Knicks Morning News (2023.06.07)

I’m not going to argue against people’s personal aesthetic preferences, but it bears noting that the idea that RJ Barrett is an awful to watch, low IQ player is a distinct (in capital letters) minority position within the fanbase of the New York Knickerbockers.

There’s no question that I from time to time hold minority positions against the sometimes teeming masses and am comfortable doing so — but this one should be clear, lest there be any confusion.

In terms of this player in particular, I’m entirely on the side of majority fashion and have a hard time really seeing the alternative — particularly when it hits the Two Minutes Hate levels it often hits around here. But there’s no accounting for taste and certainly critical tastes vary greatly, (as, well, an elite TV critic doesn’t need to be told). There are some who don’t care for, say, Mulholland Drive, or the Beatles.

They would have lost in 4 if Butler hadn’t crank-rolled his ankle …. They got “smoked,” IMHO. If the term offends, that’s fine, but it’s beside the ultimate point of their place in the association cosmos and what a 42-43 win next season would mean.

They’re probably still in purgatory. There’s some small amount of wiggle room in that for me now for the reasons I’ve outlined, which is a change in priors. But they’re probably, rather than certainly, still there.

Purgatory, the treadmill of mediocrity, etc. have existed as concepts for a while, and have never, ever been used to refer to teams in the Knicks’ position.

Completely false. (For a bunch of reasons, but “purgatory” and “the treadmill of mediocrity” are not synonyms.)

Whether or not it was described that way, the Utah Jazz declared themselves purgatorial after winning 56 games and being 3rd in SRS.

Winning a single playoff round does not remotely take a team out of purgatory.

Before you went to the dark side, you literally generated a purgatory index. Where do the Knicks fit in on it relative to the rest of the association?

You completely changed your tune on this issue sometime last season, for whatever reasons you might have had. That isn’t binding on the rest of us.

If you project to finish 6th in the conference every year, you’re in textbook purgatory.

The goal is a championship, not merely to be a little better than mediocre.

Lo and behold, there’s not a single projection system that said the Knicks had a 0% chance of winning the finals by the time the playoffs rolled around, and a certain poster was even positing, perhaps correctly, that their Vegas odds to do so represented good value.

They peaked at probably like 4%, taking the vig into account — but in any event that’s now yesterday’s news and clearly impacted by the probably non-repeatable “openness” of this year. The Bucks’ absence after the first round probably at least doubled even that small number.

I’d personally probably put the purgatory variables at above literal zero, (*) but even if we don’t do that, the critical factor as we sit here now is what they are for next year, not last year.

(*) Four percent chance at chip, zero percent chance at high lottery pick probably qualifies as purgatory — but there’s room for reasonable debate about the right inputs. TNFH’s “not even close” WAY overstates it. But conceptually, we’re on the same page. I don’t see any pushback in the relevant variables or the concept itself.

please acknowledge that our cast of characters here at Knickerblogger Dot Net was far from the only ones ready to shoot RJ into the sun prior to that game.

Definitely acknowledged. I was one of them.

Aesthetically, I like his old man-ish game and style. There’s a lot of smarts and craft involved in how he get things done. The left-handedness adds even a bit of extra style to it all. I guess that’s not for everyone. So be it.

Purgatory has always been some combination of chance at championship and chance at high lottery pick. TNFH himself codified it.

There’s been no wavering on my end.

And more importantly as we turn the page to another season — it’s *still* the definition.

He can’t defend. Like, at all.

Bullshit.

I will freely admit to not having done a scientifically rigorous poll, but E is literally the only person I have ever heard try to claim that RJ is a legitimately good defender.

He’s a good defender, but that’s not even what I’m really saying. I’m saying that the fatuous notion that he’s a terrible defender and a zero way player is bullshit.

There’s an overreliance on superficial numbers here. Either that’s seen or it’s not; I can’t coax or coach people out of it. Is what it is.

He played big wing minutes for the top-rated playoff defense in the association. Which means that an absolute bare minimum you can play him big minutes on the wing defensively and still have an excellent defense. Prima facie good enough “numbers” for me. There’s more to him than that, but there’s your numbers.

2. They take their opponent’s argument, twist it into something different, and then laugh at how stupid the different thing is (e.g. when you twisted my argument into “OMG I can’t believe Hubert thinks any team can achieve the 7th best SRS if only they want to.”)

Z-Man actually had the … audacity(?) … to suggest that no data points from the playoffs were needed to determine anything.

There was no twisting needed on my part.

And it is. The Pistons could without question, if it was their aim, win a single playoff series within the next three years.

But as some of us know and some of us used to know, that low level of achievement typically isn’t the goal of the vast, vast majority of teams in the association.

while being owed more first round picks than they owe.

Except that’s fake, intentionally misleading news. To get to this point at T+3, they’ve burned a lottery pick to get Isaiah Hartenstein, incinerated the 18th pick, and traded a 1 for Josh Hart. If you net those in, as they should be, they’re not in any true sense “owed more 1s than they owe.” They only don’t “owe” 1s because they’ve already given them away.

They’ve without question front loaded things to even get to this one playoff series win in three years, probably still purgatorial, point. There’s nothing special about where they are or what they’ve done, in the least. Any team could do it if they didn’t care about purgatory.

Do you guys want to standby what you said, or not?

Why wouldn’t we? — it’s obviously true.

Hubert’s already covered this, but the Pistons have Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, and the 5th pick in this years draft. If they set their goal as “win a playoff series in the next three years” and didn’t care about a chip or purgatory, they could accomplish the task with ease. Not even debatable. Hubert made it a bigger challenge by seemingly keeping CC and JI off limits, even then he showed how easy it would be.

The “owed more 1s than owe” continues to be gaslighting. It doesn’t matter if it’s true, but it’s not true.

SRS doesn’t matter either. When it was brought up re the Knicks and this debate there was no acceptance of the offer, no meeting of the minds on it being anything that mattered. The opposite — SRS in that context was ridiculed. With, among other things the Jazz example. Third in SRS, still a purgatorial teardown.

It was never any more than the one playoff series win in three years. The rest was thrown in once it became obvious how off the initial point was. And now we’re hearing about “assets,” whatever that means, cap position (which for the Knicks sucks), and the heavily protected 1s they’ve already paid for and more.

The ledger for the Knicks is one playoff series win in year T+3, capped out, no rookies in last two classes, three 1s used up for front-loading as in the Josh Hart trade. That’s it, that’s the ledger. The only thing separating that from flat out pure purgatory is that fact that Brunson (luckily) might be materially better than the entire market perceived him. Even with that, it is more likely than not still purgatory. It’s nothing special. At all.

Not really even a criticism, just an honest, true, GAAP-principles, accounting.

Knicks had gone 7 years without going to the playoffs, have gone 2/3 years and won the second playoff series this franchise has won in 23 years and have a pretty good team. That’s…pretty good? Idk. I guess we could have more chuckers

I’m grading on the “NBA curve,” not the “Knicks curve,” which again might be the disconnect here. If the idea is something like Leon is doing way better than the other hacks who preceded him, I think we all agree. Kumbaya to that one.

I’m not even trying to be pedantic, but when evaluating a team’s position it’s an enormous deal whether they’ve gone scorched earth to reach their current quality.

They’ve traded three first round draft picks in three years. They project to have no rookies from either the 2022 or 2023 classes on the roster. Yes, they do have some heavily protected picks left over from their silly effort to machinate and cogitate their way to Isaiah Hartenstein,(*) but so what? They have a roster immaterially different than a scorched earth roster.

If the hypothetical Pistons traded Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey and this year’s 1 for a bunch of mezzanine assets and when the dust settled happened to have a couple heavily protected 1s left over, no one would sensibly brag about the heavily protected 1s and contort themselves into salivating about the “more 1s owing than owed.” It would be definitive scorched earth and the literal zenith of pedantry.

This concept does not favor your “side,” it favors ours. Yell and scream as will be yelled and screamed, and it still won’t change things.

(*) And to rid themselves of a contract they got on the buyout market — one of the most scorched earth set of transactions in association history.