Knicks Morning News (2023.06.09)

Yes, Spoelstra gave Jalen his props, but most of the talking heads – and many on this site, including the redoubtable Cybersoze – still consider him 2A at best. Considering the intangibles he brings (the “immaculate vibes” weren’t due to Julius or RJ!), that’s enough to comfortably call him the lead dog on a good team. If you don’t think of him as 1A, you’re letting the eye test (small dude, limited athleticism, not a highlight player) mislead you.

Thanks for the shoutout, and you’re one of the (few?) KBers that goes to the last thread to read what you’ve missed. Congrats for that.
I don’t know if i’m using the tiers well (1A, 1B, 2A, …), but i think 1A is a player that you can surround with good players that aren’t stars while still being a contender. Giannis? Jokic? Kawhi? I have my doubts KD can win a championship without another star by his side. Those days are over for Lebron, maybe Jimmy can do it, we’ll see. So in that sense i think Brunson is 1B, but maybe i’m misunderstading the tiers. And that means i think Brunson can be the leader, yeah, but he’ll need at least one star by his side. And i’m a little skeptical if Randle qualifies as the needed star. I think we need to upgrade Randle and RJ to the star i’m talking about. Who can that star be? I don’t know and until now i’m not a fan of the names we’ve been talking about here.

I love Brunson, but i think we need at least one more player at his level. I’m not saying there’s players that can win without help, it’s just that some selected few can win with less help than usual. And those guys really standout as the best on their teams, like Giannis, i think no one will dispute that he’s a tier above all his teammates. Kawhi had Lowry and Siakam, i’m not seeing a lot of players that could win with those two as his sidekicks. I don’t think Brunson could do it. But instead of 1A, 1B, 2A, etc, please tell me if you think we can be champions with Randle and RJ as Brunson’s help. And if not, how good the help should be?

I would add that now seems to be a better time than ever to have extra first-round picks of questionable quality lying around–the trade that just took place seems to speak to that. I won’t say too much more on the matter because it’s an oddly controversial topic around here.

I agree, the new CBA will add value to our protected picks. And also about the new CBA, i think people aren’t yet aware that we can avoid using the MLE during the offseason because it can be used as a trade exception later on.

Thought exercise, Cyber: imagine if we ran back this year’s roster, only we replaced RJ with Mikal Bridges(*). What do you think the ceiling of that team is?

I think we’d be contenders, yeah. But it’s a case where we’re picking the ideal player to make this work, like the 2004 Pistons. No superstars, but all players were a perfect fit with one another. Well, all except Prince, i think he was easily replaceable without losing their contending status. And please, i’ve seen written here that the Pistons had “luck”, but i don’t think a sequence of ECF, Champions, NBA Finals (losing in 7), ECF (losing to the eventual champions and referee darlings – Heat) shows that they were lucky. So i think we have a good team, and Leon can elevate us to contending status, but if Brunson is still the best player on the team then our upgrade has to be with the perfect fit player, which is Mikal and i don’t know if there’s another player as perfect as him to do it without being a star.

Very nice thread about non-basketball topics, i love it. And about today’s topic, with the information i’m about to give you’ll wish you were born portuguese, college is free* here in Portugal.
* – except for a small yearly fee of about 1.5k

Oh sure, but on the other hand I bet your health insurance is free too

Oh, you’re a connoisseur. 😉 But to be frank, health insurance is a mixed bag, we have it free but in some areas we have long waiting lists, so everybody that can afford to pay the health insurance to be able to go private care to avoid the waiting, does it.

How much is the private insurance?

For 3k a year you can have a lot of stuff included and then when you go to the private hospital you’ll only pay a small fee, the rest is covered by the insurance. But we have lower salaries here than you have in america so it isn’t as cheap for us as it looks from your perspective. But i think we have access to good care and with reasonable prices for what the salaries are here. Of course everybody complains, because we have the public free care, whenever we have to pay we think it’s super expensive, but comparing to other countries i don’t think it is. I don’t know why we don’t have like health-vacation, where people could come here be well treated and spend some time recovering on a nice country, and in the end the bill will be lower.