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111 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.03.18)”
Here’s a fun game. What’s the worst possible team you can make up consisting only of first team All-NBA players (one per each position)?
Note that there are few guys that you can look at and say, “Him?!” so this team would still be really good, and yet….
So here’s my picks…
PG Tim Hardaway (1997)
SG Latrell Sprewell (1994)
SF George Yardley (1958) (Yardley was quite good, but small forward just happened to be a stacked position over the years)
PF Truck Robinson (1978)
C DeAndre Jordan (2016)
Keeping an eye on Mitch+Towns lineups– only 36 possessions so far which of course is not representative of anything, but it’s a net +42.1 with a 150 ORtg and 107.9 DRtg. They can plausibly play a Minnesota-like lineup with Brunson (Conley), Bridges (Ant), OG (McDaniels), KAT, and Mitch (Gobert) — I would wager we see some of this come playoff time.
Meanwhile – Mitch with 5 offensive rebounds and 4 stocks in 24 minutes – that’ll do.
Mitch is just rounding into shape. Knock on wood and all the prayers he continues to stay healthy. A healthy Mitch is a huge difference maker.
3 things:
1. Thank God we have KAT. Probably would have lost without his specific skill set last night. No way Randle is gonna pull up from 30 twice in 2 separate runs to put the team in the lead and put them away. Randle could still have a run like that, just in a different way- and we probably don’t take a double digit lead as easy. When your center is bombing away and scoring in the paint, there’s nothing the other team can do.
2. Godspeed, Tracy Morgan.
3. And errrrmahhhgarrrd! I just read that they are gonna be serving S’mores Quesadillas at Phillies games. I would never attend a Phillies game, but my inner fat kid is FIENDING- yal hear me?? LOL
Following up on a discussion from last week, can we conclude now that Bridges can do reasonably well in the role Randle had last year? I mean that every now and then Brunson would dump the ball to him and let him create for himself or others.
Looks like i missed the best half, but i felt we’d win even at the end of the 1st half, and i’m glad we did it in good fashion.
Having Mitch gives us a very good 7-man rotation for the playoffs, maybe Brunson, Mikal, OG, KAT and Mitch starting with Deuce and Hart from the bench. And to try to extend the rotation, Thibs can even play whoever is playing ok that day from Payne, Shamet and Precious.
Agree with Mikal’s role, he can be the new Randle and Brunson should make sure that happens. He’s watching the games as we do, and he’s a smart guy so i think he’ll know what to do.
I’m getting the feeling we’re rounding into form for the playoffs, and that’s exactly what we all hoped for. Can’t wait for the playoffs to come. Maybe we can make history, but i hope it’ll be fun at least.
Scary that all our hopes seem to hinge on Mitch’s continued health. I hope that he never misses another game in his career, but watching him play these days is like watching AD play. His health seems so tenuous. I hope I’m wrong.
Cyber – there’s certainly a glimmer of hope that the team can show up and punch some noses. I’m concerned about JBs ankle. Other than that, the team is healthy with no major concerns beyond KAT and Josh’s possible minor corrective offseason surgery. Without a healthy Brunson there is no rounding into shape.
The main thing I am contemplating is how much of our improved defense can be attributed to:
1. Deuce instead of Brunson
2. Adding Mitch as backup C instead of Sims and Precious
3. Subtle adjustments and greater effort down the stretch of the season
Both 1 and 2 are part of it, but I’m not sure how much each is contributing. I haven’t been paying close enough attention, but it does seem like the effort has been better.
I think we are going to learn a LOT down the stretch when Brunson is back and we get to see some Mitch, Towns and Brunson minutes.
At one point in the season we were discussing what would happen if Mikal was asked to be the #2 option because of an injury to Towns. It turned out to be an injury to Brunson instead which is worse because not only did we lose his scoring, we don’t have a strong real backup PG to start in his place (Deuce is more of a combo G). But at least so far, he’s showing he can be the #2 option and hold up.
A veritable 3 body problem. Or bonanza.
Many here have been waiting for the same thing. For all the crap (much of it deserved) the medical staff takes, they deserve a pat on the back for the rehab of Mitch in this instance. No one can see into the future, but this time they finally waited long enough for him to heal and are using him judiciously concerning minutes.
Long enough or as long as they could – remains to be seen. But Mitch looks like a man whose foot has healed physically and in his own minds eye.
So far, so good.
That was an incredibly positive game. Besides crushing a hated rival, we had The Old Mitch showing up big time, Hart suddenly righting the ship (for at least a half), Towns utterly dominating (for a quarter, but that was all that was needed), and Mikal having one of the more impressively quiet dominant and efficient games (10-14, 28 pts). Plus Tyler scored a basket.
OG was one long brain fart on offense, but was absolutely deadly on D, so totally gets a pass.
Once they got done sleepwalking through that first quarter, it was really fun.
They could have held him out another month and still had a reasonable number of games to get him up to speed for the playoffs. He certainly appears perfectly healthy.
His ankle/foot might explode a week from next coming Tuesday, but it will be hard to argue negligence at that point.
Sure yeah but why does so much of our offense have to be “Give the ball to player x and let him try to create something”. Why can’t we run an actual offense like every other good team in the league?
We were running an actual offense early in the season before KAT hurt his thumb. KAT operating from top of the key, lots of passing to open cutters, lots of pick and roll with KAT and Brunson, etc. Then KAT got hurt, his shooting was way off, which meant defenses could play us differently, and without that threat, we became Brunson hero ball. Now KAT finally seems back to normal, but Brunson is out. The hope is that by the time the playoffs come, everyone will be healthy at the same time, and we get back to the kind of team that pantsed the Nuggets in Denver.
Knicks third in defense since Mitch returned?
Mitchaholics Anonymous chapter meeting tonight for all who want to join.
Don’t we have a new staff this year?
It’s only one game and against the Pels, who are kind of pathetic right now, but the Pistons beat them last night by 46 points, with four of their five starters not even making it to double figures in scoring. They’re looking a little scary right now…
Kind of a wonder that Mitch was so easily able to step right into a defense that appears to be built around him…
As much as I love Mitch, I had forgotten just how dominant he can be defensively. He covers so much ground and also has very quick hands for a big man. I believe 24 minutes or so of Mitch a game gives us a top 10 defense to go with our top 5 offense.
Tracy Morgan on ‘the incident’:
“More importantly, the Knicks are now 1-0 when I throw up on the court so maybe I’ll have to break it out again in the playoffs
#goknicks”
Since Brunson went down, we have a 113.4 ORtg, which would be 18th on the season and not all that close to 17th.
Maybe that’s good enough for when you lose a superstar, but Mikal as second banana hasn’t exactly been stellar for the offense.
Our defense has carried us with a 105.6, soundly better than OKCs league-leading 107.2.
Since Brunson has been out Bridges is averaging 23.4 ppg with 4.6 asts on a 63/47/95 shooting slash line.
Without a healthy Brunson i don’t know if we’d be able to win our 1st round matchup.
And he isn’t. We have Brunson and KAT, so he is third banana.
Good points, EB. I find it an interesting example of old-time Knicks brainwashing that I find it much more enjoyable watching a good defense-bad offense team than a good offense-bad defense team.
I sure hope when Brunson comes back it’ll be good offense-good defense…
Brunson is as good as Brunson! LOL! But is KAT better than Randle? Is Mikal better than DDV? Is OG better than RJ? And then we have Mitch and iHart, i think iHart is better but it’s close because of Mitch’s defensive presence and OREBs.
I think all 3 in question are an upgrade from what we had, so i’m optimistic.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Mitch’s game defensively and I think he’s not far from DPoY level when at his best. However, it’s hard to believe that the few minutes he’s been playing are enough to turn us from mediocre to all-time great defensively.
More likely this is like when we added OG last season and our defense immediately looked great. It wasn’t just the addition of a very good defender in OG, it was the accompanying subtraction of a very poor defender in Clank Barrett that yielded a huge delta.
I think this is what we’re seeing with Brunson — it seems to me Strat’s 1 + 1 = 3 theory on bad defenders is fundamentally astute. We can hide KAT or Brunson but if they’re both on the court, teams like BOS or CLE can still put us in a zugzwang by forcing switches to get an advantage every time. Mitch in the middle will definitely help some but Horford/KP types historically are his hard counter.
I’m concerned that the Brunson-KAT combo will always be fatally flawed.
Metrics show iHart is actually better defensively than Mitch which makes him better overall as he is a lot better in every facet of offense other than OREBs, and not far off there.
This is something Cleveland is gonna have to deal with in the playoffs. Read some stats yesterday, didn’t realize how bad Garland is defensively. You can say it’s minimized due to having the 2 shot blockers but Cleveland rarely closes games with Allen on the court.
Atkinson is gonna have to make some tough decisions with his lineups in the playoffs just like Thibs.
I looked up zugswang and I am very angry that it is a real word.
Zugzwang. It’s so annoying I can’t even spell it right.
(Actually a great term that I will try to use later today in some kind of work-related communication…)
Dude, we should totally tell Thibs that this is what we should do.
Anyone into that show Queen’s Gambit?
Nuh uh.
At the risk of sounding like Brian Cashman, a healthy Mitchell Robinson really does seem to be the best trade deadline acquisition we could’ve made. The defensive change has been immense and is well-trodden territory…but has anyone else noticed an every so slightly expanded bag from him too? The odd post up here and there, a few more non-dunk putback attempts, that kind of thing? Something fun to monitor.
KAT also strikes me as more engaged defensively these past few games, and by the eye-test that coincides with some more switching from him.
For a wild ride, check out this Josh Hart college scouting report:
NBA comparison: Keith Bogans. (Bogans averaged 2.7 rebounds—best season = 4.3 rebounds, his rookie year—and 1.3 assists per game over his 11-year career. So, no. Probably more like our own Greg Anthony, Malcolm Brogdon, or KCP.)
“His long range shot will be a selling point in a league that value’s spacing” Great.
I have noticed this! It’s not much but I’ll take it!
I’ve also noticed the ocassional hook shot from KAT!
Just wait until he takes a 3.
Nah. Josh is not like Greg Anthony or KCP, after all. I’ll stick with Brogdon, though.
“It’s like a new signing guys” ht Arsene Wenger
That’s a terrible scouting job on Hart
What the fuck was any of that? LOL
he really does bring the whole team’s potential up a notch, maybe not quite contenders, but he could most certainly have an impact in any series…
him and deuce are homegrown which is really nice, both come across as good folk, and they’re key pieces to our success in the post season…
I enjoyed Queen’s Gambit quite a bit.
You mean when he takes and nails a 3 at the buzzer in game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals to win the game and series against Boston and catapult us to the Eastern Conference Finals?
I can’t wait!
noob question for sure – so, is mitch engaging in the same type of drop coverage as KAT was doing at center?
if not, why?
if so, why?
i forgot how good mitch was at swatting balls away on defense, if the ball is around him, he’ll see it and react really quickly…rebounding wise, if he gets to the front of the rim, he’s hard to stop from getting any missed shots moving around the rim…
I liked Queen’s Gambit, but mostly for Anya Taylor-Joy being fantastic. Haven’t seen it since it came out though
I loved The Queen’s Gambit, which made me watch The Gorge, the first half of which was quite entertaining and gave me great hope, but once they went into the gorge quickly became “one of the worst movies ever made.”
“Same” in a conceptual sense, as in what KAT is supposed to do but can’t. Mitch recognizes picks much more quickly, and is very fast to both hedge and recover or to close out on the shooter if that’s the play. It’s like someone who grew up speaking a language and someone who’s on an exchange trip after one month of Spanish….
Very interesting listening – The Putback with Ian Begley.
First Tim Bontemps said that “[The Knicks] might be the fifth-best team in the league. The problem is, either the best or second-best team in the league is going to be waiting for them in the second round of the playoffs.
(…)
I do think they could beat the Cavs in a series, but I don’t think they can beat the Celtics.”
But then he ended this bit with “As of now, it’s hard to see how the Knicks get better without other teams getting worse.” and i’ve been thinking about it ever since.
One thing is for certain, to improve from where we are is really hard.
Good to know on QG… I have to watch for work and it’s one of those shows that I irrationally fear being irritated by. I fear nothing from it now. Thanks. Anya Taylor Joy just has those eyes…
Mitch is lightyears ahead of KAT athletically. And willing. KAT seems like one of those guys who is just naturally good at scoring and that has made him rich… like Melo even.
Clarence, I think QG is a bit too long — an issue I generally have with Scott Frank’s TV stuff — but Taylor-Joy is really good.
Thanks, Alan.
A very challenging task considering the new cap/apron rules.
Barring a earth-shattering trade my “thread the needle” answer would be:
1. Build a better and deeper bench with smart veteran signings and willing players develoment (trading rookies/sophomores playing time for some potential RS losses)
2. Get a new coach who:
a. He’s willing to use the better and deeper bench in a tactically flexible way based on opponents’ lineups and tendencies.
b. Has the courage to add some “blasphemous“ little things to our defense (i.e. A sprinkle of zone) to offset our superstars’ weaknesses.
3. Pray to stay healthy.
Me too. I watched it twice…so far.
I’m with Max. I definitely think we can build a better bench this summer. I am skeptical that Thibs will be replaced, though. And then there’s the question of whether the FO decides that Thibs and Mikal can’t coexist, and what we might be able to trade Mikal for, then.
How does one like a show without having seen it since it came out?
I’m amused that my use of zugzwang seems to have kicked off a QG discussion that isn’t about Quentin Grimes.
I agree it is a great word, and for me it comes from poker, where game-theory optimal play tends to elicit zugzwang for a skilled opponent’s turn, such that no action on their part is particularly good.
Of course, this is a small aspect of maximizing your profit, which mostly comes from exploiting bad players and creating situations where they could exploit you if they make the right choices.
It’s interesting to map it to NBA coaching. Thibs seems to have a general strategy that he thinks is optimal. It’s solid and he does tend to win more than he loses. But the coaches that really crush the league play exploitive strategies that target adversaries’ weaknesses much more effectively.
I do think we could see this team get better (without some major moves) in the following ways.
1. Deuce. I mean, he’s gotten better every year. This is his 4th year, so he probably isn’t going to take some massive leap forward, but if he has one more mini leap in him, that would definitely make us better. Alternatively, if he shows out in the playoffs, his relatively young age and cheap contract will make him a VERY nice trade chip. I wouldn’t want to trade him but if there was a move out there to really upgrade us somewhere else, ya gotta consider it.
2. Mitch is now fully healthy. Caveats about here but last night was his first really good game with us. If he can get back to the level consistently we know he’s capable of and he’s able to give us 25 a night for 60 plus games a season, that’s huge.
3. Continuity. It should not be discounted. Wingstop could get better. Mikal could get more comfortable. Team defense could inch forward with more familiarity.
4. Dadiet becomes a rotation piece or we find a suitable veteran SF/Wing off the bench to help our size.
Outside of those things…a coach/new voice could be necessary.
I’m starting to get excited though. The season has felt like a slog at times, partly because raised expectations and general antsiness to get to the playoffs. Lots of what ifs around Brunson but if he can come back healthy with some garbage games to play before hte season ends, they get some good preparation in during the off week before round one, the team can use our round one opponent to warm up a bit, gain some confidence, I think we can go into round 2 with a real shot. No one will expect us to do anything. Boston could be cocky.
The team has a label so far of being kind of soft but that could all change in the playoffs.
It’s hard to figure out how to defend the Celtics.
If we start Towns at C, he can handle KP outside, but then we are back to the Brunson/Towns problem and no paint protection.
If we start Mitch at C, that creates other problems.
If Mitch is dragged out guarding KP or Horford the paint is open again and who does Towns guard?
If Towns in on KP, who does Mitch guard?
That’s the strength of 5 out that we were hoping to duplicate, but Boston doesn’t have the same defensive holes at PG and with Towns at C that we have.
At a minumum they are going to strengthen the bench. Plus we still have a few young players that will develop. Maybe one of them will break out if we are patient this time.
The other alternative is trading Mitch or Towns. I’d add Hart to that list but he feels more untouchable than DDV.
I’m not sure that I think Wingstop actually *could* get any better.
When you’re good you’re real good, Pags.
I think I’m going to change it to 3.14159 so it sounds smarter.
IMO it will always be flawed, but we won’t know if it’s fatally flawed until we see Mitch at C, Towns at PF and try to duplicate what the T-Wolves had last year. I think Towns’s downside is lower at PF than at C and Mitch covers for a lot of sins. If it doesn’t work, I think they’ll have to consider trading Towns or Brunson and it’s not going to be Brunson.
Matching up with the Celtics requires much more creativity than that.
Mitch on Brown (sag and give up the 3)
KAT on Porzingis (no room on the perimeter)
OG on Tatum
Brunson on Holiday
Bridges on White
Now if they want to target Brunson and KAT they are running Porzingis /Holiday pnr. I can live with that. Blitz Holiday with the taller KAT and make it harder to pass. Porzingis isn’t a roll man. Mitch is the help.
What if it’s Horford instead of KP? Easy switch of KAT to Horford, instead?
Yes.
Bottom line is you have to start Mitch against Boston. Have to.
Cgreene you pretty much read my mind there. Jaylen Brown is IMO one of the most overrated players in the league. His .316 3FG% this year would make Josh Hart blush. Wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him stroke it like Curry against us but Thibs absolutely must put that to the test.
The BOS players I fear offensively are Tatum, White, and KP in that order. Wingstop should be able to contain Tatum and White with Mitch’s backing. KP has a decent chance of not being available and is exactly the kind of big Towns doesn’t suck at guarding (see: his surprisingly decent track record against Jokic). Then we just have to live with Brunson on 34 year old Jrue and his .343 stroke.
I don’t have a lot of confidence in Thibs to figure this out, at least not until we’re down 3-1 or some stupid shit like that, but it could possibly work if we’re fully healthy and roll some decent shooting luck.
Thanks, Beeks. If you can’t handle me at my sassiest, you don’t deserve me at my classiest.
I know Brown has been having a bit of down year from 3 so far, but I wouldn’t put too much weight on that. IMO he’s certainly going to wake up if left open in the playoffs. He’s one of those guys that’s capable of stepping it up a notch. If he’s left open it could get ugly.
cgreene, from your post to Thibs’ ears
And, just realized your handle is pronounced “sea green.” Never occurred to me it could be a nom de plume (nom de flume?) instead of abbreviation.
(Also, autocorrect made it mom de plum and I almost left it….)
There was a chemical leak in my new building that led to a 2:00am evacuation. The one thing 2025 had been lacking in thus far. (But at least I got to watch Ohtani open his season. Silver linings!)
Oh, man, Donnie. Glad you’re okay. Hope your place is.
It’s a career low but not some massive outlier. He last shot above league average from 3 in 2021, the empty gym season when Julius Randle shot it like Larry Bird. Below league average in 6 of 9 seasons. Percentages has declined even as volume has declined. He is a legitimately mediocre shooter.
Given that BOS does not exactly have a thermal exhaust port (you still out there, Hubie?) I know which poison I’m picking. If you have a better Strat (pun intended) than cgreene proposed, I’d love to hear it.
Shit, Donnie! I got the 6 am tornado alarm on my phone… but that feels like a pile on for you. Glad you’re okay. Wtf…
I don’t have a good strategy. That was the point of my post. I’m just telling you right now that leaving Jaylen Brown open for 3 in the playoffs will NOT work.
Mitch’s length and/or the idea of it is not “leaving him open”. Mitch can sag and recover and jump (with his hands up unlike KAT) and bother Brown enough to make him think.
The space station rescue feels pretty cool.
I just can’t not visualize Brown pump-faking Mitch up and then flying around him where he only has to deal with KAT jumping like the Black Knight halfway through King Arthur’s sword work.
Mitch is much improved at not falling for the banana in the tailpipe.
The Knicks scored exactly 116 points in each of the three wins against the Heat this year. What are the odds?
It is and it is ridiculous that NASA/Boeing can’t do something reliably that a guy who built a private company that has thrown and entire satellite network into orbit, invented re-usable boosters, built a great ev car company and owns a social platform the limits censorship and he does this all at the same time.
Lordy. Way to skirt the politics thing, but not all that surreptitiously. I applaud you for how you tried to do it, though.
Try posting a link on the site
100%
People with money sure know how to put money into things, or in this case, get the government to subsidize every single one of his companies.
NASA can’t do it because it’s “government waste”, but when the government pays a private company to blow up their rockets, it’s genius free market enterprise.
Hell of a euphemism for “lets openly white supremacists call black people the N word.”
And it’s very much censored right now.
Apparently it is a platform the limits censorship, but not one the limits incorrect spelling.
And yeah, it’s censored, unless you agree with what it’s putting forth. Much like Mahmoud Khalil.
Wait. Isn’t this politics? Oh, yeah…….I forgot that I’m the only one who is not allowed to post about politics here.
(I don’t actually mind the topic at all, but there are some here who are really seriously put off by it.)
Brown is shooting 35.3% on wide open 3s. You need to leave him open, or at minimum play very far off him.
Leave Mitch in the paint and let Brown do whatever he wants.
Like Hart, Brown will make some of them – but you can live with it if you’re controlling everyone else.
Well, I just thought it was cool to see astronauts being heroes with my nephews is all. It made me think about what it was like to be taught who heroes are when I was a kid and figuring out how to expose young minds to moments like this and help them to walk away from it with something valuable. Or to stop talking about it because they’re more interested in how long they can hang from your outstretched arm. Not meant to trigger. It’s pretty incredible what we can do as a species. Astronauts are really brave.
I would expect that many teams have tried the “lay off Brown” tactic. With not much success overall. Brown is mostly effective as an “attack dog” kind of player…he is a lot like Randle in that way, except way mote athletic. He’s a total mismatch for most guards, and is quick and strong enough to get angles on bigger defenders and either draw fouls or get to the rim. His athleticism, quickness, and strength creates space in a different way than a lot of players. He’s streaky from 3 and shoots them out of a game here and there, but mostly he’s a very effective two-way player. The form on his shot isn’t broken, which sadly is not the case for Hart, so if you dare him to shoot you are playing with fire.
In that sense, I think it is more that he’s overpaid than overrated.
Clarence, astronauts are really crazy. I can only slightly relate. I’ve done stuff where I should have died may times over. Nothing brave about that, though. It’s more that you accept the risks. One can take the position that it’s stupid, or risk-taking, or just you know life. Mostly stupid, to be honest. But brave was taking on the big bully who went after my best bud in middle school (when I was definitely in the running for geek of the year).
To me, being a hero means doing something for others that puts you at risk.
This is completely understated. These folks make their living by sitting atop thousands of tons of high explosives while it “burns” for a few minutes and accelerates them to ridiculous speeds.
More than a few of them have gotten dismembered on the way up and fricasseed on the way down. Brave isn’t a good enough word.
Most of these folks are engineers or high end scientists in specific areas of study, not hot rod jockeys. They are putting themselves at risk for the sake of humanity’s increase in understanding of the universe. That seems pretty selfless to me.
I’ll certainly give you that one, Bob.
Raven, you strike me as someone who could be very brave from what I’ve gathered. I hate bullies so much. Especially on the occasion when I realize I’m being one. I’m not sure I agree that astronauts are just speed junkies. I’ve only only met one. I get your point though and there is merit there. Are executioners brave for facing the thing no one else in life would face or are they psychopaths… I think astronauts are fucking cool and help kids to understand that the world is not flat and they’re willing to put their lives on the line to fucking prove it.
There are lots of dangerous jobs. I think of astronauts as brave, sure, but there are many thousands of folks who would gladly do what they do if they could, but just don’t have “the right stuff.” Only a very small fraction (I believe less than 1%) are accepted into the program. In that sense, it’s not being brave that makes them special, at least not compared to other brave folks in other professions…or in facing adverse circumstances that they did not choose.
Honestly, every time I get on a plane with dozens or hundreds of passengers and crew on board, I think of how scared shitless I would be to be a commercial airline pilot.
12000 applications .083 acceptance in 2020. Country of hundreds of millions. Seems pretty special.
The reason why I like Mitch on Brown is because he cannot over power Mitch like he can other wings. It neutralizes his size
“12000 applications .083 acceptance in 2020. Country of hundreds of millions. Seems pretty special.”
That was my point. It’s not the bravery element that makes it special, it’s the intellect and combination of skills and other attributes that it takes beyond the bravery.
I think all 12000 of those people are brave or have ambitions of it. That’s my point. (There’s probably some executioners in there too).
“The reason why I like Mitch on Brown is because he cannot over power Mitch like he can other wings. It neutralizes his size”
I agree that it is probably our best strategy vs. their starters. Then you can put OG on Tatum, but Boston will run screens until they get Tatum iso’ed on to Brunson or KAT. I suppose you can try to have Mitch go under any screen set for Brown so he can lurk. But the mismatches are in their favor.
“I think all 12000 of those people are brave or have ambitions of it. That’s my point. (There’s probably some executioners in there too).”
And that’s just those who bother applying.
Who here hasn’t applied to be an astronaut?
So my thinking is that brave and heroic are not terribly useful terms. My being brave (possibly heroic) in middle school led to my hiding in the library for a semester to keep from getting my ass kicked by a whole band of brigands. Which sounds a lot more like cowardice than brave or heroic. Even if what put me in the stacks was both brave and heroic.
Thinking you’re bullet-proof when you’re young (since after all you’re going to die anyway at some point) when you don’t have a significant other to live for, much less kids, is not all that heroic. Or brave. It feels borderline nihilistic.
People have a very different calculus about risk (like, say, driving on the highway). Some people are hard-wired to run toward strange stuff that’s happening (that could be dangerous) rather than away from it. Does that make them brave? It’s all very much in the moment. You can train yourself to be brave (e.g., run toward danger). On the other hand, I was hiking on a frozen lake in the Dacks and the ice let out an enormous crack and I was onshore looking out at my friends still standing out there moments later.
People always say they’ re no hero when they do something ‘heroic,’ and I tend to believe them. They did ‘the right thing’ in the moment, and good on them. Maybe that’s all being a hero is, and I’m giving the term more credit than it deserves. YMMV.
On the other hand, what Jalen Brunson does regularly in crunch time is fucking heroic. Tip of the cap.
Heroic.
Please note that I am just responding..I am not the initiator of the topic. EB commented already very well but there is so much more that must be said.
Rich people don’t “invent” stuff but invest their money and get others to work for them. They also get the government to subsidize them and cover their risks. They also get huge tax cuts. The list goes on and on.
As a rule, most of what they use has been created through public investment and public money. That includes, for instance, more than 90% of the components of your beloved iPhone, such as GPS, touch screen, and so on. No, Steve Jobs did not invent those. Sorry. Here is another example. The HIV drug Truvada was invented though public grants. Then it was used and patented (!) by a company called Gilead so that they could sell it for two grant and make billions. That was illegal. As far as I know, nobody went after them. I could give examples for days and days.
The so-called “billionaires space race” is the latest scam in this respect. First of all, don’t forget that capital exists for profit, not for the sake of fascination with the secrets of the cosmos. Those drive scientists, not billionaires. Billionaires got in this to make money, big money. They get huge subsidies and use publicly funded technological inventions that have been available sometimes for decades. The way the astronauts landed today, for instance, is the same as Apollo 13 did so many decades ago. Sometimes, new technologies are there but have not been sufficiently developed and implemented because of underfunding. This has been a chronic issue with public agencies, and NASA is a good example of that. But NASA has been doing fine and making us proud. Who, then, let the Musks and Bezoses of the world in this? Here we see the other side of the corporate scam which politicians readily promote: underfund public sectors, render them ineffective, and then privatize them and allow the sharks to feast. We see this strategy historically implemented in all sectors of the economy and public services. We have reached a state when even Adam Smith, the great theoretic of capitalism, would be called a leftist today. One last example. In recent years, there has been much discussion about the chronically underfunded USPS and its efficiency. I am very suspicious. Who knows how things will develop. Watch out!
Please, think critically about the “entrepreneurship” myth and don’t buy so easily what corporate propaganda sells you. 1984 is already here, alas.
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