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Knicks Morning News (2025.08.05)
08/05/2025 11:00:04
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111 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2025.08.05)”
Not really. The Statcast versus old school radar gun difference is actually a thing (not sure why it’s being seemingly denied) and that’s not nostalgia talking, that’s Newton and Pascal talking.
David Peterson’s average four-seamer is 92.3 mph this year, measured out of the hand. Anything in the low 90s under either the old school “fast” or the old school “slow” radar guns is faster than that. If a guy threw “90” in 1965, he threw harder than David Peterson.
As to the numbers you gave us re Koufax, it really comes down to details. If he threw 91 on the “fast” gun, then yeah that’s probably something like 94-95 Statcast, which is nothing special. But if he threw 94 “slow” gun, that’s 98-99 Statcast, which would make his four-seamer the quickest (I think) of any 2025 starter in baseball.
Sandy Koufax is well before my time, but can I conceive of a cosmos in which he had a better four-seamer than Gerrit Cole? Absolutely yes. Did he in fact? Dunno.
I do know he missed a shit-ton of bats (*), which could have been mostly because of his 80-level curveball and I also know that dudes in 1965 could and did put enough exit velo on batted balls for them to go a very long way. But we’re being told at the same time that pitchers of that time *couldn’t* put modern “exit velos” on their pitches. Doesn’t really add up.
The velos that 2025 hitters face are way higher than the velos 1965 hitters faced, there’s no question about that and no one sane would argue otherwise. David Peterson throws significantly harder than the “David Peterson” of 1965. That doesn’t remotely mean David Peterson throws harder than the Sandy Koufax of 1965.
(*) In a pool of dudes who did practically anything they could to not strikeout, and were in part selected for the trait of not striking out. I mentioned the 1977 World Series Game 6 on the last thread because I watched it recently on YouTube. 99.99% sure Keith Jackson said one of the fastballs thrown by Yankee starter Mike Torrez fastballs was measured at 93. Assuming that was the “fast” gun, that’s Statcast 96-97. Mike Torrez was a below league-average strikeout guy.
Owen said,
That’s why I keep saying the real issue is whether people run faster, jump higher, throw faster, hit farther, swim faster etc.. because there is a much larger pool of human beings available to try to find elite athletes or whether it’s knowledge, nutition, training, sports medicine, starting out younger etc…
I believe it’s both but to different degrees depending on the sport.
If you believe that, then it’s likely a lot of lower tier professional athletes of the past would not cut it in the present even with modern advancement, but they probably would have run faster, jumped higher, hit father, thrown faster etc… than they did in their prime.
I see it in my own game.
I saw Mosconi, Lassiter, Crane, Siegel, Varner Mizerak, Reyes, etc.. play pool decades ago and I saw the level of their competition.
When Reyes came along he revolutionized the game of 9 ball with kicking and safety strategy.
Now I see Filler, Gorst, etc…
There are massively more great players now than in the past because the game is global, but you can’t compare them statistically to the past because the cue sticks have improved accuracy, the balls, cloths, and pocket size all changed and players are starting WAY younger with the benefit of learning on Youtube from great players instead of trial and error on their own.
If the great players of the past started as kids now with modern equipment and learning, they’d be better than they were in their primes, but there would be MANY more great players to compete against. So the tier below them years ago would drop away.
The argument has kinda gone astray from the original point, which is that some of us geezers think it’s kinda boring to see guys flailing away at 100mph 4-seamers an 90mph sliders/sweepers/cutters/sinkers/splitters from mostly generic starters and relievers in search of exit velocity and launch angle. It’s purely about aesthetics and tastes and preferences, and there’s no accounting for that.
Although it seems like the powers that be have recognized that aspects of the evolution of the game have had detrimental impacts on fan interest over the years. Massive rules/equipment changes were implemented (almost all geared to offense) to make it almost unrecognizable from the game played in the 1960’s, starting with lower mound and smaller strike zone, to the DH, to warnings and ejections for brushback pitches, to maple bats with hollowed out ends, to helmets and body armor that protect hitters who lean out over the plate, to outlawing the shift, pitch clocks, free runners, restricting mound visits and throw-overs, to torpedo bats. Throw in the newfangled nature of uniforms, stadiums, scoreboards, walk-up music, HR trots, and the lack of roster continuity, and there’s a lot of things to be nostalgic about. (the new stadiums and amenities are mostly a plus, so there’s that! From a Mets fan POV, Shea was a dump and Citi Field is awesome!))
But there is no debating the obvious truth that, as in most sports, the average baseball player is far, far superior to the average player back in the day. The training, equipment, and passing on of new technical skills has irrevocably changed the skill level in the sport. This is also true in football, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, figure skating, you name it! Watching film of the olden days looks kinda comical, but at the time, it seemed beautiful and state of the art.
I would guess that the sport that has stayed truest to its original nature is soccer. Seems like the uniformity of the ball, field, and goal have limited what can be done to change things. Would love to hear from folks about this, since I am not a fan at all, not enough scoring for me and penalty kicks deciding critical games seems weird, as does not knowing how exactly much time is left.
*obviously the advent of artificial turf has been a factor in soccer, but beyond that, not much else, right?
I should also mention volleyball…the most massive change over the years was to add a defensive specialist called the libero who can remain in the back row continuously to somewhat rein in the offense.
OK, I’m home under the weather and have a little extra time (but less stamina), so I can update the 1977 clip.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_QiPpMzclk
I only watched four of the Dodger innings, and didn’t find the 93 that I still think is there, but … at 5:09, the announcer notes that one of Torrez’s first pitches hit 91 on the JUGS gun. The JUGS gun was the “fast” gun in 1977 but then became the slow gun, but in any event that 91, conservatively, would be 94 today with Statcast.
Then, at 6:16, an even better piece of evidence. Tom Seaver, Mets superstar pitcher, was on the broadcast. He’s asked by Howard Cosell (*) whether he prefers working on three or four days rest. He says, Howard I always work on four days rest. Howard then says something stupid like, well that’s interesting because Mike Torrez said he prefers working on three.
Seaver then says, Well, yeah, Howard — that’s because he’s a sinkerball pitcher. I’m a riding fastball pitcher.
Now, there’s no question whatsoever that Tom Seaver threw materially harder than Mike Torrez. Seaver routinely led the NL in strikeouts, and even in that low strikeout era era got into the 8s per 9 innings. Mike Torrez in 1977 averaged 3.8 strikeouts per nine, the league average was five.
So … (1) if Mike Torrez was hitting 91 on the JUGS, there’s no way the 1988-89 environment typically featured 88 MPH fastballs or whatever the alleged number was; (2) there’s no way Dom Smith could have rolled out of bed into that 1977 World Series and automatically raked, that’s just a massive overbid; and (3) Tom Seaver was only nine years younger than Sandy Koufax and was probably something like a 94 JUGS/97-98 Statcast four-seam guy, and there’s really no doubt that Sandy Koufax could have had a better fastball than Tom Seaver and likely did have a better fastball than Tom Seaver.
(*) The era’s village idiot of sports, IMHO.
*sigh*
Seriously- what is it about the Knicks that makes them soooo clickbait worthy? I see soooo many news articles get posted about the most shit of the bull(lol at myself) mock trade ideas! It’s disgusting honestly. I see alot of these trade ideas and think, “whyyyy in the hell would the Knicks make this trade??”. The one above triggered me hard this morning lol. Why would the team feel like they need to make an OG trade to ‘improve depth’ after adding Yabusele and Clarkson to fortify the bench? What are some of these “analysts” smokin? Must be an unbelievable high lol
because theyre in the largest media market in the country and are actually good now
I’m an avid golfer and lover of both the game’s history and present. I don’t think there’s a sport where the combination of athleticism and equipment has had as dramatic of an impact on the sport. Thanks to the equipment, I am hitting the ball farther at age 67 than I was at 27. The typical college player today would outdrive prime Jack Nicklaus by 50 yards. Every course played back in the 1960’s would seem like a pitch and putt to them. Tiger Woods was sort of the Wilt Chamberlain of golf, he caused administrators to take drastic steps to “Tiger-proof” courses…lengthening holes, adding hazards…but all that did was separate him even more from the field. Now guys like Bryson DeChambeau are using analytics to throw out long-held principles of equipment design and course management. The best example was when Bryson utterly destroyed Winged Food by ignoring the 6″ deep rough because he hit the ball so far he could just sand wedge balls out of that shit on to the green.
There is serious conversation going on about restricting the golf ball, partially because competitive golf courses are running out of real estate to lengthen the holes enough.
Personally, I’d like to see the pros play one tournament where they had to use equipment from the olden days…persimmon drivers with tiny heads compared to the frying pans we use today, balata balls that crack when hit off-center, etc., throw in some hickory shafts to boot!
In terms of equipment, night and day. Played competitive golf for a spell BITD, home course first hole 306 yards. Even at 18, never came within 25 yards of driving the green, probably not even 35.
Fast forward 25-ish years to a business event in Florida. The typical prizes, long drive on 12(?) being one of them. Winner: Past his prime Lil’ Penny at 316 yards. Into a slight breeze.
I put zero stock in anything that has anything to do with equipment.
@Z-Man’s comment
McIlroy hit old school persimmons not long ago. Ball speed only 168, carry 255, total distance 285. His ball speed with his current clubs gets into the 190s.
He was probably slightly wrong-footed by the fit and the lack of familiarity, and he could probably churn out a bit more with a modern fitting — but still quite revealing.
My two cents.
Sports is less exciting than it used to be. There are many reasons for this.
I think some of it could be attributed to analytics, the athletes being almost too good, etc.
But I also think it’s trending this way similar to other forms of entertainment being less “exciting” than they used to be.
the first thing to keep in mind. If you’re a grown up, nothing is going to be as exciting as it was when you were a kid and you first discovered the thing you love. I mean, I love NBA basketball and The Knicks but NOTHING will ever live up to their 99 finals run when I was 21 years old.
Jordan will always be the best to me because I watched him win the slam dunk contest and hit game winning shots when I was in grade school and junior high.
But also…there’s just so much more access to all of this stuff. We didn’t have blogs, televised g-leauge games, sports betting, 24/7 analyses on espn, twitter, etc. Shit was more special because you didn’t get to experience it all the time.
It’s the same reason why movie theaters are struggling. I can literally push a button on my remote and watch almost any moviie that has ever existed on a massive flat screen tv at home. So why spend 15 bucks to see a mid budget comedy in the theater? I balk at paying apple or amazon 5 bucks to rent a movie that isn’t available on one of the many streaming sites I use.
Why watch late night TV to see my favorite celebrity promote their new movie when I can go to their Instagram feed and watch reels of them every day?
I sound like an old man and I am. But we have access to EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME NOW and stuff just isn’t as special as it used to be.
On a super slow stretch of the NBA calendar, I don’t want to interrupt the baseball discussion too much. That said, here’s an excerpt from Edwards’ new mailbag:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6534635/2025/08/05/knicks-giannis-antetokounmpo-ben-simmons/?source=emp_shared_article
As we’ve discussed, Edwards doesn’t seem especially plugged into the FO so far, and some of his speculation about what the team is going to do has been pretty far off the mark. I still think that the team is looking at Jordan Clarkson as the backup PG, and that Simmons, Wright, or anybody else will be an in case of emergency player. But we’ll see…
Reading this discussion, an interesting question would be whether the measurable improvement of the past 25 years is greater than it was in any 25 year interval before that.
I asked chat to use baseball pitch speed as a test case. She responded with:
As a 73 yr old geezer, Anthony Volpe will probably hit more homers in his career than, say, John Olerud by swinging out of his shoes with an uppercut. I’d prefer Olerud’s .295 BA and .396 OBP.
As Z said, it is more watchable, IMO
my vote is for delon to be our backup pg…
equipment, youth sports, nutrition/medical, training/coaching techniques – all that stuff has progressed and continues to progress at faster speeds…
wherever we are all heading, we are getting there faster now…
Q: “Hey man, who’s up after Volpe?”
A: “The other team.”
Clarkson and Deuce will the backup “pg” minutes although they are both combo guards. I’m rooting for another step forward by Deuce.
Think it’s pretty cool and interesting how we have been desentized and ignored Big Country mid night rumblings on social media.
In a finals or bust season, the starting center being unhappy is a must story for months. We know him since he was a 19yr old kid, – so I guess it’s just Mitch being Mitch type of a non-event story.
A lot of this is boiling down to “baseball isn’t the way it was when I liked it.” Which is a perfectly valid point of view that I don’t want to disparage.
But there are reasons it’s not the way it used to be. The uptick in pitcher velocity that began in earnest around 2000 or so came around the same time as the work of our friend Voros McCracken. His work made the (correct) claim that high strikeout pitchers tend to be more valuable and consistent than pitchers who pitch to contact, and that “control” pitchers have more volatility built into them because BABIP is a cruel bitch.
The teams that prioritized strikeout pitchers earlier benefitted, until pretty much every team adopted this strategy. Then the related adjustment happened on the other side of the ball: teams started figuring out you can’t beat these guys by stringing a bunch of singles together. They’ll strike you out too often before you collect the necessary number of singles, and hitting singles involves luck anyway. Very few hitters can consistently maintain high, outlier BABIPs. So you see the beginning of the Fly Ball Revolution.
So the whole ecosystem of the game changes. It becomes much more about Three True Outcomes and much less about hitting the other way, bunting, and stringing hits together. In a relatively short amount of time you see average pitcher velocity skyrocket.
In the golden days of the game, there were always outliers that could throw very hard. But there were also a lot of soft tossers looking to create weak contact. Those guys could survive in that era. That style of pitching just doesn’t really work today. You’ll see an occasional late stage Bartolo Colon who can survive on guile but that is rare. David Peterson himself has some of the lowest velocity in the league and he’s still a lefty who throws 92-93.
Everybody throws and swings hard, because it works. It gets you wins. If it didn’t work, teams wouldn’t do it. So the game looks in some ways unrecognizable to how it looked, say 50 years ago. Some people don’t like that, which is understandable.
The Bob Gibsons and Koufaxes were outliers in their day. We can quibble about their exact velocity but clearly they threw much harder than an average league starter. Today, fastballs like theirs are the norm. The AVERAGE fastball velocity in 2025 is 94 MPH. That’s a pedestrian fastball today.
Kind of remarkable, really.
Yahoo Sports (https://sports.yahoo.com/article/knicks-trade-pitch-moves-mitchell-144020169.html):
Atlanta Hawks receive: Tyler Kolek
New York Knicks receive: Walker Kessler, Kevin Love and Svi Mykhailiuk
Utah Jazz receive: Mitchell Robinson, Pacome Dadiet, 2026 first-round pick (via NYK)
In re baseball advancement and revolution:
Since I pretty much lived through the era, as did others here, I can report that the things said about the light-hitting middle infielders 40 and 45 years ago — the Felix Millans, the Dick Schofields, the Duane Kuipers, the Doug Flynns, the Frank Taverases, the Rob Wilfongs, the Julio Cruzes and on and on and on — was some combination of “he plays very good defense, he can get a bunt down for you, he handles the bat well, he can hit to the right side with a guy on second, he can steal a base. And he’s good in the clubhouse.”
It was bullshit. They were the baseball version of the Hustlebunny.
Then Earl Weaver, the baseball genius of his day, way ahead of his time, had 6-foot-4 Cal Ripken atop the prospect lists rookie year, playing third base, “his position,” and said “You know what? Fuck it, I’m sick of Mark Belanger and Kiko Garcia and Lenn Sakata — I’m moving this guy to short.”
And everyone around baseball, the herd, scoffed out something like, in unison: “You can’t move a 6 foot 4 guy to short, he’s not going to have enough range, you’re going to get killed on defense, are you out of your mind?”
In the next spring’s Bill James Baseball Abstract (*), he tackled this issue head on by for the most part if memory serves, looking at the assists of every shortstop in baseball for the past couple years — an imperfect but still valuable proxy for their range — and found that not only was Cal Ripken not at the bottom, as conventional wisdom insisted would happen, but was instead at or very near the top. So not only was he eleventy billion times the hitter that Frank Tavares and Mario Mendoza were — he was a better defender than those losers.
Alan Trammell, a Gold Glove caliber SS and World Series MVP, also started showing significant pop in the mid-80s.
It wasn’t immediate after that, but in somewhat short order then came the Derek Jeters, the Nomars, the Tejadas, the A-Rods and out went the banjo hitting losers who no one really even liked other than the herd of baseball GMs (**) .
(*) Or maybe the one after that, can’t remember.
(**) I frankly doubt even some of them really *liked* them, but instead to keep their jobs went along with the herd.
I’m not so enamored with that trade that I’d spend the time required to lobby the league to grant us a Stepien Rule exception to let us make it
Any specific reason why you feel the need to call former athletes “losers?”
It would be nice if posters would do at least a tiny bit of due diligence before posting trade ideas that some random guy in the blogosphere made up for clicks.
I like that the Mets have consistently honored the past in playing guys like Luis Guillorme and Tomas Nido for multiple seasons.
I’m sure many of them are perfectly fine people, but have you seen their career “Wins over Replacement”?
Mikal Bridges isn’t “a salary slot” any more.
He was a salary slot before he signed the extension. And he’ll be a salary slot if he turns into a 3 bpm player next year.
No one wants to trade for a guy with his track record over the last two years on a 5 year, $175M contract with a player option. Not to mention the 15% trade kicker we gave him is basically a NTC.
We doubled down on our bet, is what we did. That’s it. There’s no ancillary benefit to this. If he doesn’t play better we are well and truly fucked.
Just seems harsh.
Fair observation.
Mikal was worse in 2024 than in 2023 and then worse in 2025 than he was in 2024. I suppose at least in theory, he could reverse the trend — but I certainly wouldn’t bet anything like a max contract on it.
I was getting out sailing this past month and I met an eleven year old who was regularly competing and occasionally winning competitive regattas against the open field or whatever they call it. In our illuminating conversation about his approach to sailing he did disclose that it was too late for him to think junior Olympics or anything like that. The kids who were going for that glory started sailing at two. He started at five. Slacker.
Leon pushed all of his chips in on a pretty weak hand. Now we’re hoping for the inside straight to come up on the river.
Come on, six of diamonds!
I hate this and it’s not just sports. Music instruments, dance, etc. The expectation now is you have to start this stuff basically when they come out of the womb if they want any shot of doing it even semi-professionally. Kids aren’t allowed to just be kids and try something, not like it and give it up. It’s too much.
I have a niece who is going to be a sophomore in HS. Last year she started doing theater and has caught the bug with musical theater. But her mom, my sister in law, was telling me that finding classes for her to take outside of school during the summer or at night/weekends is hard because all the theater and dance schools in her city are expecting her daughter to already know tap, ballet, etc…by her age. Like all the beginner level classes were for kids aged 5 to 8 and she’s already missed the boat.
It’s fucking ridiculous.
The fact we’re supposedly considering Shamet for our last spot makes it pretty obvious that our backup PG is already on the roster. At the very least, the FO is fine with our current backup PG options.
Brown’s system doesn’t require the purest PG skills. There’s a lot of action where the PG passes to a wing coming off a screen or passes to a big in the pinch post. Deuce and Clarkson should be able to handle that much, even if they’re not real PGs.
So yeah, Deuce and Clarkson are our backup PGs.
It’s hard being human.
It really is, man.
I just hate that young people are being discouraged from exploring hobbies or skills they might have a real passion for because the narrative is “you aren’t going to be good enough at this” because they didn’t figure out they liked this at age 3.
It’s ridiculous.
wait what, no tie today…my goodness sir, you must feel naked…
rest well…more golf stories please…
tell ya swifty, it has lifted my spirits significantly watching the boys in the “y” summer league…the practices, games, people interactions…
so cool to see the coaches working with the kids, and the kids responding to them and each other…
some of those kids dang near live there, i like seeing the same faces over and over, great youth sports environment, at least at this location…
If I was born a hundred years ago my movies would fucking killllll.
if i was born 100 years ago id be 100 years old
Odds are you’d be dead.
lots of people live to be 100 my dad is almost there at 92
A trade kicker is hardly an NTC. They’re not nearly as difficult to navigate as base year compensation if the player doesn’t waive the kicker. A 15% differential in outgoing/incoming salary can usually be addressed relatively easily.
We don’t know the exact details of Mikal’s contract yet, but just using the AAV number he’d count as $37.5M outgoing for us and $43.1M incoming for his new team. Depending on the other team’s salary structure and/or the rest of the trade, that might not even require any adjustments, but if it did they wouldn’t be hard to cobble together.
I get the sentiment, but also if I was told 5 years ago that we’d enter a season with the 2nd best championship odds I would’ve signed up for pretty much whatever future equity depletion was required to get there.
Terrible advice that only simpleton would give. Tell her to put in the hours and if she’s talented and loves it, – she’ll catch up in a jiffy.
Worldwide about 772,000 centenarians alive in 2024. That is “lots” but only about 1 in ten thousand…
The good news for your Dad is if you already made it to 92, your odds of reaching 100 jump to 6-7%.
I know an old gal who is 97 and lives alone in my development in Boca Raton. She walks a half mile to the gym every day for a dance/exercise class, plays Mahjong at noon, takes another dance class in the pool at three and has diner with the ladies virtually every night.
She can’t see for shit, but is sharp as a tack. I’m betting the over on her.
Bottom line… keep moving and keep engaged.
Good on him. That’s cool. Got to witness the Industrial Revolution and the digital retardation. And odds beater for sure. Life expectancy was around 60 for men born in the 20s. Odds are prolly less than one percent. Hope he’s loving the future.
Edit – Ballroom dancing is one of the greatest and most fun ways to keep your neural network engaged and active. Old Ayurvedic principle that holds – “you die from the feet up”
My sister raised a specialized kid. Started playing soccer at age 2. At 4 she was training 4 days a week. She was unbelivable by age 7. Briliant at age 10. Scored at will and dribbled through defenders like they were cones. Everyone who watched her thought she was going to be the best player in the world.
@ ~U13 other kids were catching up. At U14 she was called up for a week long national team camp but never made the team. BY U16 she was coming of the bench for an ECNL national champion team. At U17 she was cut from the ECNL team. Had a great time dominating HS games but never got a D1 schoalrship and only made her college team as a walk on. Never actually played much in college.
What I’m saying is that talent and/or athleticm ends up winning when others aproach the 10,000 hours and additional skill training that can be taught by a coach hits the point of diminishing returns. My niece topped out at 5’1” with below average athleticism.
But it’s not all bad…what it did teach her was dicipline to work and do the same drill or task thousands of times until it’s done perfectly. She’s using this skill now in med school by scoring 100s on exams. I’m convinced that she will be on of the top performing surgeons because she has the discipline to prepare for countless of hours and then execute on game day and seek outcome perfection like she did when she was 10.
I hate the Yahoo sports trade linked to above. I can’t imagine why we would do it. Kessler is good, but we are supposed to give up three players and a first round pick. Getting Love back is useless, despite what Yahoo says, and Mihaliuk already didnt get minutes on a worse Knicks team than this seasons team. No, no and no.
Facts. The number of centenarians is growing exponentially since 2020. There are millions of them world wide now. I’m convinced that over 50% of kids being born today will live past 100. Longevity science is taking off with ai and its only the first inning.
Nobody should ever click on a trade idea. They are all just click bait. Maybe if you stop they’ll stop doing it (and then pigs will fly…).
But seriously. Unless it says “Knicks have just traded…” don’t go there.
All the LeBron crap earlier was clearly just his team trying to make him relevant again. Hope y’all didn’t pay it any mind.
I like the “you die from the feet up,” Clarence. Truth.
The world of music is very forgiving to late bloomers, especially these days. Nowadays if you have a crummy laptop or tablet you can do pretty amazing things with it in terms of production. There are tons of instructional videos and apps available that also level the playing field. You don’t need to be doing Suzuki method at age 3 to get into the game.
My nephew just started playing guitar at age 13, uses apps on his iPad to learn stuff, and he has gotten quite good very quickly. He had never played an instrument before. He’s not super fanatical about it, but he just tinkers around with his Squier Strat and his iPad app and now he can play tons of Weezer and Metallica riffs.
He’s talented, which helps a lot.
Check your facts…. there aren’t millions of centenarians alive now.
Longevity science might be taking off in popular culture but no one with all today’s technology has come into the same zipcode of Jean Calment’s 122 years (maybe) when she died in 1997.
Evolution selects against aging because a bunch of feeble 100 yr old dudes drooling about is a drag on the species. Apoptosis is difficult to overcome. Work for healthspan rather than lifespan.
And don’t stop boning. Evolution knows when you’re out of the game.
“I like the “you die from the feet up,” Clarence. Truth.”
My dad used to say “You dig your grave with your teeth.”
I have some bad news for you my friend… evolution has a plan for you there, too.
Smart man.
agree with you bob about the life cycle science stuff, critical component being death…life/evolution is designed for upgrades though…maybe our population rate declines, longevity becomes more useful…
if I was to guess, for the latest generation (20 and under) – 120 will become today’s 100 stat line…
you’re not really considering the ai factor…computers these days are figuring out how to break us all the way down, to basically a bunch of code 😊
we will all have personal assistants with constant monitoring to keep a bunch of folks about driving on and on…swapping out grown organs, oh yeah…
we may not see it bob, those young kids out there playing ball at the “y”, chances are very good they will see it…
I actually spect life expectancy to get worse, not better, on average. But we’d have to discuss politics to go any further in this discussion.
less and less i’m find myself reading the news, relying more and more on youtube…
finding that the ones I enjoy the most are the Knicks Film School and knicksfantv…
does anyone have any different channels they enjoy (SNY, Knicks Daily)?
I shit you not – on the way to practice yesterday with the youngest preached/nagged/discussed a bunch/graphically described terrible stuff that can happen for not maintaining good teeth and feet health…
did that all with some earth, wind and fire, sos and the gap band playing in the background…
I think it is pretty clear the “low hanging fruit” of longevity (antibiotics for systemic infection, vaccination and public sanitation) have all been mastered in the developed world.
Laying off sugar and its analogs, seed oils and additives are next. The molecular biology stuff )telomere length and mastering the immune system) are a little farther off.
depending on your current age: “farther off” has a major difference in personal significance…
that cellular off-switch is there somewhere, and people will find it, and some people will be able to take advantage of that…
the real question is, just how long would you really want to stick around?
Edit: have you ever read Kingdom Come, by Mark Waid and Alex Ross…
it’s older superman, weary…suffered a lot of loss over time, got lonely…
I would never tell my 4 year old daughter not to try something because she’s too old to become really good at it, no matter what her age is. I’, 47 and just started relearning French again. Do what you love.
I’m talking more about the unspoken things that children hear in their heads because of how competitive a lot of this stuff has become. A lot of kids don’t have the will power to stick with stuff even under the best of conditions. So I think the societal pressures of putting kids into this stuff when their super young can backfire on a lot of kids and cause them to not even try because “what’s the point.”
The clap is clapping fucking hard nowadays.
Number of deaths for leading causes of death
Heart disease: 680,981
Cancer: 613,352
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 222,698
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 162,639
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 145,357
Alzheimer’s disease: 114,034
Diabetes: 95,190
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 55,253
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis: 52,222
COVID-19: 49,932
Think we’re learning that ALL metabollic diseases are caused by what we put in our mouth (includig Alcohol) – so we’re fixing these slowly like we fixed smoking. FSD will fix accidents. AI will figure out Cancer and Alheizemer. When today’s born babies turn 50, – most of the above causes of death will be solved the same as infections and tuberculoses were solved in last century.
Yeah but it’s a weak table right now.
My early guess is Knicks-Nuggets in the finals, with us probably losing in heartbreaking fashion.
Most of truly great pool players started playing when they were under 10 (some as young as 4) and had daily access to a pool table because their father owned a room. It’s an advantage, but there are examples of elite players that started at age 13 up to 18. They peaked later but their development was faster.
As far starting kids out early, I think that’s more of a parent thing than kid thing. You can be very talented, get very good at something and enjoy it for decades without being one of the best in the world at it. It’s crazy parents that want their kids to be elite at something that push them into things and probably sometimes do more damage than good.
Hey, a real trade:
RJ Luis to Boston for George Niang and two 2nds. Boston saves $25 mil.
The problem is the rates of many of those diseases are rising among young people and both the economics and politics of the day make it difficult to figure out why. There’s a lot of money to be made in the unhealthy things we do to the environment and put into our bodies and even more in treating sickness instead of preventing it.
I mean it’s kinda hot to make out with a stranger that has a spicy tobacco after taste after they’ve had a cigarette or two on a night out. But when they got that deep lung aroma like kissing them is a portal into a fetid swamp of suppurating ruinous soft tissue tearing itself into ribbons of once human breath it’s not sexy.
That’s exactly correct, but it depends on the values you are teaching your kid.
If you are teaching your kid that he/she has to win all the time and be one of the best in the world some day for any of this to matter, they’ll either get discouraged or depressed if things aren’t going as well as hoped.
If you are teaching your kid that the point is to enjoy whatever game, sport, instrument etc.. they are interested in, then they’ll work at the pace that’s comfortable and keep that enjoyment. Some will excel and dedicate themselves to it and some will just enjoy it casually for the rest of their life.
If I dedictated myself to playing guitar 4-6 hours a day I would get much better very rapidly, but I’d hate it. If I pick it up 4-5 days a week for 30 minutes, I learn and improve very slowly, but I enjoy it.
they actually traded luis for *all* the georges he played in utah for four years early in his career
J.G. Ballard back on his body-horror pornography shtick I see
Strat, “Isn’t it pretty to think so” comes to mind from your post. It’s not anywhere near that simple. Doing a thing from childhood into adulthood comes in rhythms and stages and sometimes endings, often heavily influenced by not just natural ability but emotional maturity, baked-in personality quirks, external pressures, outside events, and so on.
Little Raven wanted to play cello when he was two and a half; I fended him off until three. He was preternaturally skilled from early on, which led him to be lazy, so he rarely practiced, didn’t learn to read music (why bother when he could memorize an entire Bach piece after a listen or two and play it beautifully even if his fingering was all messed up). That led him to fighting with his teachers (nothing like having teachers fire you!), getting annoyed and discouraged, and then frustrated at having to unlearn his feral fingering. And so on.
He’s actually maybe coming back to it of late, which thrills me to no end. Partly because it is just a beautiful instrument to listen to, but also because it’s heart-warming to have someone you love doing something they love.
It’d be nice if he enjoyed it the rest of his life, but there is zero guarantee. And zero of his struggles came from his parents pushing him. Perhaps we should have done more of that, but it likely would have had to involve sharp sticks and fire, and I suspect even those would have failed. The kid did what he wanted.
God I wish
One of my favorite living authors wrote this in his second novel:
“With medical science improving at roughly the same rate as our environmental situation worsens, the most likely scenario is that the world will become uninhabitable at the precise moment the human race becomes immortal.”
-Steve Toltz, Quicksand
me 2
It’s a risky move, but I love it.
I mentioned that 16 year old finishing second in the 800 – one coach called it the greatest achievement in the history of athletics. 🙂
https://www.si.com/track-and-field/cooper-lutkenhaus-800-meter-under-18-world-record-qualifies-world-athletic-championships-usatf
i would have rather had chris boucher for sure how the hell did the celts get him
If any team is willing to acquire Mikal at $43M we probably don’t want to trade him.
I don’t see how we’re not all in on Mikal becoming a 3 bpm player again. Or as JK47 put it, come on 6 of diamonds!
Raven,
Personally, I think you are handling it well. You are letting “little Raven” be “little Raven” and not trying to force him to do what he may not want to do. I would not be opposed to some “guidance” and “suggestions” about practice. There’s no reason he can’t learn from you and others with more experience. I’d just be against pushing. And you are correct, he may not enjoy it for life. He may find things he likes way better at 7, 10, 15, 20 or even later.
Do we want him to become a 3 bpm player or do we want him to do what we need him to do for this team to win given the skills of the other players?
We need him to score around 15-20 points per 36 as the 3a option. Where he ends up in that 15-20 point range will largely depend on how Brown uses Brunson, Towns and OG and how Brunson-centric we are. It won’t depend on Bridges. He can score 12 or 25.
IMO he has to up his 3p% a bit and try to get his overall TS% to around 60.
He may also get the opportunity to up his assists a bit if we are going to be less Brunson centric and move the ball more.
But other than his 3p%, this is all about how he will be used and not trying to maximize his stat sheet.
We could easily up his rebounds by starting Deuce instead of Hart. Then we’d need him to rebound more and he would.
We could easily get him to up his TS% by asking him to create less like in his Suns days, but we need him to create some because OG is meh at that, Hart can’t shoot and Towns is a C.
We could easily up his impact on defense by starting Deuce, letting him guard the smaller faster PGs and letting Bridge guard his own position, help, go for more steals etc..
But we are not trying to maximize his personal bpm. We are trying to maximize the total team output by fitting the skills and pieces together and using them the best we can. That may mean Bridges is asked to do more of some things he’s not great at, less of some some things he could easily be doing and guarding players he should not be guarding.
The question to ask is whether he’s having a positive impact on the team given its needs and not whether his bpm is 3.
You are putting an awful lot of faith/wishcasting in AI. The “progress” in cancer treatment is generally measured in months and not decades. The causes of Alzheimer’s have yet to be clearly elucidated let alone solved. I’m betting the under.
If there’s one thing we can be certain of with AI, it’s this:
-99% of the benefits will go to the very few people who own it.
-99% of the downsides will be borne by the rest of us as it destroys the economic value of most people’s sole asset: their labor.
If AI can extend human longevity radically, the likely practical effect is that people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Bryan Johnson will live to be 200 in a world where the human population is greatly reduced, whether by restriction of of life extension tech to the economic elite or draconian restrictions on reproduction.
thats bordering on political i like it
I liked Boucher as a min salary guy, alas.
Damn, who the fuck was this guy?
I enjoy reading about billionaires hiring doomday prepper consultants to seek solutions to “how do I make sure that my servants don’t murder me and take over the bunker” and finding no good answer except “force them to wear the explosive collars from Wedlock” which is a really funny thing to imagine in a bunker, re: morale during a nuclear AI apocalypse and all
Voted “Best Eyebrows 1973” for sure.
turned down the zeppelin bad move
fucking bobby witt
Lol
This one might be even funnier.
I can’t imagine how dreadful Mikal Bridges would be if he created even less than he did last year.
Strat it seems like you want Nikail Alexander-Walker. That’s a $15M player. For $37.5M, you’re damn right I want a 3 bpm player, or at least something close to one.
maybe mikal simply needs to relearn how to move towards the basket to create foul shots for himself hes probably a decent free throw shooter if he remembers how to do it
Yeah Mikal was already pretty close to his assisted basket percentage numbers with Phoenix last year as a Knick. He was assisted on 68% of his two pointers, and was typically in the mid-70’s as a Sun. He was under 50% in both seasons as a Net.
He needs to be creating MORE, not less. He’s not bad at it!
I’m sure we could easily get him to create more foul shots if we need him to.
And btw our offense cratered in the playoffs. So please spare me the “we only need him to play defense and hit a few threes” bullshit. We need a lot more than that.
I think Boucher was the best player left on the board, and I do think he would’ve been useful in case of injuries.
AI supposedly curing cancer and Alzheimer’s isn’t going to matter when the environmental destruction we’re committing completely destroys the insect population; every coastal city in the world is underwater; every lake, river, and ocean has become barren from overfishing, desalinization, and acidification; and drought and floods become worse and more frequent.
where ya been pags, I missed you…
you ain’t been cheatin’ on us at some other fancier website, have you…hmmmm, bet you can post pictures there…
still plenty room here to discuss and disagree about stuff in the off-season…
inequity has been around at least since agriculture took off…maybe before that too…
ai though is a rising tide that’ll lift a lot of boats…a lot…billions…not sure where the tide will carry them, but they will all get there faster and with a clearer path…
pag#111:-)
If I was AI I’d get off this rock and never tell nobody nothing. Cya. Wouldn’t wanna be ya ya plebes. That’s if I was ai.
The Yankees are indescribable.
AI can’t do this. It can only summarize or imitate what’s been done. It won’t invent new drugs unless they are copycat drugs.
infectious diseases aren’t anywhere on the director’s list. But if we give up on vaccines they will start killing people again. Death rates also will go up if the country gives up on preventive medicine. There are many ways life expectancy could get worse instead of better.
Yikes is Jack Curry roasting Boone on the YES post game show for leaving Williams in the game after a screamer to left that Dominguez couldn’t corral and then walking the next two.
They’ve unleashed the hounds on Boone, finally.
I haven’t watched a single Yankees game or even clicked on one article about baseball, and I bet I can describe them perfectly based on Brian Cashman’s track record:
– They’re a poorly managed, top-heavy team with a terrible bottom of the order.
– They’re among the league leaders in home runs and strike outs.
– They’re awful at base running and they commit too many errors.
– They started the year full of glaring holes and waited until the trade deadline to address them instead of doing it in the winter.
– Every player they just traded for came from a small market.
– They have a lot of highly touted prospects that aren’t producing bc they were never that good they just hyped them up as an excuse to not pay free agents.
How’d I do?
Pretty well, except for the prospects.
Dominguez is the overhyped one, but it is hard to criticize a 22 yr old that missed a year of development with COVID and last season with a UCL tear. Hitting .260 this season off 89 career MLB at bats is fine. He may not be Superman , but his bat will play.
Gil was rookie of the year in the AL last season and tore a Lat in the spring and missed the first 100 games this season. He and Cole being injured doomed the season before it started.
Will Warren and Ben Rice were B prospects and are playing thusly.
They have Jones ripping up AAA and 2 statically stud pitchers at AA, but everything else you wrote is pretty spot on.
I mean when you make 7 roster moves at the deadline, your roster isn’t up to snuff. They should have been sellers of Grisham, Bellinger and Goldschmidt.
Is it because you’ve been watching KPop Demon Hunters instead?
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