2023-24 NBA Season Preview: Part 1

Plus, time has almost run out on an Immanuel Quickley extension.

Good morning! ARE YOU READY FOR SOME REAL BASKETBALL!?!?

Before we get to today’s newsletter, a special announcement: this week only, I’m sending out the KFS Newsletter to ALL subscribers, including those who usually just get the complementary Monday edition. The reason is simple: it’s the beginning of a new year, the Knicks should be pretty good, and I want fans everywhere to get a sense of what they’ll be getting if they become full, paid subscribers.

On that note…remember that a full annual subscription will run you just $50 for the whole year. Most paid Substack newsletters charge $10 or more every month, and few are sent out five days a week, every week, with occasional bonus newsletters on weekends. Full subscribers will also get access to the Substack chat and halftime Zoom sessions with yours truly during most games.

If you’re still not convinced, take in this week’s newsletters and see what you think. I can only promise the best, most comprehensive Knicks coverage anywhere, but if you’re reading this right now, I’m betting that might be enough.

Let’s get to the newsletter…

🗣️ News & Notes ✍️

🏀 By the time you’re reading this, there will be no more than 12 hours left for Immanuel Quickley to sign a rookie extension before the NBA’s 5pm deadline.

The stakes are significant. If Quickley signs, not only will he secure generational wealth for he and his family, but he will in all likelihood ensure that he remains a Knick until at least next summer. As a result of the CBA’s poison pill provision for rookie extensions, first round picks who extend before their fourth season will count as one amount against the cap for the team that trades them but a different amount for the team that acquires them. In IQ’s case, that difference is likely to be over $15 million, which could make matching salary very difficult.

In other words, if he extends today, don’t expect him to be traded anytime soon.

If Quickley doesn’t agree to an extension before the deadline, his situation becomes more tenuous. The Knicks will of course retain matching rights on him next summer, meaning them will be able to equal the offer sheet of any team that signs him. In recent years, teams have been extremely leery of trying to sign away talented players from the organizations that drafted them for fear of tying up precious cap space, but the tide could be turning. Teams like the Pistons, Spurs and Magic will all have a plethora of money to spend and a desire to improve. They could also extend an offer sheet with terms that are very un-friendly to the team, which could make New York’s choice extra dicey.

But that’s just one issue that comes with letting this linger to next July. If the Knicks do what many suspect and arrive at the precipice of trading for a superstar in the offseason, Quickley’s inclusion could make the math on such a deal more difficult, as signing and trading a restricted free agent is trickier than dealing someone under contract. It’s certainly possible (the Cavs did so when they sent Collin Sexton to Utah last summer) but it adds an extra wrinkle to an already complicated process.

When you throw in the human element - IQ has become an indispensable part of the fabric of this team, and has watched every other significant piece around him get handsomely compensated, many of which have not approached his ROI for this club - the Knicks have every reason to find a number Quickley’s people can live with.

Which is, of course, damn easy for me to say. There is a price point at which IQ will turn from a promising young asset with upside to a player teams wonder about being worth his salary. Is that number $22 million a season? $25 million? More?

Whatever it is, you can bet his reps have asked for it at some point in these negotiations. If they don’t come down to a more reasonable level, Leon Rose will be emboldened to roll the dice and challenge Quickley to go find a better offer on the open market next summer.

It may not be a crazy gamble. This was already a crowded rotation last season, when Quickley averaged fewer than 26 minutes in games he came off the bench, and that was before they added Donte DiVincenzo. It’s entirely possible that he has a perfectly fine year and the payday he’s seeking still won’t be there next July. There’s also the possibility of injury, or that he has another underwhelming postseason performance.

And if he goes out and performs like the future All-Star his biggest supporters think he can be? The Knicks will have cost themselves some money, but it’ll be money they’d be all too happy to spend.

I don’t think it will come to that. Leon Rose won’t hand IQ a blank check, but he will make him a respectable offer when the final hour draws near - probably not what Quick thought he’d be in line for towards the end of last season, but enough that he’d be taking a significant risk by turning it down.

We’ll find out one way or another soon enough.

🏀 First round picks from the 2020 Draft that did agree to extensions yesterday: 9th overall pick Deni Avdija, who signed for four years and $55 million, and 22nd overall pick Zeke Nnaji, who signed for four years and $32 million. Zach Collins also agreed on a veteran extension for two years and $35 million. None are particularly relevant to Quickley’s negotiations.

🏀 The Knicks did quite a bit of roster shuffling this weekend. With the dust settled, here are the final results:

• As first reported by Keith Smith, Dylan Windler was converted from a two-way deal to a regular, one-year NBA contract.

• Charlie Brown Jr. and Jacob Toppin were converted from camp deals to two-way contracts.

• As per Ian Begley, Duane Washington Jr. will join them as the final two-way guy. His camp deal was waived during the weekend.

• With the passing of Saturday’s 5pm deadline to waive non-guaranteed contracts and not occur a cap hit, it appears that Ryan Arcidiacono and DaQuan Jeffries will remain on the roster. Along with Windler, they will occupy spots 13, 14 and 15.

One final note that fully encapsulates the machinations of this time of year in the NBA: less than 48 hours after he was waived, Isaiah Roby re-signed with New York on an Exhibit 10 deal…only to be waived again less than 24 hours later. The end result is that the Knicks will retain his G-League rights unless another team signs him to their main roster, which seems unlikely at this point.

Wild and wacky stuff, indeed.

NBA Tiers

I hate predicting exact order of conference finish or team record, partly because you have carnival game-level odds of being correct, but also because it’s somewhat useless. Every year, we get final-week jockeying and maneuvering that can move a team up or down multiple spots, and it ultimately has zero bearing on how they’ve actually performed.

As a result, here are your tiers of the NBA - a much more fruitful exercise if you ask me. I’ll still surely be wrong, but at least I’ll be wrong on my own damn terms. Let’s start with the conference the Knicks compete in…

The East

Tier 1 - Ceiling: NBA champ; Floor: second round out

Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks

No shocker here. These are the teams with the two highest over under’s and two of the four teams that are +600 or better to win it all. The Bucks have more top-end talent, but the Celtics might have the most dangerous top-six in recent memory given how well their pieces fit together and how much their individual and collective versatility will allow them to withstand the loss of any one or two of those guys for short periods of time.

For that reason, Boston is my safer bet to win more games - maybe a lot more - than any other NBA team. If they’re hitting threes, they’re not going to lose. And they’re going to hit a lot of threes.

A seven-game series with the Bucks may be a different animal. Adding Dame to Giannis and Brook Lopez gives Milwaukee three incredibly unique chess pieces. There might be one or two better stretch fives in the league than Lopez who can also protect the rim, but that’s it. Dame still, at this age, only looks up to Steph when it comes to striking fear into opponents’ hearts immediately after crossing half court. Giannis is one of one.

Put those three together and add in whatever Khris Middleton has left, and I don’t know that anyone - including Denver - should be picked to beat this team assuming full health.

Tier 2 - Ceiling: conference finals; Floor: first round out

Philly, Cleveland

The Sixers and Cavs are in this group and not the next one because I don’t see any way these teams don’t finish among the top six in the East.

That shouldn’t be a hot take for the Cavs, who finished last season with the league’s second best average scoring margin while also being the third unluckiest team when it came to underperforming their point differential. They got even better over the summer, have a year of chemistry under their belt, and could easily be a top-two seed if one of the big boys sustains an injury.

Philly is a dicier bet, but I’m banking on Embiid playing at least 70 percent of his games - something he’s done in each of the last six seasons - plus a Maxey leap, a coaching upgrade, and Tobias filling in admirably for Harden as an offensive pillar.

Harden may try to engage in nonsense, but the Sixers will sooner tell him to take his fat suit and go home than let him actively torpedo their season. Best case, the Clips start off badly and give in on Terrence Mann, who would immediately start for the Sixers and be awesome.

Even if that never comes to pass, Philly has enough.

Tier 3 - Ceiling: conference finals; Floor: play-in

New York, Miami, Atlanta

The Hawks are the surprise inclusion here, but they have the talent, they have the depth, and now they have the coaching. If we can talk ourselves into the Knicks winning a round against a non-Celtics/Bucks opponent and then catching lightning in a bottle to stage an upset, then Atlanta deserves the same benefit.

Miami has made two of the last four Finals and Heat fans (if any of them actually read this newsletter) would have a valid gripe that they’re not in tier one. That’s fine. They aren’t as good as last year, when they were three minutes away from losing to Chicago in the play-in and heading to to Cancun two months earlier than they did. They are where they belong.

As for the Knicks…I’m sure some reading will be insulted at the notion that they might not even make the top six, but that’s why I like doing this exercise. In the last two years alone, the Lakers, Warriors, Clippers and Nets have entered a season as a favorite or near-favorite to win it all and been relegated to the play-in. It happens.

It’s easy to say that New York’s culture and depth will insulate them against a similar fate, and then you remember how they were just two games ahead of the seventh place Heat last year. Stranger things have happened.

All that being said, no one should be shocked if this team ends up in a dogfight with a heavy hitter with a trip to the conference finals on the line.

Tier 4 - Ceiling: 5-6 seed; Floor: missing the play-in

Indiana, Orlando

I thought about making a separate tier for the Pacers with a play-in floor, but as we’ll see in the next group, there are a lot of East teams who will make a real run at a postseason spot, even if its the 10th seed. Indiana should be better than all of them, but not that much better where missing the play-in entirely is out of the question.

Even so, I fear this team. There is no better failsafe in the modern NBA than a big point guard with genuine off-the-dribble gravity and elite passing touch and vision. The Pacers were 28-28 when Haliburton played last season and they’ve arguably improved at every position. Rick Carlisle is a good coach, and the middling end of his Mavs tenure becomes a reflection of their organizational dysfunction more and more by the day.

Orlando…is probably a year away. But I can’t shake the feeling that Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner will emerge from this season as the best 3/4 combination in the league.

Tier 5 - Ceiling: play-in; Floor: bottom-five record

Chicago, Brooklyn, Toronto, Charlotte, Detroit

There’s probably enough separation here to warrant breaking this group into two mini-tiers. You could easily convince me Chicago, Brooklyn or Toronto has a winning record, while I can’t get there with the other two.

Whatever. The Bulls, Nets and Raptors don’t deserve any more respect than this.

Putting the Hornets and Pistons here is a bet on LaMelo Ball and Cade Cunningham. Is it that out of the question that one of them emerge from this season as a perennial All-NBA candidate? Each just turned 22 years old.

Tier 6 - Ceiling: not the worst record in the league; Floor: 💩

Washington

No team has more incentive to tank this season away. Jordan Poole, Kyle Kuzma and Tyus Jones are all interesting trade candidates as the Wiz look to increase their draft portfolio moving forward.

TOMORROW: WESTERN CONFERENCE TIERS

---

If I Were a Betting Man…

Finishing off this segment with four more NBA awards predictions. If you missed my analysis of Most Improved or 6th Man from last week, feel free to check those out.

Let’s bang out the final few categories, starting with the most prestigious award of all…

Most Valuable Player

Let’s rule out a bunch of folks off the bat:

• At +2500, Derrick Rose had the longest MVP odds in recorded history (only going back 17 years, but still). With the amount of talent at the top, this isn’t the year that figure gets bested. As a result, I’m ruling out Mitchell, Ant Edwards and AD.

• A player over 30 hasn’t won since Steve Nash in 2006 and a player over 31 hasn’t won since Karl Malone in 1999. Kevin Durant is 35 now and Steph Curry will join him in March. I don’t see either bucking the trend.

• The last time a player won MVP where we really had questions about whether he was the best guy on the team was…never? Kobe hadn’t fully established himself by 2000 when Shaq won. Kareem was just far enough past his prime in 1987 when Magic won his first of three. Dr. J won in ‘81, two years before Moses came to Philly and won it in ‘83, but there was no question whose team that was. That’s about it. Maybe Booker takes another step up this season, but I can’t see him separating himself from Durant to such a degree. Book’s out.

• It feels like SGA and the Thunder are still a year away. If you have them as a top-three seed, by all means, take +1800. I think they’re a play-in team if anything.

• Joel Embiid being +850 as the defending champ, with four guys in front of him, is either fantastic value or a very, very bad sign. I’m taking the latter, even though the narrative is there for him on a silver platter if Harden never plays a game for Philly and they still win 50+ games and get a top-three seed.

All this is to say that I think one of the four favorites win this thing. My money is on Jokic. He’s the best player in the world, and voters might feel like they owe him one after he didn’t win his (probably deserved) third straight MVP last season. Denver will be awesome, he plays every game, and there’s no question about who the engine on that team is.

There are also reasons not to like a Joker bet. Only three times in history has a player won at least two straight MVP’s, failed to get a third consecutive award, and won it the following year: Russell, Kareem and LeBron. On top of that, the favorite has won just twice in the last 10 years - Russ and Giannis. It’s as if being the guy that’s supposed to win has held players to a loftier standard with voters.

With that in mind, an alternate choice is Tatum, but only if the Celtics have a significantly better record than the next best team in the league, which I certainly think is possible.

But I’m sticking with the league’s best player.

The Pick: Jokic

Rookie of the Year

Even though he’s roughly even money, Wemby is the bet. The only way he doesn’t win is if there’s something like a 25-30 games played gap between him and whoever the next best rookie is.

But even if you subscribe to that theory, nether Chet Holmgren (+250) or Scoot Henderson (+275) have particularly tasty odds, and its equally conceivable that either one could swoop in and steal the award if Webmanyama has injury issues.

The Pick: Wembanyama

Defensive Player of the Year

I’d love to give Mitchell Robinson some love here, because its absurd how many big men have lower betting odds than his +8000 (among them: now backup center Robert Williams III at +6000, Deandre Ayton at +6000, and Jarrett Allen at +5000). There’s a world where Robinson becomes clearly identified as the lynchpin holding together a rickety Knicks starting five that falls apart on defense when he’s not there.

But the advanced numbers are never going to love him like they will some other guys, not as long as New York’s bench continues to vastly outperform the starters defensively. Plus, he’s eschewed chasing blocks in recent years in favor of playing more sound defense overall, and gaudy stats still go far in this category.

The other reason Robinson won’t win is because the Knicks likely won’t have a good enough team defense. Not since 2013 when our own Tyson Chandler won by anchoring the fifth-ranked D in the league has a player won from a team that didn’t have a top-three defense, and not since 2007 has a player won from a defense outside of the top five (Marcus Camby, then in Denver).

Even if Mitch can’t bring it home, this is still an award historically dominated by bigs, which is why they all have the best odds. Given the top-five team defense requirement, the five favorites would seem to the right five; JJJ, Mobley and Giannis all played for top-four defenses last season, and both AD and Bam have done so in recent years.

To me, this is a bet on how many games Anthony Davis will play. The last two times he’s played at least 85 percent of his team’s games, he’s finished third and second in this award, and LA had the league’s fourth best defense after the All-Star break last spring. There was a growing sentiment during the playoffs that AD is the game’s most impactful defender when healthy, so that narrative could carry over.

The Pick: Davis

Coach of the Year

Given either to the coach of the team that wins a lot more games than everyone else or the coach of the team that was expected to be bad-to-mediocre and instead ends up in the thick of the playoff race.

Eight of the last nine winners have exceeded their team’s preseason over / under totals by at least 10 games, with Nick Nurse in 2020 (6.5 more wins than Vegas predicted) the only exception, and he withstood the loss of the reigning Finals MVP.

With those parameters, give me Taylor Jenkins in Memphis. The narrative - surviving the absence of Ja for 25 games - is there on a silver platter, and their over/under is a reasonable 45.5. Losing Steven Adams for the season will only make his job tougher.

Taylor led the Grizz to a 56-26 record two years ago with Morant missing 25 games due to injury, and you could argue that Marcus Smart better insulates them against a drop off.

The Pick: Jenkins

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”