A (not so) Bold New World
by Jonathan Macri
Bold preseason predictions are like White Castle burgers: you crave them, and they’re super appealing in the moment, but they get old kind of fast, and when they go wrong shortly after consumption, the person who made them is nowhere to be found.
Bastards.
So apologies in advance. If you want a column that predicts RJ Barrett is going to average 25, 5 & 5, Mitchell Robinson is going break the all-time record for blocks in a single season, or that Frank Ntilikina is going to…umm…play (#KiddingNotKidding), you’ll have to look elsewhere.
I did indeed pen 17 predictions (one for each win last season) concerning the 2019-20 Knicks, but they aren’t bold; they’re real. This will be my 27th season watching Knicks basketball like it’s white powder and I’m this guy. Over that time, I’d like to think I’ve developed a pretty good feel for what’s going to happen with the team before it actually does.
Am I always right? Helllllll no. I didn’t do one of these last season, but if I had, I would have predicted 30 wins, a huge step up for my boy Frank, and a year spent mostly in Westchester for Mitchell Robinson. How’s that working out.
I also had a good feeling about Noah Vonleh, a bad feeling about Enes Kanter (shocker, I know), and thought Damyean Dotson would emerge as a person of interest before the end of the year. So I wasn’t completely off.
With that backdrop, here are what I’ll call my “gut feelings” (and not the type you get after White Castle) for the year ahead, with a reminder that these aren’t necessarily what I want to happen, only what I think will happen.
Like I said, I made 17 in total, but nothing gets the juices flowing like a good tease, so I’m only unveiling one today, and then eight apiece on each of the next two Mondays. That said, prediction number one is by far the most important one, and also the one I feel most strongly about. It concerns the guy who will be most responsible for turning the team from a laughing stock into one that is at least respected, and one day, will be the reason it is feared.
Without further ado…
1. Mitchell Robinson will emerge as a Star (and a foundational building block for the organization). I know many Knicks fans already consider him to be exactly this, but coming off of last year, he hasn’t proven nearly enough to be worthy of the moniker.
Yet.
The fouling certainly got better, decreasing every month, from 7.6 per 36 in November, down to 5.0 in February before going back up to 5.9 in March when he was playing against better competition as a starter. Still, his value can only be so high if savvy vet centers know they can pump fake him out of a game in the first few minutes. Here’s betting he has some early bumps but figures it out before the end of November.
The bigger step forward will have to come on offense, and I’m not talking about as a shooter. For as giddy as we all get over those 3-ball clips from camp, Robinson is years away from being a threat from deep. If he actually has free reign to shoot from distance this year, teams will welcome it; he is nowhere near as dangerous on the perimeter as he is being perhaps the most athletically gifted lob threat in the game today.
For Robinson to truly emerge, he’ll need to show some basic playmaking ability. In 66 games last year, he had zero or one assist in 61 of them. Most of those he did have were of the dribble hand-off variety, or simply featured him passing back out to a shooter. We did, however, have this gem from perhaps the Knicks best performance of 2019:
It’s a start. Smart teams will dare Mitch to put the ball on the floor and/or make a play on the move. At some point, he needs to start getting the basics down.
Other things – like actually setting screens instead of slipping them 98.7 percent of the time – will come. You can teach that stuff. What Robinson displayed time and time again on the court last year – the thing that will make him a household name in every NBA city before too long – you can’t teach. And I’m not talking about the blocks.
That clip is from an utterly meaningless March 30 game against Miami, yet there’s Robinson, head in hands after a foul call. We can’t tell whether he disagrees with the call or his own instinct that resulted in it, but regardless, he would routinely show this type of emotion on the court throughout last season. He gives a shit, maybe a few shits. Perhaps even many shits. This is a good thing, and all too rare for this organization for far, far too long.
We also saw him becoming more and more focal with teammates as the year went on. Keep in mind: this was a young man who treated every mic as if it were covered in rat poison for the first six months after he was drafted. Now he’s an amateur talk show host who stands to become New York's best center since Patrick Ewing.
Believe the hype and leave doubters in the dust. At least you’ll be able to say you were on the bandwagon before it turned into a full-on movement.
Check out next Monday’s newsletter for predictions 2-9, and then watch out for the final eight on Monday, October 21!
News & Notes
From now on, we’re going to go back to what we did last season, when we included pertinent Knicks-related happenings, links, videos, tweets and everything in between in the newsletter. Articles will still be a part of them too, and we’ll have a special format for postgame wrap ups, but at the very least, by the end, you’ll be fully informed on what’s going on.
Open Practice
Check out the site for a link to Terry & Trey’s video of Saturday’s Open Practice at Columbia, as well as P&T’s writeup of the event.
Heights and Weights
Knicks PR released the players official heights and weights, if you’re into that kind of thing. Knox, Frank and Mitch all shrunk an inch.
(::shrug emoji::)
Injury Front
Dennis Smith Jr. will not play in tonight’s first preseason game, apparently as a precaution. The injury is not believed to be related to the back problem that kept him out towards the end of last year.
New Podcast!
Jeremy joined me for what will be our regular Monday spot, and we go through some lingering preseason issues before tonight’s game.