An Old Friend
Past and present converge tonight in Portland
In this newsletter:
Do you remember where you were the last time Carmelo Anthony played the New York Knicks?
I do, quite clearly…and it wasn’t because I remember the game, which I didn’t watch a single minute of. It was December 16, 2017, three days after my wedding anniversary. Because I give the Knicks basically all of my attention for 364 days out of the year, I always give my wife the first Saturday after December 13. This seems like a fair compromise.
We went out for a fancy steak dinner in the city before making our way back to the cheapest Chinatown hotel we could find for a night away from the kid. Right after the appetizers came out, I decided to check the score of the game. In case you forgot, it featured a struggling OKC team making their way to the Garden to face the Knicks, who were off to one of the more surprising starts in the league.
That night, though, figured to a one-sided affair in the Thunder’s favor. Kristaps Porzingis, who had cooled off but was still playing at an All-NBA level, was missing the game after coming down funny on his leg the previous night in Brooklyn (surely, though, this would be an isolated incident). Oklahoma City hadn’t been playing well, but they were simply going to out-talent New York. Like Thanos, it was inevitable.
So as the waiter cleared away our salad plates, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing on my phone: the Knicks were not only winning, but handily so, and Michael Beasley was vastly outplaying Carmelo Anthony. From that point on, I had my phone in the corner of the table, fully expecting to see a Thunder run in progress every time I checked it.
It never came. Beasley finished with 30 points on 18 shots, Melo finished with 12 on the same number of attempts, and New York won going away. With the loss, the Thunder dipped back below .500, and it looked like the Anthony experiment in Oklahoma City was a bust.
The Knicks, meanwhile, were 16-13 and in the midst of a four-game winning streak. For the first time since the 2012-13 season that would up being the high point of Melo’s tenure in New York, it felt like the Knicks had found something real that they could build on, and that the best was yet to come.
Yeah. Good times, indeed.
OKC, of course, would be fine, going 34-19 the rest of the way, while the Knicks have also won 34 games…total…against 124 losses in the nearly two seasons’ worth of games they’ve played since that night. Anthony adjusted to his new role, and until the Jazz exposed him in the playoffs, the Melo experiment would be considered a resounding success.
The Knicks? If there was ever a moment in time that represented the first step down the slippery slope that brought the franchise to where it is today, it was that night against the Thunder. It can be argued that everything that could have gone wrong since then has gone worse than wrong, and here the team sits, once again the butt of jokes around the league, seeming like there is no end in sight to their misery.
But as that December night taught us, things are never as good (in New York’s case) or as bad (in the Thunder’s) as they seem when you’re in the midst of it all.
On that note, I’m going to do something I don’t think I’ve ever done in this space before: I’m predicting a win. Don’t ask why, but I think things are going to start to get better for this team, and I think it starts tonight.
(Ed’s note: It’s because they can’t get any worse.)
They will still be bad, to be sure, and there will be more change at the top, maybe sooner than we think. But the house has essentially burnt down to its foundation. The fire started against the Thunder two years ago, and only a few charred bricks remain. At some point, they will begin building the thing back up.
No better time to start than the present.
Too Much or Not Enough?
by Jeremy Cohen (@TheCohencidence)
Once upon a time, I started a short-term, contract job I accepted through a temp agency. The position was in a field I had a significant interest in and I was thrilled to get started. During the first week, I realized both the job and the field of interest weren’t a fit. My boss knew it too. I privately planned my exit the second week and went back to another place I had turned down, asking if the position had been filled. One afternoon of the third week, I was offered that role and verbally committed. The goal was to sign my paperwork and give my notice the next day.
In a twist of fate, I received an email from my recruiter at the temp agency the day I verbally agreed to leave. “Can we talk later this afternoon?” It was lunchtime, I had an incredible amount of work to do, and I wanted to break the news that I was leaving to her the next day. She wrote back saying no. “We really need to chat today.”
Oh shit, I thought. I’m getting fired.
I started laughing.
As I waited to learn of my fate over the next three hours, I did… nothing. I did no work. I went on Twitter. I answered some personal emails. I read over my new job offer. Why should I do anything to benefit this company when I know my time there was short and that I would be leaving soon anyway? I was going to do what was best for me.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and Steve Mills has Littlefinger’ed his way through the Knicks’ organization by playing the game. There are only enough buses for him to throw others under before he gets the axe himself.
If Mills and Perry believe they’re not long for this team, then I have two fears: 1) They’re going to be buyers and try to make a more competitive roster because they’ll feel the need to act within their own self-interests, or 2) They’re not going to do anything because they know they’re about to get fired.
The front office has taken a risk by firing Fizdale. They have removed the one person who shielded them from intense scrutiny. However, we’ll soon see that Miller, a former G-League Coach of the Year Award winner, is a better game manager and X’s and O’s coach than Fizdale. If anything, not riding with Fizdale for the rest of the season shows that Knicks brass has every desire to turn the season around. Seven of the team’s 22 games under Fizdale were decided by five points or less and the team went 2-5 in those contests. The Miller tenure is a one-game sample size, and the Knicks lost, but he’s one for one in giving this team a winning chance.
I recently wrote about why top-five picks are imperative to a franchise’s success, and that the way you guarantee yourself a top-five pick is by finishing with the worst record. Suddenly, losing appears to be the one thing that can create systematic changes at the top. That could either motivate the front office to add more wins and state its case to stay, or it could demotivate them enough to be apathetic to New York’s cause.
Ask yourself how many former Knicks executives and head coaches have found jobs within the NBA. Scott Layden was terrible for the Knicks, and maybe it’s rightfully so, but he went 13 years without a front office job. Donnie Walsh was able to return to the Indiana Pacers because he’d been there for about 25 years before joining the Knicks. Outside of that, the Knicks have been the last stop for executives. New York has parted ways with 12 coaches since 2001, and only two of them, Mike D’Antoni and Mike Woodson, have made it back to an NBA bench. Perry, and especially Mills, are two men who could do whatever they can to stay in power, because a front office safety net isn’t guaranteed for either of them like it was with Walsh. To thrive is to simply survive.
Buying would be the biggest disaster, but not selling, let alone not selling assets at their highest value, is a close second. Think about how many players Mills and Perry either traded when their value was on its way down, or didn’t trade and should have. Marcus Morris is shooting 50% from three on 5.7 attempts per game. That’s phenomenal! He’s also due to regress. Any potential team knows this, and his trade value should be reflected as such, but there’s a difference between trading him before he likely regresses and after he has already regressed. An interest in buying means not selling, and not selling means limiting the capitalization of your assets.
It’s easy to look at New York’s record and say there’s no chance the team makes the playoffs. The Knicks are 4-19, have the worst record in the league, and are 7.5 games back of the eighth seed, the Orlando Magic. The team has a four-game trip to the west coast, a seven-game mixed bag, and then another four-game west coast trip. Coaching change or not, the season feels cooked.
A normal organization understands mistakes will be made but it’s how you learn from them that’s paramount. The Knicks operate differently, but if the front office sold Dolan on a competitive roster, punting on the season is admitting that you took a step back. Even if fans knew this season would be a rebuilding one, the front office implying in any way to Dolan that this team would be competitive is a fireable offense in itself. Under-promise and over-deliver: that’s the way to go.
The funny thing is that I truly don’t believe the Knicks are that far away from contending for a playoff spot, generally speaking. This year is absolutely a wash but I can’t help but look at some of the most pressing flaws – poor free throw shooting, better three-point defense, badly constructed roster, simply being too young – and see improvements as a result of a better front office, smarter coaching, and time. The nucleus feels solid, and while solid never won a championship, it’s a start.
An ideal scenario if the Knicks don’t start selling this month is that Miller proves to be a viable coaching candidate going forward, he utilizes the strengths of his players so that their values increase, the team loses, the selling commences, and sweeping changes are made at the top not long after. That’s all to say that the fates of Mills and Perry aren’t sealed already.
I was, in fact, let go that day. I owed the company nothing and the company owed nothing to me. The same can be said about the Knicks with Mills and Perry, and that’s what’s so worrying. The main difference is I already had a new job – a better job – in hand. The same likely can’t be said about Mills and Perry.
If the duo of Mills and Perry feels they have to prove their worth to Dolan by competing, that could put future assets in peril. However, if they know there’s nothing that can be done to save themselves, nothing is exactly what they could do.
Player Spotlight
Yesterday in our PredictionStrike Player Spotlight (remember to use code KFS for an extra $10 when signing up), we highlighted Carmelo Anthony as a possible investment opportunity for the rest of the season with Portland. Today, we’re going the opposite end of the spectrum and focusing on two players whose combined ages are only a tad higher than LaLa’s husband.
Nassir Little ($0.43 a share, up 50%) and Anfernee Simons ($0.48 a share, no change) have been two names on the minds of some Knick fans, at least early on in the season. That was before Portland signed Carmelo Anthony and everyone was envisioning a Marcus Morris for Kent Bazemore swap, with one of these two young Blazers headed back to New York.
Even if Melo hadn’t seemingly solved Portland’s issues at the four, this was always sweet dreaming. Little and Simons are good. Both are playing consistent minutes, and while it isn’t always pretty (the team has been much better in non-Simons minutes in particular), there’s enough there to be excited about.
Simons in particular is a guy to watch. He started off at $0.75 and dropped to as low as $0.29. He’s averaging 21 minutes a night, so the team clearly believes in giving him time to play through his mistakes. It’s highly unlikely, but if the season continues to go south (Portland is just 9-15 in a brutal West), they may let him and Little loose even more. At a bargain basement price, either one is worth a shot.
Podcast Alert!
In case you missed part one, there’s a link to it in yesterday’s newsletter.
News & Notes
compiled by Michael Schatz (@mschatz99)
Knicks Nuance has been killing it for P&T this year, and his latest piece on RJ Barrett is no exception.
Ian Begley reported on Melo knowing why KD & Kyrie didn’t come here. Wise words.
Mario Hezonja wanted to remain a Knick.
On This Date: Knicks acquire Tyson Chandler in sign-and-trade
by Vivek Dadhania (@vdadhania)
The New York Knicks solidified their frontcourt defense by acquiring Tyson Chandler from the Dallas Mavericks in a three-team, sign-and-trade deal. The deal was made in December, on the second day of the preseason, due to the NBA Lockout. Chandler agreed to a 4-year, $58 million contract with the Knicks.
That’s it for today…see everyone tomorrow!