Briefing: March 27
A presidential candidate disowns the Knicks, Mitchell Robinson elite, Porzingis for Fox, and more
Good Morning,
TANKING MAGIC NUMBER: 6
Any combination of Suns wins plus Knicks losses equal to 6 will clinch the top lottery spot for the Knicks. For example, if the Suns finish the season 1-6, the Knicks need to finish 3-5, or worse, to clinch the worst record.
Knicks are off until Thursday when they face the Raptors at home.
3 Days Rest: Knicks are 0-3 when playing after three days rest this season. Two of those games came wrapped around their trip to London.
Kevin Knox and Damyean Dotson have a friendly bet on their respective colleges as Kentucky and Houston meet in the Sweet 16 on Thursday:
If Kentucky loses, Knox will wear a Houston jersey to the Knicks' game against the Heat on Saturday at the Garden, and if Houston loses, Dotson will wear a Kentucky jersey. [Chris Iseman]
Knox: “We talked today in the weight room. He’s talking a lot of trash. I talk my trash, too. It’s going to be a fun matchup.’’ [Marc Berman]
Knicks Director of Scouting Kristian Petesic and scout Walker Russell were in attendance at the McDonald’s All-American Games in Atlanta, per Adam Zagoria. Zags noted that Scott Perry was also expected to join them.
Seeing who: The McDonald’s All-American Games are a showcase for the nation’s top high school players, so they would be potential prospects for the 2020 draft.
Andrew Yang, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, is apparently running on an anti-Knicks campaign:
MSG Networks and ESPN New York 98.7FM announced a new multi-year agreement to keep 98.7FM the home of the Knicks and Rangers, were both teams have been broadcast since 2004. (Read more)
Injuries…Injuries…Injuries…
Morning Listen: Jonathan Macri is joined by Chris Iseman, the Knicks beat reporter from The Record & NorthJersey.com, to give a recap on the soon-to-be-completed season. They talk about whether the team feels any of this year's objectives have been achieved, whether the culture has actually improved, how to grade David Fizdale, if Frank Ntilikina has played his last game as a Knick, and the encouraging signs he's seen from some of New York's young players. [iTunes / SoundCloud]
Elite Second Rounder
Mitchell Robinson ranks among all-time greats as a rookie in terms of the advanced statistic Box Plus/Minus, as explained by Michael Salfino of FiveThirtyEight:
If BPM is accurately assessing Robinson, he’s on pace to become one of the better second-round draft picks of all-time — and certainly the best, value-wise, in recent Knicks history. Robinson is having the fourth-best rookie season ever by this metric, at 6.3 points over average on an average team.
But the rookies ahead of him — 1984-85 Michael Jordan (8.2), 1975-76 Alvan Adams (6.7) and 1989-90 David Robinson (6.5) — were all Top 4 picks. Mitchell Robinson was picked 36th overall.
What is BPM: A box score-based metric for evaluating basketball players' quality and contribution to the team. BPM relies on a player's box score information and the team's overall performance to estimate a player's performance relative to league average. [Learn more at Basketball-Reference]
Porzingis for Fox
Kristaps Porzingis was offered in a “template” package to Sacramento for De’Aaron Fox around last year’s draft, according to Zach Lowe:
Sacramento moved up in the lottery again -- to No. 2 -- and faced a pivotal moment: the chance to reorient their team around Luka Doncic. Rivals sensed the dilemma and made offers for Fox -- including a template from the New York Knicks centered around Kristaps Porzingis that would have required Sacramento to either send something beyond Fox or take unwanted Knicks salary (or both), sources say.
What this means:
We have learned a few things since the Porzingis trade:
Porzingis decided over the summer that he wasn’t going to play this season.
The Knicks explored multiple trades for the star player, as far back as last year’s draft.
How does this this information change my opinion on the trade? It’s hard to say, considering there is still plenty of information still hidden from the public view, and we don’t have the benefit of knowing what will happen in the future to properly evaluate some of the unknowns (how the Knicks use their cap space, what the Dallas draft picks become, etc.).
But I will say that for those worried about the reasons for trading Porzingis in terms of the team’s relationship with the star player, I wouldn’t be.
To me, no player should be deemed “untradeable” unless they are a legitimate Top 5 player in the league.
As Knicks fans, we had dreams of KP reaching those heights, and maybe someday he will. But even when healthy, he still had a long way to go before making the leap from young player with a high ceiling to established player who has reached his ceiling.
So the fact that the Knicks, knowing he was going to sit out the entire season as he recovered from a major injury that carries significant risk to future performance, would entertain trade ideas, from a basketball standpoint, makes sense.
You’re telling me you wouldn’t have liked the Knicks turning KP into De’Aaron Fox and possible cap relief?
I think the Knicks vision for 2019 is simple:
Sign Durant
Put the best possible team around him
We look at the return the Knicks ultimately did receive for Porzingis and assume the plan all along was to open up two max spots for 2019 free agency. This way, Durant could choose his running mate. But maybe that is simply the best scenario that materialized after months of working the phones. We know the Knicks tried to trade Porzingis for Anthony Davis. We know they tried to trade him for Fox. There are scenarios where the Knicks might not be holding a sign reading “two max spots for superstars” this summer, and instead, had other teams cooperated to their initial wants, they could be offering Durant the chance to play with a dynamic player like Anthony Davis or De’Aaron Fox. Maybe the Knicks believe those players are more enticing to Durant than Porzingis. We don’t know.
What we do know is that after accounting the basketball reasons for why you might consider trading an injured star for future assets, the fact that said star didn’t want to be a part of the organization adds another factor to the decision process. It’s a complicated process. I don’t know from personal experience, but think about any complex decision in life, or business. Once all of the data and input has been collected, a decision can still come down to a coin flip on what to do, weighing trade-offs and risk profiles that don’t necessarily have perfect quantitative value to compare.
Did KP’s final meeting with the team offer the final push for the team to accept a deal that was perhaps lower on their acceptance threshold than proposals they had been making around the league? Maybe. The point is don’t confuse the final meeting with the process. A prudent team will look to improve their roster through any means necessary. They do the homework, they canvas the market, and then make decisions on a variety of factors. I wouldn’t get so caught up on which factor was the final push, as much as the overall theme of whether trading an injured star player as a means to add future assets in the form of young players and cap space is prudent, and whether the eventual trade that happened helped the team achieve their ultimate goal of building a champion around Kevin Durant. Time will tell.
Remember when…
March 27, 2002: Lavor Postell pours in a career-high 20 points off the bench to lead Knicks to an 89-82 win at Detroit. Postell scores 15 points in the second quarter, then nails the game’s biggest shot when he buries a three-point bomb from the left corner with 1:04 left to put New York up by seven.
March 27, 1990: Patrick Ewing scores 41 points and grabs 12 rebounds in 119-100 win over Washington at the Garden. It marks his 28th consecutive game with at least 20 points. The streak would come to an end the next day, when he was limited to 17 points at New Jersey.
NBA Buzz
Chris Bosh’s jersey was retired in Miami. (What he meant to the game)
Bucks win in MVP showdown between Giannis and Harden. (Read more)
Must Read: Is this season a blip or the new normal for LeBron James by Brian Windhorst
Thanks for reading, talk to you tomorrow!