Still Wishing Upon a Star?

Today's mailbag features a few questions about everyone's favorite topic.

Good morning! Hope everyone is enjoying the good vibes heading into the weekend.

Game Day

SUNDAY: Hornets at Knicks

When: 12:00 pm, MSG

Injury Report: Both teams are fully healthy (or at least healthy enough to play).

Halftime Zoom: Giddy up! Here’s the link.

What to watch for: New year, same Hornets. They have a respectable enough offense - 12th in the league, according to Cleaning the Glass - but are giving up the third most points per possession. There is no major aspect of defense where they don’t rank bottom 10 in the NBA.

For the Knicks, who have won anytime their offense remotely gets going, that’s probably a good sign.

Also good: Charlotte takes the fewest threes in the league, but lives at the rim and the foul line. New York has been pretty good at not fouling, and with Mitchell Robinson around the hoop, the Hornets shouldn’t get anything easy come Sunday afternoon.

🗣️ News & Notes ✍️

🏀 Stefan Bondy of the NY Post reported yesterday that Julius Randle was still experiencing post-surgery ankle discomfort earlier in the season, and it was that discomfort that contributed to his poor play. The team reportedly tried to get him to take some time to rest, but he insisted on playing.

This is one of those Rorschach test stories that will reveal your view of this player and/or the coaching staff. Think Randle is selfish? This backs it up. Think he’s a warrior who gets unfairly maligned? This backs it up. Think Thibs’ is overly beholden to his two-time All-Star? This backs it up. And on and on we go.

FWIW, I’m not surprised, and it’s hard for me to think this was coming from a bad place. He wants to be out there for his team, and I think we should respect that, even if we might not agree with it.

📬 Friday Mailbag 📬

We have 18, count’em eighteen questions on the docket for today. Let’s start things off with a big-picture NBA question I received earlier this week.

Hamish asks… I'd like to hear your thoughts on the assumption that you need a star to win a companionship.

This conversation has been had in many ways over my years doing this newsletter, but let me try one more approach:

If you consider (in no particular order) the list of the best 20-25 players since 1980 (roughly the “modern” era of the NBA) to include MJ, LeBron, Kareem, Duncan, Bird, Magic, Steph, Kobe, Shaq, Hakeem, KD, Dr. J, Moses, KG, Dirk, Wade, Isiah, Giannis and Jokic, it seems notable to me that the only teams in that time to win a title without one of these guys are the 2004 Pistons and the 2019 Raptors. You can throw the 2014 Spurs in with those two if you’d like, because Duncan was past his prime and Kawhi hadn’t yet ascended to his, but if we do that, I’d argue for the ‘19 Raps to be taken off the list. Kawhi would have been a no-brainer for the above list if he’d had any semblance of a normal, injury-free career. When he’s been healthy, he’s been an MVP level player.

That leaves two teams in over four decades that have won it all without the typical superstar player, and they were both so damn unique, with the parts coalescing to such an absurd degree that they were closer to a sole organism than a collection of five distinct parts. San Antonio’s magic was more on offense, while Detroit’s was more on defense, but in both cases, the whole blew away the sum of the parts.

(Not that the parts weren’t great in their own right. For as much as those teams may have been “star-less” by the historical barometer of NBA champions, they each had four players in prominent roles that were All-Stars at or around the time they won it all.)

So really, you’re not asking my opinion about an assumption; you’re asking my opinion about a fact. History says that unless you catch once-in-a-decade (if that) lightning in a bottle, you need a superstar to win it all.

And I’m never one to go against history.

Speaking of superstars…

Samir K. Gadepalli, MD, MBA asks… When was the last time at least one of the top three players on a Finals team was not drafted by that team? I feel like losing IQ, RJ or Mitch is a bad idea even for a “superstar”.

If we’re talking top three players, the only Finals teams that qualify are, ironically, the team many fans hope the Knicks can emulate - the ‘04 & ‘05 Pistons - and the last Knicks team to make the Finals, in 1999, when Spree, Houston and Camby had all arguably surpassed Ewing in importance by the playoffs.

One could argue that the recent tide seemed to be turning away from the necessity of home grow players. The top two guys from both the ‘19 Raptors and the ‘20 Lakers were the result of free agency or trades, and the Bucks didn’t draft the second, third, fourth or fifth best players on their 2021 title squad..

But then the last two championships occurred, both of which reaffirmed the longstanding assumption that homegrown is where it’s at. Digging deeper, even the ‘19 Raptors had Siakam, VanVleet, OG Anunoby and Norm Powell, while Khris Middleton might as well have been drafted by the Bucks because of how raw he was when he first arrived in Milwaukee. So really it’s just the Lakers who thought they could (and eventually did) turn their nose up at tradition.

All that being said, with the exception of the Spurs’ title teams and the ‘15 Warriors, every champ in the last 25 years has featured at least one major non-draft pick acquisition playing a prominent role, usually as either the best or second best player on the roster.

As for the Knicks, they already have two such acquisitions in Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson. History says that adding a third star to those two would be unlikely to result in a title, but (as I discussed in the previous question) history also says that to win a ring, they’ll need a star that isn’t currently in house.

My guess? If the Knicks eventually reach the promised land, one of RJ Barrett or Immanuel Quickley will still be here, likely serving as the team’s third best guy, while one of Quentin Grimes or Mitchell Robinson also sticks around as a key starter. Meanwhile, one of Jalen or Julius probably goes out the door, and you don’t have to think too hard to figure out which of those two I’d guess it’ll be.