Yes Bonn, you bring up good points too. You get a star!

Bonn1997 wrote:

fishmike wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

Nalod wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

nixluva wrote:Thanks for your opinion and comments. last year the Knicks beat the projections and had a chance to beat them by a lot if not for Melo stepping on that ref and Lance going down. Not to mention the coaching issues. The actual talent on the roster was capable of more wins if things went right. Now this year there's lots of reasons to anticipate that the Knicks will win more games than predicted again. Just saying that the Knicks "loaded up on players who were hurt and a bunch that have no history" is LAZY. There's more details that can be researched to come to a better conclusion than that.

Starting with the Head Coach. He's been almost completely absent for any consideration. Hornacek has shown he can get a team to improve and play above expectations. He was sabotaged by his Front Office IMO but before that he was fairly successful with an OK team. Here Phil is fully supporting Hornacek and at least he has the kind of players with whom he can do a lot of the things he believes in. Playing uptempo, early offense, spread offense, 3's, PnR and scoring at the basket.

--->Just saying that the Knicks "loaded up on players who were hurt and a bunch that have no history" is LAZY.

FG% top 6 players 2015-2016

1 Courtney Lee 44.5% games missed 2
2 Carmelo Anthony 43% games missed 10
3 Derrick Rose 42.7% games missed 16
4 Kristaps Porzinigis 42.1% games missed 10
5 Joakim Noah 38.3% games missed 53
6 Branden Jennings 36.8% games missed 38

Not only do we have the worst collective fg% and eFG in the ENTIRE NBA with our top 6 they collectively missed 129 games

We dont really have a proven NBA post scorer on the team from the C or pF position.

5 of our 15 will have never played 1 minute of nBA basketball

Our team 3 point shooting collectively is among the worst in the NBA.

So maybe you should go back and stop being lazy:)

Jennings and Noah obviously get the bulk of the missed games. 91 if them! Rose was right to take some games off even if not hurt after all he has been thru. If Jennings was super healthy reliable his salary would be much higher and he is not on roster.
Regarding field goal %, there is cause to be concern. Rose and Jennings did shake off rust and its a good reason. KP does take some off balance shots and has to work on that. Im not sure he instinctively understands his size yet. With a slow release due to his length it can be fixed with better selection.

What I'd be curious is the breakdown of Rose in his last 3rd of the season and if it improved over the season. same for jennings. Noah seemed to be out of sorts not just physically, but lost in Hoilbergs system.

Basketball is not like baseball were we can transpose last years stats going forward. Briggs does bring up some good points that could be concerns and it will be interesting to see if the variables I mentioned, or others will factor.

On the surface the fear that Phil Starphucked is always in the back of our minds.
If everything "goes right", this is a 53-55 win team. If not, .500 should be about right

So a good GM ignores the previous season stats? Briggs is not raising valid points?
I think he's right here. Most of the predictions from the media and statistical models are going to look low to people on this board.

I think we have a 43 win team or so. The two big things will be Derrick Rose and our bench

an 11 game improvement would be great for Bonn... that's a nice chunk of wins for the incremental improvement crowd.

Knicks were a .500 team at the midpoint and trending upwards last year. Melo got hurt, KP hit a wall, Lance got hurt and the rest of the crew were about as good as the 17 win team the year before. Now THAT team had no depth. Once Melo went down there was no player who take over a game or impose their will. It just wasn't a good enough squad to get wins.

To me the biggest reason the Knicks will improve is their upgraded backcourt. Knicks still won 32 games and were 20-20 with Jose, AA, Grant and Langston. AA and Calderon were horrific on defense. It was a turnstile. Langston plays hard on D but is limited and his effectiveness on defense wavered. Grant had a rough rookie season. You replace them with Rose, Jennings, Lee and Holiday. Lee and Holiday are excellent defenders, long and athletic. Rose and Jennings are not great defenders, but they are very fast players and Rose has shown to play well in a system defensively... on the other side of the ball Rose and Jennings can do things Jose and Langston simply cant. Its not even close. We have backcourt difference makers where as before we did not.

Knicks can protect the rim, and they can certainly rebound very well. They have upgraded the backcourt on both sides of the ball. Really the only question marks are the guys who haven't played. Kuz, Willy, NDour, Plumlee... who knows what we get. However Jennings and Lance are a good start. One brings scoring and the other can defend 2-3 positions very well. We will see who wins the other bench roles. I wouldn't call it deep, but its not a weakness either. Last year we had DWill off the bench and that was a nice boost. Someone will have to pick that up.

I mean to me its still about KP/Melo and how well those two played together. Knicks were even with them (as indicated by the early record and their +/-) and really bad when they were off the floor. To boost those guys we needed to improve the defense on the perimeter and add more scoring. On paper it looks good for that.

This should be a .500ish playoff team. I mean if Melo and KP get hurt and Rose/Noah are iffy thing could be bad. If they all play reasonably well and stay reasonably healthy Knicks could be playing the Cavs in round 3. I think if you look at it in the middle its a .500ish playoff team with cap space, all their future first rounders and a young franchise player to build around going forward. After 3 years I think this is what most would have hoped for. KP is the part that make everything rosy. He's the coveted cornerstone, but we have the pieces to be good now and we should be.

Incremental improvement doesn't mean a 1 year increase in wins. 43 wins could be a peak or it could be the beginning of incremental improvement. It is more likely to be a peak if you have older, injury-rpone players. Just getting to 43 has no bearing on the approach I was discussing before.
It's like if you set up a retirement account and want 6% growth every year. After year 1, maybe you beat that 6% but that's not mission accomplished. It's not even evidence that you're on the right track. You could have a bad plan that just happened to go up 6% that year but is unlikely to achieve the long-term incremental growth that you wanted.
I think incremental progress already implies a long-term outlook. But just to be clear, when I said incremental progress, I meant long-term incremental progress.

Melo injury prone? Not really. Older yes.
Noah, oldish and injury prone.
Rose? bad stretch but only 27.
Jennings, one injury, low contract, 26 years old.
and........Wait for it..........
KP6, 20! What none of us know is his trajectory. That blows your mind as you can't really transpose him going forward, but he is as solid a prospect as you might find in this league.
So to say this is an old team is really not correct. Injury prone elements are present, but then one has to look at the variable.

Regarding retirement plan, often If you buy underperforming assets, your buying low. If you buy assets that have performed well, they might have reached their maturity and are not as opportune. Go buy Utility stocks based on current fundamentals and you might lose 15-20%. Fools buy high thinking it goes higher. Define a "bad plan"? Im guessing your an index kind of guy?

Malcolm wrote:

Nalod wrote:Basketball is not like baseball were we can transpose last years stats going forward.

And if you add in the fact that the Knicks run the Triangle . . . the stats
become even less enlightening.

Intelligence and character and versatility and adaptability mean a lot more.

I don't see how Rose's past makes him very promising in those respects.

The rest of the changes make sense . . . of a kind.

But unless Rose suddenly becomes someone other than who he's been . . .
I don't see how this is going to amount to much.

Who has he been? The injured Rose or the MVP rose?
Lets forget MVP, say 3/4 that guy. A 6'6 long PG penetrator high tempo player with good midrange ability and passing.
Basically I think for what Horny and Phil want, John wall, Westbrook and Rose fit the bill. If Rose holds up this season, does that change his trajectory?
Durant had awful injury and needed time to come back. The very Kurt Thomas had awful foot problems out of college and he played until 42 years old.
If we run Rose hard this year and he holds up, does that warrant a change of outlook?

Lost on some stats is the effect of chemistry. Good GM recognized the potential. A god executes it. Phil has the unique perspective of 13 rings. Im thinking he is beyond stats. No guarantee's mind you, but this a variable to consider. The Sum of parts can be greater than the individual value. Not Sure Bonn has that kind of perspective.

Its what teams strive for.

Bonn1997 wrote:

fishmike wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

Nalod wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

nixluva wrote:Thanks for your opinion and comments. last year the Knicks beat the projections and had a chance to beat them by a lot if not for Melo stepping on that ref and Lance going down. Not to mention the coaching issues. The actual talent on the roster was capable of more wins if things went right. Now this year there's lots of reasons to anticipate that the Knicks will win more games than predicted again. Just saying that the Knicks "loaded up on players who were hurt and a bunch that have no history" is LAZY. There's more details that can be researched to come to a better conclusion than that.

Starting with the Head Coach. He's been almost completely absent for any consideration. Hornacek has shown he can get a team to improve and play above expectations. He was sabotaged by his Front Office IMO but before that he was fairly successful with an OK team. Here Phil is fully supporting Hornacek and at least he has the kind of players with whom he can do a lot of the things he believes in. Playing uptempo, early offense, spread offense, 3's, PnR and scoring at the basket.

--->Just saying that the Knicks "loaded up on players who were hurt and a bunch that have no history" is LAZY.

FG% top 6 players 2015-2016

1 Courtney Lee 44.5% games missed 2
2 Carmelo Anthony 43% games missed 10
3 Derrick Rose 42.7% games missed 16
4 Kristaps Porzinigis 42.1% games missed 10
5 Joakim Noah 38.3% games missed 53
6 Branden Jennings 36.8% games missed 38

Not only do we have the worst collective fg% and eFG in the ENTIRE NBA with our top 6 they collectively missed 129 games

We dont really have a proven NBA post scorer on the team from the C or pF position.

5 of our 15 will have never played 1 minute of nBA basketball

Our team 3 point shooting collectively is among the worst in the NBA.

So maybe you should go back and stop being lazy:)

Jennings and Noah obviously get the bulk of the missed games. 91 if them! Rose was right to take some games off even if not hurt after all he has been thru. If Jennings was super healthy reliable his salary would be much higher and he is not on roster.
Regarding field goal %, there is cause to be concern. Rose and Jennings did shake off rust and its a good reason. KP does take some off balance shots and has to work on that. Im not sure he instinctively understands his size yet. With a slow release due to his length it can be fixed with better selection.

What I'd be curious is the breakdown of Rose in his last 3rd of the season and if it improved over the season. same for jennings. Noah seemed to be out of sorts not just physically, but lost in Hoilbergs system.

Basketball is not like baseball were we can transpose last years stats going forward. Briggs does bring up some good points that could be concerns and it will be interesting to see if the variables I mentioned, or others will factor.

On the surface the fear that Phil Starphucked is always in the back of our minds.
If everything "goes right", this is a 53-55 win team. If not, .500 should be about right

So a good GM ignores the previous season stats? Briggs is not raising valid points?
I think he's right here. Most of the predictions from the media and statistical models are going to look low to people on this board.

I think we have a 43 win team or so. The two big things will be Derrick Rose and our bench

an 11 game improvement would be great for Bonn... that's a nice chunk of wins for the incremental improvement crowd.

Knicks were a .500 team at the midpoint and trending upwards last year. Melo got hurt, KP hit a wall, Lance got hurt and the rest of the crew were about as good as the 17 win team the year before. Now THAT team had no depth. Once Melo went down there was no player who take over a game or impose their will. It just wasn't a good enough squad to get wins.

To me the biggest reason the Knicks will improve is their upgraded backcourt. Knicks still won 32 games and were 20-20 with Jose, AA, Grant and Langston. AA and Calderon were horrific on defense. It was a turnstile. Langston plays hard on D but is limited and his effectiveness on defense wavered. Grant had a rough rookie season. You replace them with Rose, Jennings, Lee and Holiday. Lee and Holiday are excellent defenders, long and athletic. Rose and Jennings are not great defenders, but they are very fast players and Rose has shown to play well in a system defensively... on the other side of the ball Rose and Jennings can do things Jose and Langston simply cant. Its not even close. We have backcourt difference makers where as before we did not.

Knicks can protect the rim, and they can certainly rebound very well. They have upgraded the backcourt on both sides of the ball. Really the only question marks are the guys who haven't played. Kuz, Willy, NDour, Plumlee... who knows what we get. However Jennings and Lance are a good start. One brings scoring and the other can defend 2-3 positions very well. We will see who wins the other bench roles. I wouldn't call it deep, but its not a weakness either. Last year we had DWill off the bench and that was a nice boost. Someone will have to pick that up.

I mean to me its still about KP/Melo and how well those two played together. Knicks were even with them (as indicated by the early record and their +/-) and really bad when they were off the floor. To boost those guys we needed to improve the defense on the perimeter and add more scoring. On paper it looks good for that.

This should be a .500ish playoff team. I mean if Melo and KP get hurt and Rose/Noah are iffy thing could be bad. If they all play reasonably well and stay reasonably healthy Knicks could be playing the Cavs in round 3. I think if you look at it in the middle its a .500ish playoff team with cap space, all their future first rounders and a young franchise player to build around going forward. After 3 years I think this is what most would have hoped for. KP is the part that make everything rosy. He's the coveted cornerstone, but we have the pieces to be good now and we should be.

Incremental improvement doesn't mean a 1 year increase in wins. 43 wins could be a peak or it could be the beginning of incremental improvement. It is more likely to be a peak if you have older, injury-rpone players. Just getting to 43 has no bearing on the approach I was discussing before.
It's like if you set up a retirement account and want 6% growth every year. After year 1, maybe you beat that 6% but that's not mission accomplished. It's not even evidence that you're on the right track. You could have a bad plan that just happened to go up 6% that year but is unlikely to achieve the long-term incremental growth that you wanted.
I think incremental progress already implies a long-term outlook. But just to be clear, when I said incremental progress, I meant long-term incremental progress.

Is the roster younger? So you were only talking about incremental improvement that cant be quantified with wins (why bother, its sports after all) but by what? If the Knicks go from 17 to 32 to 43 wins how many more years do you need? Can you spell our YOUR version of incremental? Assuming it will involved the modestly paid 2-way super efficient players that cant be named you would opted for over Rose/Noah/Lee but indulge us

Love to know how a team with a 20 year old KP can "peek" next year. I guess he's only as good as his true shooting % last year?

fishmike wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

fishmike wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

Nalod wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

nixluva wrote:Thanks for your opinion and comments. last year the Knicks beat the projections and had a chance to beat them by a lot if not for Melo stepping on that ref and Lance going down. Not to mention the coaching issues. The actual talent on the roster was capable of more wins if things went right. Now this year there's lots of reasons to anticipate that the Knicks will win more games than predicted again. Just saying that the Knicks "loaded up on players who were hurt and a bunch that have no history" is LAZY. There's more details that can be researched to come to a better conclusion than that.

Starting with the Head Coach. He's been almost completely absent for any consideration. Hornacek has shown he can get a team to improve and play above expectations. He was sabotaged by his Front Office IMO but before that he was fairly successful with an OK team. Here Phil is fully supporting Hornacek and at least he has the kind of players with whom he can do a lot of the things he believes in. Playing uptempo, early offense, spread offense, 3's, PnR and scoring at the basket.

--->Just saying that the Knicks "loaded up on players who were hurt and a bunch that have no history" is LAZY.

FG% top 6 players 2015-2016

1 Courtney Lee 44.5% games missed 2
2 Carmelo Anthony 43% games missed 10
3 Derrick Rose 42.7% games missed 16
4 Kristaps Porzinigis 42.1% games missed 10
5 Joakim Noah 38.3% games missed 53
6 Branden Jennings 36.8% games missed 38

Not only do we have the worst collective fg% and eFG in the ENTIRE NBA with our top 6 they collectively missed 129 games

We dont really have a proven NBA post scorer on the team from the C or pF position.

5 of our 15 will have never played 1 minute of nBA basketball

Our team 3 point shooting collectively is among the worst in the NBA.

So maybe you should go back and stop being lazy:)

Jennings and Noah obviously get the bulk of the missed games. 91 if them! Rose was right to take some games off even if not hurt after all he has been thru. If Jennings was super healthy reliable his salary would be much higher and he is not on roster.
Regarding field goal %, there is cause to be concern. Rose and Jennings did shake off rust and its a good reason. KP does take some off balance shots and has to work on that. Im not sure he instinctively understands his size yet. With a slow release due to his length it can be fixed with better selection.

What I'd be curious is the breakdown of Rose in his last 3rd of the season and if it improved over the season. same for jennings. Noah seemed to be out of sorts not just physically, but lost in Hoilbergs system.

Basketball is not like baseball were we can transpose last years stats going forward. Briggs does bring up some good points that could be concerns and it will be interesting to see if the variables I mentioned, or others will factor.

On the surface the fear that Phil Starphucked is always in the back of our minds.
If everything "goes right", this is a 53-55 win team. If not, .500 should be about right

So a good GM ignores the previous season stats? Briggs is not raising valid points?
I think he's right here. Most of the predictions from the media and statistical models are going to look low to people on this board.

I think we have a 43 win team or so. The two big things will be Derrick Rose and our bench

an 11 game improvement would be great for Bonn... that's a nice chunk of wins for the incremental improvement crowd.

Knicks were a .500 team at the midpoint and trending upwards last year. Melo got hurt, KP hit a wall, Lance got hurt and the rest of the crew were about as good as the 17 win team the year before. Now THAT team had no depth. Once Melo went down there was no player who take over a game or impose their will. It just wasn't a good enough squad to get wins.

To me the biggest reason the Knicks will improve is their upgraded backcourt. Knicks still won 32 games and were 20-20 with Jose, AA, Grant and Langston. AA and Calderon were horrific on defense. It was a turnstile. Langston plays hard on D but is limited and his effectiveness on defense wavered. Grant had a rough rookie season. You replace them with Rose, Jennings, Lee and Holiday. Lee and Holiday are excellent defenders, long and athletic. Rose and Jennings are not great defenders, but they are very fast players and Rose has shown to play well in a system defensively... on the other side of the ball Rose and Jennings can do things Jose and Langston simply cant. Its not even close. We have backcourt difference makers where as before we did not.

Knicks can protect the rim, and they can certainly rebound very well. They have upgraded the backcourt on both sides of the ball. Really the only question marks are the guys who haven't played. Kuz, Willy, NDour, Plumlee... who knows what we get. However Jennings and Lance are a good start. One brings scoring and the other can defend 2-3 positions very well. We will see who wins the other bench roles. I wouldn't call it deep, but its not a weakness either. Last year we had DWill off the bench and that was a nice boost. Someone will have to pick that up.

I mean to me its still about KP/Melo and how well those two played together. Knicks were even with them (as indicated by the early record and their +/-) and really bad when they were off the floor. To boost those guys we needed to improve the defense on the perimeter and add more scoring. On paper it looks good for that.

This should be a .500ish playoff team. I mean if Melo and KP get hurt and Rose/Noah are iffy thing could be bad. If they all play reasonably well and stay reasonably healthy Knicks could be playing the Cavs in round 3. I think if you look at it in the middle its a .500ish playoff team with cap space, all their future first rounders and a young franchise player to build around going forward. After 3 years I think this is what most would have hoped for. KP is the part that make everything rosy. He's the coveted cornerstone, but we have the pieces to be good now and we should be.

Incremental improvement doesn't mean a 1 year increase in wins. 43 wins could be a peak or it could be the beginning of incremental improvement. It is more likely to be a peak if you have older, injury-rpone players. Just getting to 43 has no bearing on the approach I was discussing before.
It's like if you set up a retirement account and want 6% growth every year. After year 1, maybe you beat that 6% but that's not mission accomplished. It's not even evidence that you're on the right track. You could have a bad plan that just happened to go up 6% that year but is unlikely to achieve the long-term incremental growth that you wanted.
I think incremental progress already implies a long-term outlook. But just to be clear, when I said incremental progress, I meant long-term incremental progress.

Great Bonn... take a hike then and come back to me in 5 years and you can comment then.

Is the roster younger? So you were only talking about incremental improvement that cant be quantified with wins (why bother, its sports after all) but by what? If the Knicks go from 17 to 32 to 43 wins how many more years do you need? Can you spell our YOUR version of incremental? Assuming it will involved the modestly paid 2-way super efficient players that cant be named you would opted for over Rose/Noah/Lee but indulge us

Love to know how a team with a 20 year old KP can "peek" next year. I guess he's only as good as his true shooting % last year?

Bonn1997 wrote:

fishmike wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

fishmike wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

Nalod wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

nixluva wrote:Thanks for your opinion and comments. last year the Knicks beat the projections and had a chance to beat them by a lot if not for Melo stepping on that ref and Lance going down. Not to mention the coaching issues. The actual talent on the roster was capable of more wins if things went right. Now this year there's lots of reasons to anticipate that the Knicks will win more games than predicted again. Just saying that the Knicks "loaded up on players who were hurt and a bunch that have no history" is LAZY. There's more details that can be researched to come to a better conclusion than that.

Starting with the Head Coach. He's been almost completely absent for any consideration. Hornacek has shown he can get a team to improve and play above expectations. He was sabotaged by his Front Office IMO but before that he was fairly successful with an OK team. Here Phil is fully supporting Hornacek and at least he has the kind of players with whom he can do a lot of the things he believes in. Playing uptempo, early offense, spread offense, 3's, PnR and scoring at the basket.

--->Just saying that the Knicks "loaded up on players who were hurt and a bunch that have no history" is LAZY.

FG% top 6 players 2015-2016

1 Courtney Lee 44.5% games missed 2
2 Carmelo Anthony 43% games missed 10
3 Derrick Rose 42.7% games missed 16
4 Kristaps Porzinigis 42.1% games missed 10
5 Joakim Noah 38.3% games missed 53
6 Branden Jennings 36.8% games missed 38

Not only do we have the worst collective fg% and eFG in the ENTIRE NBA with our top 6 they collectively missed 129 games

We dont really have a proven NBA post scorer on the team from the C or pF position.

5 of our 15 will have never played 1 minute of nBA basketball

Our team 3 point shooting collectively is among the worst in the NBA.

So maybe you should go back and stop being lazy:)

Jennings and Noah obviously get the bulk of the missed games. 91 if them! Rose was right to take some games off even if not hurt after all he has been thru. If Jennings was super healthy reliable his salary would be much higher and he is not on roster.
Regarding field goal %, there is cause to be concern. Rose and Jennings did shake off rust and its a good reason. KP does take some off balance shots and has to work on that. Im not sure he instinctively understands his size yet. With a slow release due to his length it can be fixed with better selection.

What I'd be curious is the breakdown of Rose in his last 3rd of the season and if it improved over the season. same for jennings. Noah seemed to be out of sorts not just physically, but lost in Hoilbergs system.

Basketball is not like baseball were we can transpose last years stats going forward. Briggs does bring up some good points that could be concerns and it will be interesting to see if the variables I mentioned, or others will factor.

On the surface the fear that Phil Starphucked is always in the back of our minds.
If everything "goes right", this is a 53-55 win team. If not, .500 should be about right

So a good GM ignores the previous season stats? Briggs is not raising valid points?
I think he's right here. Most of the predictions from the media and statistical models are going to look low to people on this board.

I think we have a 43 win team or so. The two big things will be Derrick Rose and our bench

an 11 game improvement would be great for Bonn... that's a nice chunk of wins for the incremental improvement crowd.

Knicks were a .500 team at the midpoint and trending upwards last year. Melo got hurt, KP hit a wall, Lance got hurt and the rest of the crew were about as good as the 17 win team the year before. Now THAT team had no depth. Once Melo went down there was no player who take over a game or impose their will. It just wasn't a good enough squad to get wins.

To me the biggest reason the Knicks will improve is their upgraded backcourt. Knicks still won 32 games and were 20-20 with Jose, AA, Grant and Langston. AA and Calderon were horrific on defense. It was a turnstile. Langston plays hard on D but is limited and his effectiveness on defense wavered. Grant had a rough rookie season. You replace them with Rose, Jennings, Lee and Holiday. Lee and Holiday are excellent defenders, long and athletic. Rose and Jennings are not great defenders, but they are very fast players and Rose has shown to play well in a system defensively... on the other side of the ball Rose and Jennings can do things Jose and Langston simply cant. Its not even close. We have backcourt difference makers where as before we did not.

Knicks can protect the rim, and they can certainly rebound very well. They have upgraded the backcourt on both sides of the ball. Really the only question marks are the guys who haven't played. Kuz, Willy, NDour, Plumlee... who knows what we get. However Jennings and Lance are a good start. One brings scoring and the other can defend 2-3 positions very well. We will see who wins the other bench roles. I wouldn't call it deep, but its not a weakness either. Last year we had DWill off the bench and that was a nice boost. Someone will have to pick that up.

I mean to me its still about KP/Melo and how well those two played together. Knicks were even with them (as indicated by the early record and their +/-) and really bad when they were off the floor. To boost those guys we needed to improve the defense on the perimeter and add more scoring. On paper it looks good for that.

This should be a .500ish playoff team. I mean if Melo and KP get hurt and Rose/Noah are iffy thing could be bad. If they all play reasonably well and stay reasonably healthy Knicks could be playing the Cavs in round 3. I think if you look at it in the middle its a .500ish playoff team with cap space, all their future first rounders and a young franchise player to build around going forward. After 3 years I think this is what most would have hoped for. KP is the part that make everything rosy. He's the coveted cornerstone, but we have the pieces to be good now and we should be.

Incremental improvement doesn't mean a 1 year increase in wins. 43 wins could be a peak or it could be the beginning of incremental improvement. It is more likely to be a peak if you have older, injury-rpone players. Just getting to 43 has no bearing on the approach I was discussing before.
It's like if you set up a retirement account and want 6% growth every year. After year 1, maybe you beat that 6% but that's not mission accomplished. It's not even evidence that you're on the right track. You could have a bad plan that just happened to go up 6% that year but is unlikely to achieve the long-term incremental growth that you wanted.
I think incremental progress already implies a long-term outlook. But just to be clear, when I said incremental progress, I meant long-term incremental progress.

Great Bonn... take a hike then and come back to me in 5 years and you can comment then.

Is the roster younger? So you were only talking about incremental improvement that cant be quantified with wins (why bother, its sports after all) but by what? If the Knicks go from 17 to 32 to 43 wins how many more years do you need? Can you spell our YOUR version of incremental? Assuming it will involved the modestly paid 2-way super efficient players that cant be named you would opted for over Rose/Noah/Lee but indulge us

Love to know how a team with a 20 year old KP can "peek" next year. I guess he's only as good as his true shooting % last year?

No, you don't need to wait 5 years to have a discussion. At the end of next season, you can debate whether that year was likely to be the start of incremental growth or more likely to have been a peak. Nalod is right that KP is as good a prospect as any. I don't want a team that blows his prime years like Minn did with KG, though. We could have started grabbing young players who would have a decade to grow with KP, though. We could have set the team up for a great long-term future.
You asked how much more progress do you need than 17 to 32 to 43 wins? The answer is title contention. Isn't the goal to build a team that can compete for a title? What's the point in building a team that peaks at .500?

So at 20 years old your concern is we become KG/Minn? What relevance does that have? None. Is Lopez a starter on a title team?

Who are the players you wanted to grab that can have a decade to play with KP? Name em... please. Do tell. We added 5 guys who are 26 or under. What was your expectation? What is reasonable? Do you understand the value of fielding a good team?

Who are the guys that would have been a better fit? Go ahead... put your GM hat on and say something

fishmike wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

fishmike wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

fishmike wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

Bonn1997 wrote:

Nalod wrote:

BRIGGS wrote:

nixluva wrote:Thanks for your opinion and comments. last year the Knicks beat the projections and had a chance to beat them by a lot if not for Melo stepping on that ref and Lance going down. Not to mention the coaching issues. The actual talent on the roster was capable of more wins if things went right. Now this year there's lots of reasons to anticipate that the Knicks will win more games than predicted again. Just saying that the Knicks "loaded up on players who were hurt and a bunch that have no history" is LAZY. There's more details that can be researched to come to a better conclusion than that.

Starting with the Head Coach. He's been almost completely absent for any consideration. Hornacek has shown he can get a team to improve and play above expectations. He was sabotaged by his Front Office IMO but before that he was fairly successful with an OK team. Here Phil is fully supporting Hornacek and at least he has the kind of players with whom he can do a lot of the things he believes in. Playing uptempo, early offense, spread offense, 3's, PnR and scoring at the basket.

--->Just saying that the Knicks "loaded up on players who were hurt and a bunch that have no history" is LAZY.

FG% top 6 players 2015-2016

1 Courtney Lee 44.5% games missed 2
2 Carmelo Anthony 43% games missed 10
3 Derrick Rose 42.7% games missed 16
4 Kristaps Porzinigis 42.1% games missed 10
5 Joakim Noah 38.3% games missed 53
6 Branden Jennings 36.8% games missed 38

Not only do we have the worst collective fg% and eFG in the ENTIRE NBA with our top 6 they collectively missed 129 games

We dont really have a proven NBA post scorer on the team from the C or pF position.

5 of our 15 will have never played 1 minute of nBA basketball

Our team 3 point shooting collectively is among the worst in the NBA.

So maybe you should go back and stop being lazy:)

Jennings and Noah obviously get the bulk of the missed games. 91 if them! Rose was right to take some games off even if not hurt after all he has been thru. If Jennings was super healthy reliable his salary would be much higher and he is not on roster.
Regarding field goal %, there is cause to be concern. Rose and Jennings did shake off rust and its a good reason. KP does take some off balance shots and has to work on that. Im not sure he instinctively understands his size yet. With a slow release due to his length it can be fixed with better selection.

What I'd be curious is the breakdown of Rose in his last 3rd of the season and if it improved over the season. same for jennings. Noah seemed to be out of sorts not just physically, but lost in Hoilbergs system.

Basketball is not like baseball were we can transpose last years stats going forward. Briggs does bring up some good points that could be concerns and it will be interesting to see if the variables I mentioned, or others will factor.

On the surface the fear that Phil Starphucked is always in the back of our minds.
If everything "goes right", this is a 53-55 win team. If not, .500 should be about right

So a good GM ignores the previous season stats? Briggs is not raising valid points?
I think he's right here. Most of the predictions from the media and statistical models are going to look low to people on this board.

I think we have a 43 win team or so. The two big things will be Derrick Rose and our bench

an 11 game improvement would be great for Bonn... that's a nice chunk of wins for the incremental improvement crowd.

Knicks were a .500 team at the midpoint and trending upwards last year. Melo got hurt, KP hit a wall, Lance got hurt and the rest of the crew were about as good as the 17 win team the year before. Now THAT team had no depth. Once Melo went down there was no player who take over a game or impose their will. It just wasn't a good enough squad to get wins.

To me the biggest reason the Knicks will improve is their upgraded backcourt. Knicks still won 32 games and were 20-20 with Jose, AA, Grant and Langston. AA and Calderon were horrific on defense. It was a turnstile. Langston plays hard on D but is limited and his effectiveness on defense wavered. Grant had a rough rookie season. You replace them with Rose, Jennings, Lee and Holiday. Lee and Holiday are excellent defenders, long and athletic. Rose and Jennings are not great defenders, but they are very fast players and Rose has shown to play well in a system defensively... on the other side of the ball Rose and Jennings can do things Jose and Langston simply cant. Its not even close. We have backcourt difference makers where as before we did not.

Knicks can protect the rim, and they can certainly rebound very well. They have upgraded the backcourt on both sides of the ball. Really the only question marks are the guys who haven't played. Kuz, Willy, NDour, Plumlee... who knows what we get. However Jennings and Lance are a good start. One brings scoring and the other can defend 2-3 positions very well. We will see who wins the other bench roles. I wouldn't call it deep, but its not a weakness either. Last year we had DWill off the bench and that was a nice boost. Someone will have to pick that up.

I mean to me its still about KP/Melo and how well those two played together. Knicks were even with them (as indicated by the early record and their +/-) and really bad when they were off the floor. To boost those guys we needed to improve the defense on the perimeter and add more scoring. On paper it looks good for that.

This should be a .500ish playoff team. I mean if Melo and KP get hurt and Rose/Noah are iffy thing could be bad. If they all play reasonably well and stay reasonably healthy Knicks could be playing the Cavs in round 3. I think if you look at it in the middle its a .500ish playoff team with cap space, all their future first rounders and a young franchise player to build around going forward. After 3 years I think this is what most would have hoped for. KP is the part that make everything rosy. He's the coveted cornerstone, but we have the pieces to be good now and we should be.

Incremental improvement doesn't mean a 1 year increase in wins. 43 wins could be a peak or it could be the beginning of incremental improvement. It is more likely to be a peak if you have older, injury-rpone players. Just getting to 43 has no bearing on the approach I was discussing before.
It's like if you set up a retirement account and want 6% growth every year. After year 1, maybe you beat that 6% but that's not mission accomplished. It's not even evidence that you're on the right track. You could have a bad plan that just happened to go up 6% that year but is unlikely to achieve the long-term incremental growth that you wanted.
I think incremental progress already implies a long-term outlook. But just to be clear, when I said incremental progress, I meant long-term incremental progress.

Great Bonn... take a hike then and come back to me in 5 years and you can comment then.

Is the roster younger? So you were only talking about incremental improvement that cant be quantified with wins (why bother, its sports after all) but by what? If the Knicks go from 17 to 32 to 43 wins how many more years do you need? Can you spell our YOUR version of incremental? Assuming it will involved the modestly paid 2-way super efficient players that cant be named you would opted for over Rose/Noah/Lee but indulge us

Love to know how a team with a 20 year old KP can "peek" next year. I guess he's only as good as his true shooting % last year?

No, you don't need to wait 5 years to have a discussion. At the end of next season, you can debate whether that year was likely to be the start of incremental growth or more likely to have been a peak. Nalod is right that KP is as good a prospect as any. I don't want a team that blows his prime years like Minn did with KG, though. We could have started grabbing young players who would have a decade to grow with KP, though. We could have set the team up for a great long-term future.
You asked how much more progress do you need than 17 to 32 to 43 wins? The answer is title contention. Isn't the goal to build a team that can compete for a title? What's the point in building a team that peaks at .500?

Bonn... what are you talking about? Again.. you are great at talking in grand sweeping rhetoric without offering any reality based examples. Who said anything about peeking at .500? Your plan called for incremental upgrades, but apparently that is only a mark of progress if it happens your way, which we know doesn't exist as you cant name the players you would pursue.

So at 20 years old your concern is we become KG/Minn? What relevance does that have? None. Is Lopez a starter on a title team?

Who are the players you wanted to grab that can have a decade to play with KP? Name em... please. Do tell. We added 5 guys who are 26 or under. What was your expectation? What is reasonable? Do you understand the value of fielding a good team?

Who are the guys that would have been a better fit? Go ahead... put your GM hat on and say something

BRIGGS wrote:

nixluva wrote:There is a TON of upside on this roster. IMO a lot of this is about Hornacek's ability to reach and influence his players. He was able to mesh his team and get them to play his brand of ball in his rookie year and if he does that here with this talent it will make a huge difference. His ability to play Dragic and Bledsoe together was brilliant work. We have to hope he can be just as successful here with these players.

Is there a team that Hornacek has coached that won a lot of playoff games or something? The last time I checked he has a negative record and no playoff wins,.

Check closer, especially his first year in PHO. 48 wins (25 the previous year) after a decent overhaul of roster. In the West, where 49 wins was the 8th seed. In the East this past year, 49 wins would have been 3rd seed. And that 48 win team had a LOT less talented than the Knicks do for the upcoming season.