technomaster wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOG0XVY4DjY

Trip down memory lane - the Nuggets actually drafted Donovan Mitchell and make a draft day trade for Trey Lyles and a later pick.

Crazy, especially after watching the Utah/Denver series.

Weirder still- the Knicks could have had both Donovan Mitchell (if they hadn’t drafted Frank) and Murray (if they hadn’t traded the pick for Melo) AND Denver could have had both Mitchell and Murray (as you outlined above). Those two players fates were intertwined- they were destined to face off!

ESOMKnicks wrote:RJ is our Mitchell. Gotta have the faith.

Why? I'm not sure RJ has come close to warranting that faith whereas Mitchell was box office from Day 1

joec32033 wrote:

KnickDanger wrote:

Allanfan20 wrote:but now I think I just don’t respect him at all. I actually used to like him a lot too. He lost his absolute mind when the Knicks drafted both Frank and Porzingis. I’m sorry. You’re in the media. You have to speak at least what you think is truthful. You are absolutely supposed to say you disagree with what the Knicks did in those drafts. That’s fine. I personally wanted the Knicks to draft Frank. However, SAS lost his damn mind over the air. He had zero problem bringing Frank and KP down, when they were both kids coming from Europe. That was wrong.

And then, last night, SAS shouts how he was screaming for the Knicks to draft Donovan Mitchel. How could anyone forget? SAS lost his mind over the Knicks not drafting Dennis Smith Jr and MAYBE to a lesser extent, Malik Monk. I don’t remember him one time mentioning DM, let alone screaming about him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t even know who he was at that point!

You, Stephen A Smith, just lied on the air to make yourself look good.

I agree. I promise you he was not clamoring for Mitchell -- no one was. Michael Kay has said the same thing. Mitchell's name was in the mix, but both originally were wetting their pants over DSJ, as were pretty much all the Frank haters, and when DSJ flamed out they revised it to Mitchell. I've always felt this was really about Phil and Dolan. Kay has always been a phony, but I agree, Stephen A turned along the way somehow. I think they figure they're getting a bigger share that way.

I listen to the Kay show religiously. He did the exact same thing (albeit without the racial overtones)with JVG when they hired Thibs saying they should have just talked to him. To me it got to the point where I tuned out any time he went over the top with it-which was alot over a two day stretch or so. Point is he kept pushing this agenda because he was friends with JVG even though JVG and Thibs have similar coaching strategies.

The media are at the point where no matter what the Knicks do it is the wrong thing to do even of it is something the media has called for (everyone loved getting Phil involved here bit Noone has ever said it was the right move that went wrong or admitting they were wrong when supporting it.

And while I single out Kay every show on ESPN NY has done it to the point it is noticeable.

Kay has also had his nose up the Nets butt the last few years (don't know where he's at with the Nash thing since I stopped listening). I wonder where he'd be if the Knicks made the same moves as the Nets over the last year (KD, Kyrie being maxed and injured, firing Atkinson, hiring Nash). And yes Knicks bashing is an ESPN thing. The trendy thing. When we start winning these frauds will be the first on the bandwagon.

KnickDanger wrote:

joec32033 wrote:

KnickDanger wrote:

Allanfan20 wrote:but now I think I just don’t respect him at all. I actually used to like him a lot too. He lost his absolute mind when the Knicks drafted both Frank and Porzingis. I’m sorry. You’re in the media. You have to speak at least what you think is truthful. You are absolutely supposed to say you disagree with what the Knicks did in those drafts. That’s fine. I personally wanted the Knicks to draft Frank. However, SAS lost his damn mind over the air. He had zero problem bringing Frank and KP down, when they were both kids coming from Europe. That was wrong.

And then, last night, SAS shouts how he was screaming for the Knicks to draft Donovan Mitchel. How could anyone forget? SAS lost his mind over the Knicks not drafting Dennis Smith Jr and MAYBE to a lesser extent, Malik Monk. I don’t remember him one time mentioning DM, let alone screaming about him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t even know who he was at that point!

You, Stephen A Smith, just lied on the air to make yourself look good.

I agree. I promise you he was not clamoring for Mitchell -- no one was. Michael Kay has said the same thing. Mitchell's name was in the mix, but both originally were wetting their pants over DSJ, as were pretty much all the Frank haters, and when DSJ flamed out they revised it to Mitchell. I've always felt this was really about Phil and Dolan. Kay has always been a phony, but I agree, Stephen A turned along the way somehow. I think they figure they're getting a bigger share that way.

I listen to the Kay show religiously. He did the exact same thing (albeit without the racial overtones)with JVG when they hired Thibs saying they should have just talked to him. To me it got to the point where I tuned out any time he went over the top with it-which was alot over a two day stretch or so. Point is he kept pushing this agenda because he was friends with JVG even though JVG and Thibs have similar coaching strategies.

The media are at the point where no matter what the Knicks do it is the wrong thing to do even of it is something the media has called for (everyone loved getting Phil involved here bit Noone has ever said it was the right move that went wrong or admitting they were wrong when supporting it.

And while I single out Kay every show on ESPN NY has done it to the point it is noticeable.

Kay has also had his nose up the Nets butt the last few years (don't know where he's at with the Nash thing since I stopped listening). I wonder where he'd be if the Knicks made the same moves as the Nets over the last year (KD, Kyrie being maxed and injured, firing Atkinson, hiring Nash). And yes Knicks bashing is an ESPN thing. The trendy thing. When we start winning these frauds will be the first on the bandwagon.

He has been on the Nets since they hired Sean Marks as the GM. Apparently thinks very highly of him.

newyorknewyork wrote: But there are more blatant issues to be addressing. NFL has 2 black GMs(down from 7 about 4 yrs ago) and 3 black head coaches. And 1 out of the 3(coaches) was hired by 1 of the 2(gms).

In the NFL, you won't get hired as a GM unless you really understand the salary cap and CBA. Lots of people don't. Lots of people try and can't do it. Someone with a deep mathematics background would have some slight advantages. In this regard, your arguments should be about the issue of how American schools treat math and why current black Americans with a deep math background don't pursue NFL jobs. Not so much the raw math but the quantitative analysis ability that comes with a high level math education. A lot of people interview poorly. Interviewing with a billionaire is a very difficult thing to do. It's much more confrontational than most people expect. ( you have a powerful person who is always squeezed for time and always has people asking them for money/things) Tony Dungy has pointed out often that blacks need more practice at high level interviews at all levels of their coaching career to prepare them for this. But he's often ignored because he's often seen as some kind of traitor. Dungy is right, but no one listens. A GM candidate in football needs a preexisting relationship with the major agents and major representation out there. They also need that with the college game.

It's a very hard job for anyone to get. Most people can't endure the dues paying process. And lower level front office guys get treated like cattle.

You have a sport with a high injury attrition rate, a short career span and a large roster base plus a salary system that implies massive roster turnover year to year. The amount of processing time you need for player evaluation is astronomical.

A lot of people who would be the best suited as a GM candidate have options elsewhere. Other careers with more money upfront, better career long term prospects and better quality of life doing something else.

The Fritz Pollard group was told to actively mine the halls of Cornell and MIT for the next great NFL front office minds. They did not. They were told to establish an interview system for black coaching candidates based on proven methodologies established in other industries. They did not. They were told to create a 1 on 1 mentorship program at all levels of football. They did not. Their big sweeping reform was to push for any team hiring a black coach to get better draft picks. Which is probably one of the dumbest ****ing ideas in the history of any professional sport. You could get an entry level NHL intern, who knows **** about football or the NFL CBA, to loophole a rule like that for manipulation. But apparently it's not media friendly to say it was not only a stupid suggestion, it would risk the collapse of the existing rookie slotting system, which would start an entirely new labor war on its own. An idea so ****ing stupid it would basically stop football from being played. Do you know how far down the rabbit hole of the land of Nitwits you have to be to come up with the only idea that could trigger a massive lockout in the most profitable professional sport in the country? It would probably help if Fritz Pollard Alliance had more progressive executives who had better ideas.

Sorry, I interrupted you. You were pushing a narrative. Let me let you continue.

newyorknewyork wrote:Only strong opinion I have when it comes to black gms and black coaching is that it should be honestly and thoroughly investigated. With my outside view, I don't believe the #s are what they are due to outright racism. But there may be a disadvantage for Black coaches in the interview process than White ones when 30 of the 32 teams are Old rich White men. They will lean towards the people they are more comfortable with and can relate to. But again is a issue that needs to be investigated to gain understanding into those dynamics and then create opportunities to bridge that gap.

And yes the offer of draft picks (as an African American myself)is one of the worst solutions I have ever heard.

But if the resolutions were to be voted in under the League Policy on Equal Employment and Workplace Diversity, they would work as follows:

If a team hires a minority head coach, that team, in the draft preceding the coach's second season, would move up six spots from where it is slotted to pick in the third round. A team would jump 10 spots under the same scenario for hiring a person of color as its primary football executive, a position more commonly known as general manager.
If a team were to fill both positions with diverse candidates in the same year, that club could jump 16 spots -- six for the coach, 10 for the GM -- and potentially move from the top of the third round to the middle of the second round. Another incentive: a team's fourth-round pick would climb five spots in the draft preceding the coach's or GM's third year if he is still with the team.

In addition to the coaching hires, only two of the 32 GM positions currently belong to someone of color, alarming statistics considering 70 percent of head coach hires during the past three years came from two positions: quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator.

The belief internally is the numbers can be reversed by removing some of the barriers that have hindered minority mobility, such as teams blocking assistants from interviewing for coordinator positions elsewhere. Many owners view coordinator experience as essential for first-time head coaches, but currently Eric Bieniemy in Kansas City and Byron Leftwich in Tampa Bay are the only minority coordinators on offense.

Under the proposed resolution, clubs would be prohibited from the end of the regular season to March 1 from denying an assistant coach the opportunity to interview with a new team for a "bona fide" coordinator position on offense, defense or special teams.

If a minority assistant left to become a coordinator elsewhere, his former club would receive a fifth-round compensatory pick. And if a person of color leaves to become a head coach or general manager, his previous team would receive a third-round compensatory pick.

One final provision: Any team that hires a person of color as its quarterbacks coach would receive a compensatory pick at the end of the fourth round if it retains that employee beyond one season. The provision is an attempt to get a more diverse pool of coaches working with quarterbacks, since the trend of late is to hire head coaches with offensive experience -- 24 of the past 33 hires have been from the offensive side of the ball -- and it's considered even more beneficial to have worked with quarterbacks.

The league office is also looking at further enhancing the Rooney Rule by doubling the number of minority candidates a team must interview for head-coaching vacancies. It also is expected to apply the rule to coordinator positions for the first time.

The Fritz Pollard Alliance was a brainchild of Johnnie Cochrane, who threatened to sue the NFL over the issue. At the time, the main argument was over Marvin Lewis, who had been a defacto head coach in Washington despite Spurrier being the technical head coach. It spurred a counterpoint that the FPA didn't want to talk about. No one could punish Dan Snyder for his own stupidity. Losing football games is the ultimate tax on stupidity from the ownership level.

The NFL Diversity committee has three of the most powerful owners in the entire league on it. They've said over and over, to the FPA, come to us with good ideas and we will give you the opportunity to lobby for changes. They had direct access. The best they could come up with was ****ing with the NFL draft. If the FPA had tried to embrace Tony Dungy, they'd be farther along.

The reality is there are not an infinite amount of interviews for any position. Every coach you interview to make sure you won't be fined or destroyed in the press with someone you have no interest in denies opportunity for someone else. A large problem no one can talk about with the Rooney Rule is it always assume there is a situation like Marvin Lewis all the time. There are simply going to be lulls where there won't be any black coaches who fit any teams needs. The Rooney Rule works as a tax on opportunity for all coaches for the sake of optics.

Changing the draft, for optics, changes the base meritocracy under which the game is revered by the public at large. You keep what you kill. Anyone can succeed based on merit no matter their background. It's not an incentive for team to hire a black coach, it's a TAX on every team who doesn't. It assume everyone is a racist at a baseline level and only a hard rule to change the competitive balance is going to stop it. It also implies that owners would care more about race than winning. That they would rather lose than hire a black person. Since owners only give a **** about money and there is a correlation between NFL profit and winning, that makes no sense at all. These ideas aren't just dumb, they are arrogant.

What no one wants to discuss is there are a lot of black coaches at the college level who want nothing to do with the pros. For the same reasons Coach K wouldn't want to leave for the NBA. What no one wants to discuss is there are a lot of retired black players who want nothing to do with the meat grinder of the coaching circuit and the front office carousel. What no one wants to discuss is that lots of former players who retired made enemies during their playing career ( owners, agents, coaches, media, brands, etc) and no one wants to help them as a future coach or a front office guy, both black guys and white guys. What no one wants to talk about is that there are places coaches and front office candidates don't want to work ( like the Browns for so long) because it's seen as a fast way to career death.

If there's a crime committed here, it's with the sheer number of bad ideas involved. If people want more black coaches and black executives, there needs to be better pathways than what amounts to bribery and extortion. Using that road will only create future enemies to this cause. A guy who gets bumped on the interview circuit for league optics is not going to forget that.

NardDogNation wrote:

newyorknewyork wrote:

NardDogNation wrote:

This dude is controlled opposition; a modern day Al Sharpton. I remember just a couple years ago this dude was one of the main critics of the Black community, helping to perpetuate Black males as an archetype for "toxic masculinity". I distinctly remember him dismissing the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown murders, in hopes of shifting the conversation toward that narrative. But now when it's fashionable to be pro-BLM, he's Mr.Black Panther?

What's especially frustrating is that he's talking about a nothing burger. There is a fairly well established precedent of Black head coaches with no prior coaching experience getting hired. Our franchise, his supposed favorite team, is responsible for two of them: Isiah Thomas and Derek Fisher. Then there is also Mark Jackson with the Golden State Warriors, Doc Rivers with the Magic, Byron Scott with the Nets and basically Nate McMillian with the Sonics off the top of my head. So what the **** is he talking about? Dude is the ultimate opportunist and as I said before, his opinions are for sale to the highest bidder and the highest bidder is not the Black community....

It's not a battle that he can win or won he should be trying to fight. NBA is one of the more progressive leagues in the world. Closer to any other league to having a female head coach as well. These are the type of takes that have people believing that "black people complain about everything". Granted those people don't tend to not really care for issues in the black community to begin with. But there are more blatant issues to be addressing. NFL has 2 black GMs(down from 7 about 4 yrs ago) and 3 black head coaches. And 1 out of the 3(coaches) was hired by 1 of the 2(gms).

SAS is the mouthpiece for his employers and what they need a colored face to say to help further their agenda. Malcolm X had quite alot to say about men like him and the role they play. You can't perpetuate the racist culture we live in without buy-in from a "Black establishment" that can sheepdog movements and hinder progress. That is why SAS has a platform and why I can't understand how anyone could have ever respected him on any level.

Keep in mind, the execs at ESPN censored him when he did not regurgitate the Me-Too talking points; Michele Beadle made sure of that. But when has SAS ever been reprimanded for "insensitive remarks" about Black males that can't help further his career? I distinctly remember this dude taking statistics out of context to perpetuate a narrative of Black men being deadbeat fathers, more criminally-prone/violent and the source for the real problems in the Black community, post-Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown. No suspension then?

Him spouting off about "white privilege" - now - is nothing more than a farce, especially in this context. The political climate has shifted so much that out-and-out sellouts like him have to do a better job endearing themselves to the community to be more effective. But make no mistake, he is just as corrosive then, as he is now. I just hope people are not foolish enough to allow themselves to become his useful idiot.

Not saying you're wrong to feel the way you do about Smith's politics. After many years of listening to him talk politics. Dont believe SAS is trying to please anyone. Ive disagreed with him myself on issues of race at times. Dont feel its anything but how he feels on a subject.

I remember when Smith spent a year or so away from ESPN, and focused exclusively, as a guest on cable news. Talking politics. Some of what he said probably didnt make corporate America happy.