ESOMKnicks wrote:

nixluva wrote:

ESOMKnicks wrote:

dk7th wrote:[look at it this way: outside of durant who among the free agents in 2016 is appealing? here's the list:

http://www.spotrac.com/nba/free-agents/2016/

Maybe this means that 2015 was the year to swing for the fences and land the marquee free agent that would have made us a contender, i.e. going all out to recruit LMA. And not accomplishing that can be deemed a failure. In which case, the management should have tried option 2 and positioned itself to land Durant next year. But we no longer have the cap space for Durant. Another failure?

NAH!!! This team's future success isn't hinging on getting Durant and wasn't reliant on signing LMA. It's true that those are great players but it's not the only way to win. The Knicks are simply taking another path and part of that path is drafting and growing our own stars. It seems to me that simply because it's been the norm for the Knicks to pin all their hopes on a Free Agent or Trade for a Big Name that isn't the only way to build a winner.

The Knicks don't have a ton of 1st rd picks but making the best use of the picks you have is more important. Making smart use of the cap space they had is another important part of the process. This is a slightly different approach since we kept Melo, used cap space not on stars but a lot of quality Free Agents and drafted a few really talented player who should all be contributors over the next few years.

Another important aspect that gets overlooked is the actual makeup of the roster. You can't have a lot of ball dominant players no matter how talented cuz it doesn't work. Phil has added players who are largely successful without the ball. In a Ball and Player movement system you need guys who are great without the ball. Guys that defend, rebound, move well without the ball, pass willingly, finish at the basket, set great picks, can catch and shoot and have good BB IQ. That's one of the most overlooked aspects of this team's rebuild. It's very similar to how the Hawks win. They have a lot of winning basketball players. Guys who know how to play team ball. That's what Phil is doing.

Recent history shows that you need two or three stars to win a championship. The exceptions - the 2004 Pistons and the 1994 Rockets - the best defensive big man in the league. So far, the Knicks have neither and are not going in either direction. Our chance to contend should be right now, while we have an elite player in Melo, but we need to pair him with a real star, that's the only way to win. And by the time KP becomes the next Sabonis or Grant becomes the next Billups, Melo will already be indecline, much like Ewing was when the top brass finally got him a legit second superstar in Spree. And we will wallow in perennial mediocrity at best. Not sure I like this plan.

And I don't like the Hawks comparison. They may have ruled the regular season, but in the playoffs they were lucky to barely squeeze by a yet immature Washington team whose best player was injured, and got quickly bounced by a Cleveland team basically consisting of LeBron + bums.

Good point, but the fact is you sign Aldridge to play center, not trade for grant, keep or trade hardaway for another player, and then trade KP and you still don't have the third player or a team to really contend. We would not have depth and no star at guard.

So basically we are not contending anytime and it may not be with Melo. Aldridge did not want to play center and did not see us contending him there. He is right.

ESOMKnicks wrote:

nixluva wrote:

ESOMKnicks wrote:

dk7th wrote:[look at it this way: outside of durant who among the free agents in 2016 is appealing? here's the list:

http://www.spotrac.com/nba/free-agents/2016/

Maybe this means that 2015 was the year to swing for the fences and land the marquee free agent that would have made us a contender, i.e. going all out to recruit LMA. And not accomplishing that can be deemed a failure. In which case, the management should have tried option 2 and positioned itself to land Durant next year. But we no longer have the cap space for Durant. Another failure?

NAH!!! This team's future success isn't hinging on getting Durant and wasn't reliant on signing LMA. It's true that those are great players but it's not the only way to win. The Knicks are simply taking another path and part of that path is drafting and growing our own stars. It seems to me that simply because it's been the norm for the Knicks to pin all their hopes on a Free Agent or Trade for a Big Name that isn't the only way to build a winner.

The Knicks don't have a ton of 1st rd picks but making the best use of the picks you have is more important. Making smart use of the cap space they had is another important part of the process. This is a slightly different approach since we kept Melo, used cap space not on stars but a lot of quality Free Agents and drafted a few really talented player who should all be contributors over the next few years.

Another important aspect that gets overlooked is the actual makeup of the roster. You can't have a lot of ball dominant players no matter how talented cuz it doesn't work. Phil has added players who are largely successful without the ball. In a Ball and Player movement system you need guys who are great without the ball. Guys that defend, rebound, move well without the ball, pass willingly, finish at the basket, set great picks, can catch and shoot and have good BB IQ. That's one of the most overlooked aspects of this team's rebuild. It's very similar to how the Hawks win. They have a lot of winning basketball players. Guys who know how to play team ball. That's what Phil is doing.

Recent history shows that you need two or three stars to win a championship. The exceptions - the 2004 Pistons and the 1994 Rockets - the best defensive big man in the league. So far, the Knicks have neither and are not going in either direction. Our chance to contend should be right now, while we have an elite player in Melo, but we need to pair him with a real star, that's the only way to win. And by the time KP becomes the next Sabonis or Grant becomes the next Billups, Melo will already be indecline, much like Ewing was when the top brass finally got him a legit second superstar in Spree. And we will wallow in perennial mediocrity at best. Not sure I like this plan.

And I don't like the Hawks comparison. They may have ruled the regular season, but in the playoffs they were lucky to barely squeeze by a yet immature Washington team whose best player was injured, and got quickly bounced by a Cleveland team basically consisting of LeBron + bums.

1st of all recent history is meaningless now because the only way your going to see 3 stars is to grow 2 of your own. 2nd we should be more competitive this year and make even more progress the following year as our young players develop. This is a team pointed towards the future now. 3rd Melo is gonna be just fine. Melo will probably end up playing for a long time yet. He's gonna be like Pierce. When you have a game based on skills as opposed to flying over people you can continue to play in this league for a long time. THE PLAN IS FINE!!! We have young talent to be developed in the D League, Europe and the NBA.

NAME	                POS	AGE	HT	WT
Kristaps Porzingis	PF	20	7-1	220
Willy Hernangomez       C       21      6-10    243
Jerian Grant	        PG	22	6-5	205
Wesley Saunders	        SG	22	6-5	215
Thanasis Antetokounmpo	SF	23	6-7	215
Darion Atkins	        SF	23	6-8	241 
Langston Galloway	PG	23	6-2	200
Cleanthony Early	SF	24	6-8	220
Derrick Williams	PF	24	6-8	240
Kyle O'Quinn	        PF	25	6-10	250
Kevin Seraphin	        PF	25	6-10	278

In addition to the young guys we have some vets who can help this team win now as well.

knicks1248 wrote:

ChuckBuck wrote:All this talk about "star" systems make me want to puke. Phuck free agency already! That ships sailed.

Build from within is the best way. Golden State home grown all their stars. Same with the Spurs.

Forget Melo's prime for once. We're not winning a chip the duration of his contract.

But we can build towards it.

dude that home grown developing talent sht is so 90's it's not even funny. You can count on one hand the amount of teams that won a chip in the last 50 yrs with talent they develop.

In the last 20 yrs, after the spurs and GS you have no answers, and guest what? THE MVP of the finals was AI, not home grown talent.

Ewing, starks, ward, hubert davis, all home grown talent, just a stubborn coach who left a ice cold starks in, a broken down EWING in his 14th yr.

Winning a ring takes smart trade's and solid drafting, (why you think phil drafted experience players over talened ones) Early, Grant, KP, 4 yr players.

Your job is toast after 3 yrs if you're not a contender

knicks1248 wrote:

nixluva wrote:

knicks1248 wrote:

ChuckBuck wrote:All this talk about "star" systems make me want to puke. Phuck free agency already! That ships sailed.

Build from within is the best way. Golden State home grown all their stars. Same with the Spurs.

Forget Melo's prime for once. We're not winning a chip the duration of his contract.

But we can build towards it.

dude that home grown developing talent sht is so 90's it's not even funny. You can count on one hand the amount of teams that won a chip in the last 50 yrs with talent they develop.

In the last 20 yrs, after the spurs and GS you have no answers, and guest what? THE MVP of the finals was AI, not home grown talent.

Ewing, starks, ward, hubert davis, all home grown talent, just a stubborn coach who left a ice cold starks in, a broken down EWING in his 14th yr.

Winning a ring takes smart trade's and solid drafting, (why you think phil drafted experience players over talened ones) Early, Grant, KP, 4 yr players.

Your job is toast after 3 yrs if you're not a contender

You're really going going off the rails at this point. How about we just get to being a "winning" team before we worry about how we can win a title??? It's a process that we are just getting rolling. This isn't gong to be a KG, Allen and Pierce or Lebron, Wade or Bosh type situation. No instant title team is possible. So there is no choice but to build it in a more natural way. Plus its silly to point to AI as your proof that GS didn't do it organically. NO TEAM ever wins with ZERO Free Agents or traded for players. I mean come on man! You really are just scrapping the bottom now for arguments against what the Knicks are doing.

No Nix, im not scrapping the bottom, I'm speaking reality. You know I hope this team does well, and i hope to god fish and phil succeed, but i know for certain that if we are not contending by the 2016/17 (top 5 n the conference) season your going to revamp your roster and make a coaching staff change.

when you finish in the top 5, you keep it going and tweak what you've been doing, make a trade, late round draft pick, maybe you find a gem, easy to find a big name FA who will take less to play for a contender.

when you lose in the first round with talent, you usually chalk it up to the coach if he has a healthy team(mark jackson) his next season we'll surely be his last if he doesn't advance.

In order to keep our draft picks for the long haul, we have to win now, we have to win more than we lose... 30 to 35 wins will force you to trade them for the melo's and the harden's, the veteran piece your missing.

Phil better know that melo needs a shaq, or pippen, he better know that he needs the right VOCAL leader in the locker room like a fisher (in his play days)

I think what Isiah did with the liberty was pretty good, and I hope (the in experience prez that phil is) can look at him as a learning experience, and add that to his wealth of knowledge

This revamped roster is pretty solid and competitive in terms of talent and ability. I see no reason to think we'll be seeing any massive failure or doing poorly enough to have more major change. You have to admit there's some potential in this roster! It's going to take some time to find out what we have over the next couple of seasons.

I'm not that worried about this team showing enough progress to stave off the issues you've identified above. I think there's a higher chance of this team making the needed progress than not.

knicks1248 wrote:

nixluva wrote:

knicks1248 wrote:

nixluva wrote:

knicks1248 wrote:

ChuckBuck wrote:All this talk about "star" systems make me want to puke. Phuck free agency already! That ships sailed.

Build from within is the best way. Golden State home grown all their stars. Same with the Spurs.

Forget Melo's prime for once. We're not winning a chip the duration of his contract.

But we can build towards it.

dude that home grown developing talent sht is so 90's it's not even funny. You can count on one hand the amount of teams that won a chip in the last 50 yrs with talent they develop.

In the last 20 yrs, after the spurs and GS you have no answers, and guest what? THE MVP of the finals was AI, not home grown talent.

Ewing, starks, ward, hubert davis, all home grown talent, just a stubborn coach who left a ice cold starks in, a broken down EWING in his 14th yr.

Winning a ring takes smart trade's and solid drafting, (why you think phil drafted experience players over talened ones) Early, Grant, KP, 4 yr players.

Your job is toast after 3 yrs if you're not a contender

You're really going going off the rails at this point. How about we just get to being a "winning" team before we worry about how we can win a title??? It's a process that we are just getting rolling. This isn't gong to be a KG, Allen and Pierce or Lebron, Wade or Bosh type situation. No instant title team is possible. So there is no choice but to build it in a more natural way. Plus its silly to point to AI as your proof that GS didn't do it organically. NO TEAM ever wins with ZERO Free Agents or traded for players. I mean come on man! You really are just scrapping the bottom now for arguments against what the Knicks are doing.

No Nix, im not scrapping the bottom, I'm speaking reality. You know I hope this team does well, and i hope to god fish and phil succeed, but i know for certain that if we are not contending by the 2016/17 (top 5 n the conference) season your going to revamp your roster and make a coaching staff change.

when you finish in the top 5, you keep it going and tweak what you've been doing, make a trade, late round draft pick, maybe you find a gem, easy to find a big name FA who will take less to play for a contender.

when you lose in the first round with talent, you usually chalk it up to the coach if he has a healthy team(mark jackson) his next season we'll surely be his last if he doesn't advance.

In order to keep our draft picks for the long haul, we have to win now, we have to win more than we lose... 30 to 35 wins will force you to trade them for the melo's and the harden's, the veteran piece your missing.

Phil better know that melo needs a shaq, or pippen, he better know that he needs the right VOCAL leader in the locker room like a fisher (in his play days)

I think what Isiah did with the liberty was pretty good, and I hope (the in experience prez that phil is) can look at him as a learning experience, and add that to his wealth of knowledge

This revamped roster is pretty solid and competitive in terms of talent and ability. I see no reason to think we'll be seeing any massive failure or doing poorly enough to have more major change. You have to admit there's some potential in this roster! It's going to take some time to find out what we have over the next couple of seasons.

I'm not that worried about this team showing enough progress to stave off the issues you've identified above. I think there's a higher chance of this team making the needed progress than not.

The only way this roster should struggle is because of injuries, it shouldn't take long to gel if you got the right players and coach.

I agree that if reasonably healthy this team should be competitive. Phil has added more effort players and high IQ players. Guys that are more team oriented. This is hopefully a roster that can play team ball more successfully this time.

Because we have so many young players that are in the development stage that's the only part of this process that will require some patience. No different than any other team with draft picks in development. The only difference is we have Melo, RoLo, Afflalo etc. Vets who can carry the load as our young guys develop.

DJMUSIC wrote:Now FIRE Derek Fisher !
Phil is gonna shove fish down knick fans throats.

Still don't buy fisher wants to be here, 25$mil.,
Helps as sole reason.. cause he sure can't coach

The goal Phil and Fish have is to build a team that can eventually compete for a title and being able to play Team Ball is key to that goal. So it may have been ugly last year but there was a purpose for not completely making things easier for players by completely going away from the Triangle.

Fish is not a terrible coach. After the trade you could see how hard the team played, even in losses. The team actually played much more competitively while Melo was still healthy during a 10 game stretch before he shut it down. The team actually went 5-5 after the trade when Melo came back on Jan 15th. It's a small indication of how much better the team could play when Melo is relatively healthy after the trade. IMO this year could be much better with the improved roster.

ESOMKnicks wrote:

Nalod wrote:

ESOMKnicks wrote:
Recent history shows that you need two or three stars to win a championship. The exceptions - the 2004 Pistons and the 1994 Rockets - the best defensive big man in the league. So far, the Knicks have neither and are not going in either direction. Our chance to contend should be right now, while we have an elite player in Melo, but we need to pair him with a real star, that's the only way to win. And by the time KP becomes the next Sabonis or Grant becomes the next Billups, Melo will already be indecline, much like Ewing was when the top brass finally got him a legit second superstar in Spree. And we will wallow in perennial mediocrity at best. Not sure I like this plan.

And I don't like the Hawks comparison. They may have ruled the regular season, but in the playoffs they were lucky to barely squeeze by a yet immature Washington team whose best player was injured, and got quickly bounced by a Cleveland team basically consisting of LeBron + bums.

Good point, but the fact is you sign Aldridge to play center, not trade for grant, keep or trade hardaway for another player, and then trade KP and you still don't have the third player or a team to really contend. We would not have depth and no star at guard.

So basically we are not contending anytime and it may not be with Melo. Aldridge did not want to play center and did not see us contending him there. He is right.

All I am saying is that once it was obvious that the Knicks season had gone into the toilet, my preferred course of action would have been:

1) Tank the season to get a top 3 draft pick. Even the Spurs, who are constantly held up as an example of supreme class, sportsmanship and competitiveness, did not consider it below their dignity to blatantly tank a season to get Duncan to go along with Robinson. For the fans of "growing our own stars" there is no way in hell we should have been winning that game against the Hawks in April. And before you jump in to bash Hardaway, remember that it is ultimately the job of the coach and the GM to strategize an entire game, an entire season. I think the Phil-Phish duo miscalculated big time on this one, unless someone proves me that KP is still vastly superior to Towns, Okafor or Russell.

2) Sign LMA to play power forward. Fill the center position through the draft or by getting a defensive big to rebound and protect the lane. Even if we were to get he #2 or #3 pick and end up with Russell, we still could have traded Hardaway for a later round big man (someone on this forum brought up Portis as an alternative to Grant in that scenario). You do not need scoring from the center position when you have Melo and LMA on the same team.

3) Then with two legit superstars and a high proven draft pick, filling out the rest of the team with role players and competing for the championship would have been more than real.

It's all a shoulda woulda coulda talk right now, of course, and I am hoping that Phil's genius transcends my amateur theorizing, but that's what I would have been happy with as a strategic rebuild plan.

This was Zeke approved plan of... starpunching continuation...
Phil went in opposite direction.
We know how this kind of plans worked for 15 years... lets see how opposite will work in NY.

CrushAlot wrote:

ESOMKnicks wrote:

Nalod wrote:

ESOMKnicks wrote:
Recent history shows that you need two or three stars to win a championship. The exceptions - the 2004 Pistons and the 1994 Rockets - the best defensive big man in the league. So far, the Knicks have neither and are not going in either direction. Our chance to contend should be right now, while we have an elite player in Melo, but we need to pair him with a real star, that's the only way to win. And by the time KP becomes the next Sabonis or Grant becomes the next Billups, Melo will already be indecline, much like Ewing was when the top brass finally got him a legit second superstar in Spree. And we will wallow in perennial mediocrity at best. Not sure I like this plan.

And I don't like the Hawks comparison. They may have ruled the regular season, but in the playoffs they were lucky to barely squeeze by a yet immature Washington team whose best player was injured, and got quickly bounced by a Cleveland team basically consisting of LeBron + bums.

Good point, but the fact is you sign Aldridge to play center, not trade for grant, keep or trade hardaway for another player, and then trade KP and you still don't have the third player or a team to really contend. We would not have depth and no star at guard.

So basically we are not contending anytime and it may not be with Melo. Aldridge did not want to play center and did not see us contending him there. He is right.

All I am saying is that once it was obvious that the Knicks season had gone into the toilet, my preferred course of action would have been:

1) Tank the season to get a top 3 draft pick. Even the Spurs, who are constantly held up as an example of supreme class, sportsmanship and competitiveness, did not consider it below their dignity to blatantly tank a season to get Duncan to go along with Robinson. For the fans of "growing our own stars" there is no way in hell we should have been winning that game against the Hawks in April. And before you jump in to bash Hardaway, remember that it is ultimately the job of the coach and the GM to strategize an entire game, an entire season. I think the Phil-Phish duo miscalculated big time on this one, unless someone proves me that KP is still vastly superior to Towns, Okafor or Russell.

2) Sign LMA to play power forward. Fill the center position through the draft or by getting a defensive big to rebound and protect the lane. Even if we were to get he #2 or #3 pick and end up with Russell, we still could have traded Hardaway for a later round big man (someone on this forum brought up Portis as an alternative to Grant in that scenario). You do not need scoring from the center position when you have Melo and LMA on the same team.

3) Then with two legit superstars and a high proven draft pick, filling out the rest of the team with role players and competing for the championship would have been more than real.

It's all a shoulda woulda coulda talk right now, of course, and I am hoping that Phil's genius transcends my amateur theorizing, but that's what I would have been happy with as a strategic rebuild plan.

They did #1. We don't know if they could have done 2 but it sounds like they had a small chance of getting Aldridge. I do think getting Grant for Hardaway and getting Hernangomez were great moves in the draft. With the benefit of hindsight it seems like PJax really wanted Jordan and then targeted Lopez.

This is right on target. We had the money so if Phil didn't meet with LMA it's clear he didn't really want him. He waited on DeAndre and actually offered a contract to RoLo, which he didn't to Monroe. That tells us exactly what Phil's priorities were.

As for the draft I can only assume Phil really wanted a big. So any one of Towns, Okafor or KP were his top choices. Phil says he was very high on KP so we got what we wanted in the end.

The move of THJ for Jerian was excellent. Willy makes all kinds of sense. In terms of the draft you can see the wisdom of the particular players Phil picked. I can't believe the level of doubt by some when we haven't drafted players of this level of potential in one draft before!!! When you combine that with the players signed in Free Agency, all the additions add up to a solid off season revamp of the roster.

Phil did pretty much exactly what he said he would do. Going after LMA may have been the exciting and sexy move but it wasn't part of his plan, which was to build a TEAM as opposed to just adding talent. There isn't just one way to build a team. We had a LOT of holes to fill. IMO adding LMA wouldn't be the same as adding Lebron and Bosh or KG and Allen. This was never going to be that kind of Free Agency. This was never going to be an Instant Title team in one summer.

ESOMKnicks wrote:It all makes sense if Phil had always viewed KP as a future franchise player for the Knicks, a la Ewing, with whom we'd become contenders once he matures in 3 years. I have my doubts, but hope i'm wrong.

Returning to the original topic of this thread, to me drafting KP is Phil's version of Isiah's bet on Eddy Curry.

I do think LMA would have been a game changer, his scoring average and rebounding alone merit that view.

The only way to attract real talent is to show you can win with what you have already, and the Knicks once again will be hard pressed to show such. Also you have to keep your expenses in order to be able to be major players. paying Lopez a guaranteed 4 years was silly.