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BlueKnickers wrote:

martin wrote:Lowkey the Shamet vet min signing across 2 seasons has been a homerun

They started to get back on track when he came back

No minutes for Clarkson tonight. That's a good thing. Shamet is an upgrade

Yeah let me upgrade that to a vet min grand slam home run

martin wrote:

NardDogNation wrote:

martin wrote:

BlueKnickers wrote:

ToddTT wrote:Mitch with a great second half.

Now with chucklehead Karl fouling out, Mitch is gonna need two weeks off.

That's the conundrum with Mitch

My ideal scenario is we trade KAT for a defensive starting C and keep Mitch as our secret weapon

A healthy Mitch that can play two quarters per game in the playoffs could be the X factor that wins you a championship.

Unfortunately, you cannot build a team with Mitch as your sole starting option at Center due to injury potential.

Giannis

I know you're joking but I don't think Giannis makes sense for us (not to mention we'd end up gutting our team). Of course, he's better than KAT defensively by leaps and bounds but the ball sticks with him to the detriment of others. And Giannis has his fair share of bone-headed players barreling into defenders; kinda like KAT. I view him as a suped up version of the Julius experience (though I actually liked and preferred Julius for us).

Considering Giannis' track record with Dame (albeit an aging Dame), I'd be very cautious about pairing him with Brunson. I know it's not rationale but if I had to choose between the two, I pick Brunson every single time. I hope he retires a Knick. I love that dude so much that I think I'm naming my first-born Jalen, lol.

Nah, that’s the super pessimistic version. Giannis would need to play C long term and it would create mismatches for defenses. And it would add needed ball handling and a down hill guy. And shore up the D and make it super complicated for teams defending them.

It’ll come down to what Knicks would give up.

For the record, I prefer Giannis to KAT for the reasons you mentioned. I'd be amendable to getting him in spite of whatever fit concerns I have. But the cost it would take is one I wouldn't be comfortable paying. I am a hard-core fan of Brunson's...and by extension the 'Nova Knicks (evidenced by the constant trade proposals I have of bringing back DDV while adding alumni like Bey and Collin Gillepsie....**** even Ryan Arcdiacano). I don't want to give up any of those guys or other rotation players like OG Anunoby, Deuce or Mitch Robinson that embody the Nova spirit.

I can't see any world where we can do a KAT for Giannis swap straight-up, or a 3 way deal that could net us the assets to re-route for a Giannis. For that reason, I much rather stand pat and try to turn KAT into serviceable rotation players. I think we'd be better served both in the regular and postseasons.

BlueKnickers wrote:

NardDogNation wrote:

martin wrote:

BlueKnickers wrote:

ToddTT wrote:Mitch with a great second half.

Now with chucklehead Karl fouling out, Mitch is gonna need two weeks off.

That's the conundrum with Mitch

My ideal scenario is we trade KAT for a defensive starting C and keep Mitch as our secret weapon

A healthy Mitch that can play two quarters per game in the playoffs could be the X factor that wins you a championship.

Unfortunately, you cannot build a team with Mitch as your sole starting option at Center due to injury potential.

Giannis

I know you're joking but I don't think Giannis makes sense for us (not to mention we'd end up gutting our team). Of course, he's better than KAT defensively by leaps and bounds but the ball sticks with him to the detriment of others. And Giannis has his fair share of bone-headed players barreling into defenders; kinda like KAT. I view him as a suped up version of the Julius experience (though I actually liked and preferred Julius for us).

Considering Giannis' track record with Dame (albeit an aging Dame), I'd be very cautious about pairing him with Brunson. I know it's not rationale but if I had to choose between the two, I pick Brunson every single time. I hope he retires a Knick. I love that dude so much that I think I'm naming my first-born Jalen, lol.

Giannis aside, I'd like to affirm your statement about Brunson. He's a gem and should be appreciated and built around.

The risk is assuming because Brunson is a defensive weak link that makes him culpable for some of the issues we're going through. I'd say he is exactly the kind of player you construct around and you compensate for his defense in order to maximize his impact on offense.

I think of Brunson as a net positive player under most circumstances.

Conversely, I think of KAT as a neutral to net negative player under most circumstances. That excludes his better games, including ones like a playoff game he won for us singlehandedly in last year's playoffs. But those are largely outliers.

Brunson's game can adapt enough to include everyone on offense and to mesh together an effective team defense when he's on the floor.

I cannot say the same for KAT, primarily due to KAT himself and secondly due to his position.

KAT has a below average basketball IQ. He is almost entirely a creature of instinct and many of those instincts rear their ugly head at the wrong times.

Brunson's game was built out of a laborious cerebral process. He has a basketball brain that he can tap into even if sometimes he needs to rein in his ISO tendencies. You don't build a game like Brunson's without years of breaking down every single step and motion like a kung-fu artist deconstructing a form's parts and then putting them back together again.

Brunson is the Knicks AFAIK. I'd ride or die with Brunson.

I do not feel anything like that for KAT.

I know alot has been said about Brunson's defense, which has been substantiated by advanced metrics. Personally, I think it's grossly overstated but I do obviously have my biases.

As much as Brunson is little, he moves his feet well laterally and is built like a fire-hydrant, making it difficult to ever post him up. Let's not also forget how he'd frequently put his body on the line to draw charges (though he's been doing less of that). That propensity to draw charges makes swings be a little more tentative driving to the rim, and helped us be a league leader at rim protection when we had iHart and Mitch in drop. Fred VanVleet has a similar profile to Brunson and no one has ever criticized him being a "weak link" defensively. Why should we automatically do that with JB?

I also agree with your analysis of KAT and Brunson, respectively. KAT simply doesn't have the mental tools or spirit to fit who we are. His appeal is purely hypothetical/theoretical because it has not come to fruition the entire time he's been with us. He might be an analytics darling but his contributions are purely stats related. You can easily tell what type of game he's had by reading a basic box score, which is not the type of player that wins championships. He does have his utility...just not with us.

We need to double-down on building around Brunson; the Nova-Knicks way.

martin wrote:Lowkey the Shamet vet min signing across 2 seasons has been a homerun

He has and I cringe every time he tries to go over screens - especially with Embid trying to send him to shoulder specialist.

KEEPCAMBYNY wrote:

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This is the best and most fluent movement I’ve seen from Mitch in years. He’s starting to look like the Mitch from 4 years ago. It feels like he and JB have much more synergy right now than KAT and JB this season.

Not only that but he also played a season high 27 minutes

https://open.substack.com/pub/kamakrami/p/knicks-overcome-challenges-in-philadelphia?r=qj46k&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=overlay

It's sort of like a PHX move when they traded KD. Trade him for spare parts that reinforce depth at key positions and give us more defense. We will be lacking firepower at that point and likely be a pretender in the playoffs. But maybe still good enough to win the East.

The hard part is that we have minimal assets to trade, so when you take a "step back" by moving on from Towns, you are not really in a position to trade your way back up at that point. You would need to take a swing at someone whose value is way down (Trae Young or KAT kind of guy who's getting dumped).

Knicks are not in a great spot right now, with a 50M problem, right on the edge of the apron, and other key players who need to get paid soon.