Philc1 wrote:

Nalod wrote:

Philc1 wrote:

EwingsGlass wrote:

jrodmc wrote:

Uptown wrote:

jrodmc wrote:

ramtour420 wrote:

Uptown wrote:Nice breakdown of Obi's impact on the team....

I honestly feel that Obi's ceiling is higher than Randle's. With RJ taking on the lead role we don't need another ISo player in Randle. And with Thibs sticking with Randle no matter what the numbers say we need our management to get rid of Randle in order to let Obi develop

If Obi's ceiling is that high, why would he have a problem developing around Randle or anyone else? They are two completely different players.
Obi love and Randle hate are apparently the two sides of the same incoherent coin.

Maybe we should get rid of Thibs too? And our management? And any other PF/C on the team? I heard Sims is stealing time from Obi, better get rid of him for developmental Obi purposes.

Holy ****.

I started this thread to point out how well Obi has been playing with extended minutes. Nothing more. Not one time did I mention Randles name...You are the one pitting these two players against each other. You called Obi, Kenny Walker, in another thread in an attempt to defend Randle....

Ummm, read up, oh thread starter. I'm responding to ramtour's 4 mentions of Randle in two sentences, not your non-mention of Randle in the original post...

And calling Obi Kenny Walker is not a stretch, unless you think Obi's robotic, stand still jumper is the new NBA standard... they both leap out of the gym, they both flailed away excitedly on defense, they both exhibit limited BB IQ, etc, etc. I'm just pointing out that in my opinion, Obi's not exactly showing up as the next coming of Amare, as some have conjectured.

I don't think you can underestimate that value of having Steve Nash as point guard for a guy like Amare Stoudemire in an open offense like SSOL under Mike D'antoni. We know what Amare looks like in a closed offense in NY under Woodson. But you can't judge Toppin by the lack of minutes he is playing. What I have seen since March has made me think Toppin has tremendous upside and deserves a chance to play somewhere. He shouldn't be stuck behind Randle indefinitely. Toppin needs to keep getting consistent minutes. I think he performs.

Agree, just wonder how we are getting rid of Randle’s whale of a contract

Y’know we coulda traded him last summer for a bunch of draft picks. A couple posters were saying that and got called clowns

We extended him after an All NBA season. Who said that? The clowns are the ones making **** up.
No doubt not everyone was on board with Randle but respect the timeline. He took less than max which was not awful. Not saying he had a great season. If he don’t hit his incentives, his deal is not as you like to inflate it.

Defending bad moves after they are obviously bad moves is your specialty

Not cognizant of facts is yours.
Look up the meaning of "Incentives".

ramtour420 wrote:Why good Sir, you cannot have two starting power forwards that cannot play other positions on the same team, that's just bad team balance. As time has shown Thibs goes with the veterans even if there are better alternatives right there in front of him. But don't let my opinion get in your way of thinking, that's simply what I think and I am no head coach, as incoherent as it may seem.
Thibs needs the front office to put him in position to succeed, if we failed as playoff contenders we need to try our luck as a rebuilding team. So let's not get ahead of ourselves and talk about management and all that. They need time too to work through this.

I think it runs a little deeper than that.

If you spend a lottery pick on a young player like Toppin, you either trade him or you have to give him some extended burn to see what he can or cannot give you. ( In that same way, I agree about Reddish in which some people here have said if you trade a first round pick for a player, you need to give him minutes to see what he can do and if he can help this team, I agree with that)

I can see why Toppin is not playing more minutes ( His defense in general is still very bad. Now he has improved from his first few games in the league and from his college showing, but that's still relative to that he was a pure net negative on defense to start. He can't defend the rim and he doesn't have the fundamentals and situational awareness to actually develop into an effective rim protector. Something I saw before he was drafted was that Toppin doesn't understand how to use space. Which is pretty much a death sentence for a lottery pick outside of some pretty unique circumstances) But I agree with you that there cannot be this grudge match between Leon Rose and Thibs over this.

Rose has to give Thibs players with the basic skill set and ability to play the kind of ball that Thibs clearly wants to play and conducive to actually winning real basketball games. I'm not saying Rose has to give Thibs every last player on Thibs' wishlist. But if you have a defense first type coach, you can't give him a young player, a lottery pick, who carries no defensive value at all, including no real defensive role. We are talking "basic skill set" here.

And you can't have a team carrying a young lottery pick that just isn't getting enough minutes to show you what he can or can't do for you long term. What that means is can Toppin give you enough offensively to offset his defensive shortcomings. Do I think that's possible? No, not in a functional offense that consistently wins basketball games. If you give Toppin 25+ shots a game, sure he'll put up some counting stats, but any player will start to generate counting stats if you are making them the primary offensive option. I'm not talking end of the season type competition, I'm talking night in and night out during the meat of the season kind of regular grind.

The answer is NOT picking one or the other, it's trading both off the roster

1) Randle is a toxic ball stopper who decides when he wants to give a **** and has a childish attitude. That's horrible and destructive to have young players and new draftees be around that stupid kind of bull****. If you aren't all in, then you are all out. If you refuse to play the right way, get the **** off of this team.

2) Even if you had a different coach than Thibs, Toppin is the kind of flawed player that won't help you regularly win basketball games. He seems like a good kid, with a good heart and is a hard worker, but his tradeoffs are too severe for the modern Space And Pace style game.

If you absolutely had no choice but to be stuck with one of them, then it's better to keep Toppin. He's cheaper by contract and at least he's willing to play hard all the time and keep the ball moving. He's at least trying to effect some kind of basic fundamental basketball. While Toppin is in the "I'll score 15 for you but give up 40 on the other end" spectrum, at least he's not demoralizing his teammates like Randle does with the sulking, stupid turnovers, yelling at the refs, refusing to run back on defense, bad shot selection type of bull****.

I didn't want the Knicks to draft Toppin. That being said, if he's here, he needs to stop being a pawn in a war of control between Thibs and Rose. Either give him some extended burn, knowing that it will cost your bottom line against winning, or trade him.

TripleThreat wrote:

ramtour420 wrote:Why good Sir, you cannot have two starting power forwards that cannot play other positions on the same team, that's just bad team balance. As time has shown Thibs goes with the veterans even if there are better alternatives right there in front of him. But don't let my opinion get in your way of thinking, that's simply what I think and I am no head coach, as incoherent as it may seem.
Thibs needs the front office to put him in position to succeed, if we failed as playoff contenders we need to try our luck as a rebuilding team. So let's not get ahead of ourselves and talk about management and all that. They need time too to work through this.

I think it runs a little deeper than that.

If you spend a lottery pick on a young player like Toppin, you either trade him or you have to give him some extended burn to see what he can or cannot give you. ( In that same way, I agree about Reddish in which some people here have said if you trade a first round pick for a player, you need to give him minutes to see what he can do and if he can help this team, I agree with that)

I can see why Toppin is not playing more minutes ( His defense in general is still very bad. Now he has improved from his first few games in the league and from his college showing, but that's still relative to that he was a pure net negative on defense to start. He can't defend the rim and he doesn't have the fundamentals and situational awareness to actually develop into an effective rim protector. Something I saw before he was drafted was that Toppin doesn't understand how to use space. Which is pretty much a death sentence for a lottery pick outside of some pretty unique circumstances) But I agree with you that there cannot be this grudge match between Leon Rose and Thibs over this.

Rose has to give Thibs players with the basic skill set and ability to play the kind of ball that Thibs clearly wants to play and conducive to actually winning real basketball games. I'm not saying Rose has to give Thibs every last player on Thibs' wishlist. But if you have a defense first type coach, you can't give him a young player, a lottery pick, who carries no defensive value at all, including no real defensive role. We are talking "basic skill set" here.

And you can't have a team carrying a young lottery pick that just isn't getting enough minutes to show you what he can or can't do for you long term. What that means is can Toppin give you enough offensively to offset his defensive shortcomings. Do I think that's possible? No, not in a functional offense that consistently wins basketball games. If you give Toppin 25+ shots a game, sure he'll put up some counting stats, but any player will start to generate counting stats if you are making them the primary offensive option. I'm not talking end of the season type competition, I'm talking night in and night out during the meat of the season kind of regular grind.

The answer is NOT picking one or the other, it's trading both off the roster

1) Randle is a toxic ball stopper who decides when he wants to give a **** and has a childish attitude. That's horrible and destructive to have young players and new draftees be around that stupid kind of bull****. If you aren't all in, then you are all out. If you refuse to play the right way, get the **** off of this team.

2) Even if you had a different coach than Thibs, Toppin is the kind of flawed player that won't help you regularly win basketball games. He seems like a good kid, with a good heart and is a hard worker, but his tradeoffs are too severe for the modern Space And Pace style game.

If you absolutely had no choice but to be stuck with one of them, then it's better to keep Toppin. He's cheaper by contract and at least he's willing to play hard all the time and keep the ball moving. He's at least trying to effect some kind of basic fundamental basketball. While Toppin is in the "I'll score 15 for you but give up 40 on the other end" spectrum, at least he's not demoralizing his teammates like Randle does with the sulking, stupid turnovers, yelling at the refs, refusing to run back on defense, bad shot selection type of bull****.

I didn't want the Knicks to draft Toppin. That being said, if he's here, he needs to stop being a pawn in a war of control between Thibs and Rose. Either give him some extended burn, knowing that it will cost your bottom line against winning, or trade him.

You’re not getting Toppin full time minutes until Randle is off the roster

gradyandrew wrote:Randle was really good last season. Are Thibs and I the only ones who think that guy can still get back there mentally?

No. We just disagree on where “there” is. I think he can get to a good mental place to be a productive all star caliber player. I just think that his shooting percentages last year were a bit of an abnormality and/or teams are defending him better than they did last year. So, his game has an obvious adaptation from the guy who iso-ball dribbles into a turn around jumpshot to a guy that facilitates the offense without needing to shoot bad shots to feel validated. It starts with finding that 40% 3 point shot again. And synergy with guys other with Fournier.

gradyandrew wrote:Randle was really good last season. Are Thibs and I the only ones who think that guy can still get back there mentally?

Yes... and even if he were able to get there mentally - the problem still exists with his ball dominant style and iso-focus. Also the slow pace when the rest of the team plays uptempo.

jskinny35 wrote:

gradyandrew wrote:Randle was really good last season. Are Thibs and I the only ones who think that guy can still get back there mentally?

Yes... and even if he were able to get there mentally - the problem still exists with his ball dominant style and iso-focus. Also the slow pace when the rest of the team plays uptempo.

The ISO issues this year were exacerbated by there not being a competent pg on the roster. Randle was forced to take even tougher and tougher shots plus he never got easier baskets to try to build momentum

Philc1 wrote:

jskinny35 wrote:

gradyandrew wrote:Randle was really good last season. Are Thibs and I the only ones who think that guy can still get back there mentally?

Yes... and even if he were able to get there mentally - the problem still exists with his ball dominant style and iso-focus. Also the slow pace when the rest of the team plays uptempo.

The ISO issues this year were exacerbated by there not being a competent pg on the roster. Randle was forced to take even tougher and tougher shots plus he never got easier baskets to try to build momentum

Agree to a point. As for Randle's "tougher" shots I feel he continually makes his offensive moves more difficult than what the defense offers him. So many times he is left with space at the top of the key and he dribbles endlessly (trying to make some type of counter move/spin that isn't necessary) instead of taking what the defense gives him. So yes they were exacerbated but he has consistently shown a style (eg Elfrid prior season, Kemba this season briefly) that necessitates us to land a Chris Paul type of PG for Randle to give up the ball more. RJ also dominates the ball too much... but at least he makes quicker decisions and does look to pass to Mitch/Obi at times. If anything - Thibs should share some of the blame for designing an offense centered around a B level player with limited court vision and physical abilities to impose his will.

TripleThreat wrote:

ramtour420 wrote:Why good Sir, you cannot have two starting power forwards that cannot play other positions on the same team, that's just bad team balance. As time has shown Thibs goes with the veterans even if there are better alternatives right there in front of him. But don't let my opinion get in your way of thinking, that's simply what I think and I am no head coach, as incoherent as it may seem.
Thibs needs the front office to put him in position to succeed, if we failed as playoff contenders we need to try our luck as a rebuilding team. So let's not get ahead of ourselves and talk about management and all that. They need time too to work through this.

I think it runs a little deeper than that.

If you spend a lottery pick on a young player like Toppin, you either trade him or you have to give him some extended burn to see what he can or cannot give you. ( In that same way, I agree about Reddish in which some people here have said if you trade a first round pick for a player, you need to give him minutes to see what he can do and if he can help this team, I agree with that)

I can see why Toppin is not playing more minutes ( His defense in general is still very bad. Now he has improved from his first few games in the league and from his college showing, but that's still relative to that he was a pure net negative on defense to start. He can't defend the rim and he doesn't have the fundamentals and situational awareness to actually develop into an effective rim protector. Something I saw before he was drafted was that Toppin doesn't understand how to use space. Which is pretty much a death sentence for a lottery pick outside of some pretty unique circumstances) But I agree with you that there cannot be this grudge match between Leon Rose and Thibs over this.

Rose has to give Thibs players with the basic skill set and ability to play the kind of ball that Thibs clearly wants to play and conducive to actually winning real basketball games. I'm not saying Rose has to give Thibs every last player on Thibs' wishlist. But if you have a defense first type coach, you can't give him a young player, a lottery pick, who carries no defensive value at all, including no real defensive role. We are talking "basic skill set" here.

And you can't have a team carrying a young lottery pick that just isn't getting enough minutes to show you what he can or can't do for you long term. What that means is can Toppin give you enough offensively to offset his defensive shortcomings. Do I think that's possible? No, not in a functional offense that consistently wins basketball games. If you give Toppin 25+ shots a game, sure he'll put up some counting stats, but any player will start to generate counting stats if you are making them the primary offensive option. I'm not talking end of the season type competition, I'm talking night in and night out during the meat of the season kind of regular grind.

The answer is NOT picking one or the other, it's trading both off the roster

1) Randle is a toxic ball stopper who decides when he wants to give a **** and has a childish attitude. That's horrible and destructive to have young players and new draftees be around that stupid kind of bull****. If you aren't all in, then you are all out. If you refuse to play the right way, get the **** off of this team.

2) Even if you had a different coach than Thibs, Toppin is the kind of flawed player that won't help you regularly win basketball games. He seems like a good kid, with a good heart and is a hard worker, but his tradeoffs are too severe for the modern Space And Pace style game.

If you absolutely had no choice but to be stuck with one of them, then it's better to keep Toppin. He's cheaper by contract and at least he's willing to play hard all the time and keep the ball moving. He's at least trying to effect some kind of basic fundamental basketball. While Toppin is in the "I'll score 15 for you but give up 40 on the other end" spectrum, at least he's not demoralizing his teammates like Randle does with the sulking, stupid turnovers, yelling at the refs, refusing to run back on defense, bad shot selection type of bull****.

I didn't want the Knicks to draft Toppin. That being said, if he's here, he needs to stop being a pawn in a war of control between Thibs and Rose. Either give him some extended burn, knowing that it will cost your bottom line against winning, or trade him.

I agree with you on everything except Obi. His style of play is very modern, very team oriented and I see it as more suitable for winning big. Player and ball movement is still king of basketball, even after all these years. Obi does both. One thing that I want to point it is that he is very efficient. He is able to be a main offensive threat not only by getting 25+ shots:he does it while finding easy buckets, while involving his teammates, while shooting an elite percentage ( yeas I know, small sample and meaningless end of the season games) Still, he is doing all that in his 2nd year. We really could have a jem on our hands. Notice how his shooting improved with more playing time/shot attempts. That's an indicator that he is ready for a bigger role. The only thing is his D. You have a good point there. But maybe, just maybe Thibs could make a difference for him? I think it might be realistic for him to become not a liability at the PF spot. The kid does try and has a good motor. It's not such a far fetched possibility

Philc1 wrote:

gradyandrew wrote:Randle was really good last season. Are Thibs and I the only ones who think that guy can still get back there mentally?

People love to take a very dichotomous view of Randle. Either he sucks and is a cancer you can’t win with or hes a top 10 player in the nba. Before the previous season people hated him, we made the playoffs, they loved him and now he’s considered a worse Zach Randolph

The truth is in between. We have to learn how to live with Randle moving forward. Moving the Empire State Building is easier than moving that insane contract

Your very view is a good example of the “Dichotomous” view.
Perhaps its the lack of understanding his contract won’t eclipse him to be a top 40 paid player.
With every season and pay raises that status won’t make him lower. With a higher cap his % of the cap shrinks.

Nalod is on the fence. I can’t say that Randle won’t return closer to his ceiling because I don’t know what was wrong and what can be fixed with him, or the roster.

Thibs is stubborn but the team also evolved. RJ start to finish his role changed. If the Yoot exceeded expectations that a positive spin can be “Wow, they developed faster than expected and the hard work by them and coaches really was awesome!!! The very fact they exceeded is on Thibs and the coaches that worked with the kids. Its not an either/or.

The 3-13 stretch was bad. Bad play, bad lineups, bad everything. You fire a coach because of that after a COY season? OR give him a chance to adapt to the scenario. He played yoot which could have been organizational imposed. If so, does it matter why?