New York Knicks early offseason in review (HW/bondom34/dbrandon/Slava)

[dakomish23]

Anyone still think Jose Calderon is better than DRose?

I still think he's better value on his contract. And if the Knicks even consider re-signing Rose then they definitely should have just stuck with Jennings/Calderon.

And if they had done that and still had RoLo they'd look even better. So yeah my opinion remains the Rose trade was a mistake.

I couldn't disagree more on the value provided to the team, even if DRose is making 3x the amount.

I saw every Jose game for NY. He was absolutely petrified to make a play. He wouldn't shoot unless no one was within 5 feet of him. The amount of times the Knicks offense would come to a halt when because the defense applied a little pressure. We had so many possessions where the first pass wouldn't be made till single digits in the shot clock. Don't get me started on the defense.

I'm far from a DRose apologist.

I still think he plays like a SG more than a PG. I think he misses way too many open players and is failing to recognize the gravity he has in his drives, though yesterday I saw him do a way better job so maybe there's hope. I think at times he can dribble the air out of the ball. I think he tries to get bailed out sometimes by flinging himself into the rim protection.

STILL a massive upgrade over anything we've had in a long time.

I'm assuming you guys didn't watch yesterday's game. He had probably the best quarter of basketball a Knick PG has had in a decade in the first. Knicks were stagnant, Melo had to go to the training room and KP couldn't throw the ball in the Atlantic. DRose stepped up and carried the offense while finding open shooters.

And that was enough. We went from getting nothing to getting something. As a fan of a team who has generally ignored the PG position, it's been refreshing to get production from a spot that generally gave us nothing. The metrics are not reflecting the impact properly.

On the trade itself, I'm fine with it. RoLo is not the stud that he's been painted as since he no longer wears orange and blue. He's solid. Losing Grant sucked simply because I didn't want to give youth away. Dumping Calderon gave us the space to sign Jennings and Kuz - clearly a win. Holiday has been great for us as a role player. Plus we got a 2nd. Not sure how anyone can watch all the Knicks games and think that trade in itself was a loss for the Knicks.

Anyway, they're better than predicted by most. I'll leave it at that.

[HartfordWhalers]

RoLo is not the stud that he's been painted as since he no longer wears orange and blue.

This is funny, as certain Knicks fan(s) kept saying he was worth a late lotto/mid 1st pick and an additional prospect when he did wear orange and blue.

Dumping Calderon gave us the space to sign Jennings and Kuz - clearly a win

In terms of the cap space gained by the Lopez trade:

Calderon $7,708,427
Lopez $14,000,000
Grant: $1,643,040
Total: $23,351,467

Rose: $21,323,252
Holiday: $1,015,696
Total: $22,338,948

Cap space gained: $1,012,519

Attributing 8m of new signings as made possible by that trade just feels wrong for the obvious reason.

I'm assuming you guys didn't watch yesterday's game.

Well, then you are wrong. Thats the difficulty with that sort of assumption.

[DOT]

As for the Knicks expectations from here, they are on a 40 win pace per 538 and that is with Noah playing 80% of the games, Lee at 90%, and Rose at 100%. SRS puts them at 17th in the league.

I think the educated guess is those percentages have more room for downside than upside. We will see, but I would feel very comfortable taking the under on a 40 win line personally.

Didn't 538 also say Hillary had a 90% chance to win?

[HartfordWhalers]

As for the Knicks expectations from here, they are on a 40 win pace per 538 and that is with Noah playing 80% of the games, Lee at 90%, and Rose at 100%. SRS puts them at 17th in the league.

I think the educated guess is those percentages have more room for downside than upside. We will see, but I would feel very comfortable taking the under on a 40 win line personally.

Didn't 538 also say Hillary had a 90% chance to win?

They had it less than most people, but if you are implying that the prediction that that Knicks poster was touting about how great the Knicks are doing should be taken with a big grain of salt, then you and I are definitely in agreement.

[DOT]

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2017-nba-predictions/

56% chance at the playoffs right now.

A lot of season left to play, but they've been better than so many, including the group who did this thread, predicted.

Anyone still think Jose Calderon is better than DRose?

Knicks being healthy has been surprising, that's pretty much the reason why they are outperforming expectations in this thread.

Yep, and I still think Rose is awful. I'd rather Calderon on his contract and Rose hasn't been any good.

And the RoLo trade was still a big mistake. They're healthier than I thought though.

If he wasn't named Derrick Rose, he would be seen as what he is, which is just okay. Everyone will always compare him to his MVP self, which is why people keep saying he's trash. I know he hasn't been great, but not any good? Foh, man. He needs to improve on things like his 3 pointer and his passing vision, but 17 and 5 on 46 percent shooting is at least decent, and just watching him defensively he's soooo much better than Calderon. If we had Jose trying to play d on Westbrook, he probably scores 50 on 60% shooting. Y'all need to understand that there's a middle ground between great and trash

[DOT]

As for the Knicks expectations from here, they are on a 40 win pace per 538 and that is with Noah playing 80% of the games, Lee at 90%, and Rose at 100%. SRS puts them at 17th in the league.

I think the educated guess is those percentages have more room for downside than upside. We will see, but I would feel very comfortable taking the under on a 40 win line personally.

Didn't 538 also say Hillary had a 90% chance to win?

They had it less than most people, but if you are implying that the prediction that that Knicks poster was touting about how great the Knicks are doing should be taken with a big grain of salt, then you and I are definitely in agreement.

I'm implying that any prediction should be taken with a grain of salt. I haven't posted much, but I'm a very optimistic person about the Knicks, so I see things through an optomistic viewpoint. As of right now, they've been solid. Not contenders, and I don't think they ever would be, but they're decent. Over the last 11 games, the Knicks have the best record in the East at 8-3, which means they're improving. It also means that their schedule has lightened up a bit, but there are some quality wins in there. They're really good at home, but have been dropping games on the road like hot potatoes, so I don't really know how good they are. However, this is practically a brand new team, so giving them 20-25 games to determine how good they are is where I'm at right now. By the end of the week, we should have a grasp on where they're at

[bondom34]

Knicks being healthy has been surprising, that's pretty much the reason why they are outperforming expectations in this thread.

Yep, and I still think Rose is awful. I'd rather Calderon on his contract and Rose hasn't been any good.

And the RoLo trade was still a big mistake. They're healthier than I thought though.

If he wasn't named Derrick Rose, he would be seen as what he is, which is just okay. Everyone will always compare him to his MVP self, which is why people keep saying he's trash. I know he hasn't been great, but not any good? Foh, man. He needs to improve on things like his 3 pointer and his passing vision, but 17 and 5 on 46 percent shooting is at least decent, and just watching him defensively he's soooo much better than Calderon. If we had Jose trying to play d on Westbrook, he probably scores 50 on 60% shooting. Y'all need to understand that there's a middle ground between great and trash

If he wasn't paid 20 million dollars and was a backup PG he'd be fine. But he is and he starts, and he's awful at it. He still grades out as a worse defender statistically and Westbrook went for 27/18/14 on him.

[dakomish23]

As for the Knicks expectations from here, they are on a 40 win pace per 538 and that is with Noah playing 80% of the games, Lee at 90%, and Rose at 100%. SRS puts them at 17th in the league.

I think the educated guess is those percentages have more room for downside than upside. We will see, but I would feel very comfortable taking the under on a 40 win line personally.

Didn't 538 also say Hillary had a 90% chance to win?

They had it less than most people, but if you are implying that the prediction that that Knicks poster was touting about how great the Knicks are doing should be taken with a big grain of salt, then you and I are definitely in agreement.

How am I touting this stat? I'm just stating what the stat says and I said there's still a lot of season to be played. I am more cautiously optimistic than what you probably think, especially on DRose.

[dakomish23]

RoLo is not the stud that he's been painted as since he no longer wears orange and blue.

This is funny, as certain Knicks fan(s) kept saying he was worth a late lotto/mid 1st pick and an additional prospect when he did wear orange and blue.

Dumping Calderon gave us the space to sign Jennings and Kuz - clearly a win

In terms of the cap space gained by the Lopez trade:

Calderon $7,708,427
Lopez $14,000,000
Grant: $1,643,040
Total: $23,351,467

Rose: $21,323,252
Holiday: $1,015,696
Total: $22,338,948

Cap space gained: $1,012,519

Attributing 8m of new signings as made possible by that trade just feels wrong for the obvious reason.

I'm assuming you guys didn't watch yesterday's game.

Well, then you are wrong. Thats the difficulty with that sort of assumption.

I never said that about RoLo. I think he's solid and that's about it.

They didn't have to include Calderon in the deal. Another 2.5 mil in contracts would of made it work. Instead they got CHI to take on Calderon who they in turn had to dump using 2 2nd round picks. That's what I mean by opening up the cap space. It wasn't necessary but they got them to take it on. This is a guy with zero value who they dumped. That's a positive, right?

Did you watch the game? If you did, would you disagree that DRose played extremely well in that first quarter?

I'm not trolling you guys. We can have different opinions on the DRose deal and I assume we'll end this current conversation not changing each other's minds on grading the trade.

[Texas Chuck]

[
If he wasn't named Derrick Rose, he would be seen as what he is, which is just okay. Everyone will always compare him to his MVP self, which is why people keep saying he's trash. I know he hasn't been great, but not any good? . Y'all need to understand that there's a middle ground between great and trash

If he wasn't paid 20 million dollars and was a backup PG he'd be fine. But he is and he starts, and he's awful at it. He still grades out as a worse defender statistically and Westbrook went for 27/18/14 on him.

Yeah bondom nailed it. Rose had literally been one of the worst players in the league the last few years in Chicago. A huge negative on the court and all kinds of distractions off of it.

He's been better than that in New York. But he's still one of the worst starters in the Association and he's making huge money. I don't know any way to term that other than poor value and telling me he's better than Jose Calderon is the very definition of damning with faint praise.

[Capn'O]

FYI - his performance (and corresponding impact stats) are trending up. At the beginning of the season his play was hurting the team. Now, not so much - maybe off again on again. I'm more optimistic than I was even a week ago. He's probably had his two best games as a distributor since the Thunder game. There's a chance this all doesn't stick or that he gets hurt again but that will come out in the wash. This was the risk the Knicks took and hopefully they don't rush to "Mission Accomplished" and cut down the evaluation time before moving on him.

[DOT]

Yep, and I still think Rose is awful. I'd rather Calderon on his contract and Rose hasn't been any good.

And the RoLo trade was still a big mistake. They're healthier than I thought though.

If he wasn't named Derrick Rose, he would be seen as what he is, which is just okay. Everyone will always compare him to his MVP self, which is why people keep saying he's trash. I know he hasn't been great, but not any good? Foh, man. He needs to improve on things like his 3 pointer and his passing vision, but 17 and 5 on 46 percent shooting is at least decent, and just watching him defensively he's soooo much better than Calderon. If we had Jose trying to play d on Westbrook, he probably scores 50 on 60% shooting. Y'all need to understand that there's a middle ground between great and trash

If he wasn't paid 20 million dollars and was a backup PG he'd be fine. But he is and he starts, and he's awful at it. He still grades out as a worse defender statistically and Westbrook went for 27/18/14 on him.

Yeah, he scored 27 points on 39% shooting, when for the season he averages 31 on 43%, Rose is such an awful defender
Let's look at Jose for a second.
In the games he's played this year, the Laker's offensive rating when he's on the court is a whopping 89.8. Truly, this man is the floor general and veteran leader every team needs
When he's off the court, their ORTG is 110.2, making a difference of 20.4. I honestly can't see how they're winning games with him off, those numbers are sooo much better with him

[HartfordWhalers]

RoLo is not the stud that he's been painted as since he no longer wears orange and blue.

This is funny, as certain Knicks fan(s) kept saying he was worth a late lotto/mid 1st pick and an additional prospect when he did wear orange and blue.

Dumping Calderon gave us the space to sign Jennings and Kuz - clearly a win

In terms of the cap space gained by the Lopez trade:

Calderon $7,708,427
Lopez $14,000,000
Grant: $1,643,040
Total: $23,351,467

Rose: $21,323,252
Holiday: $1,015,696
Total: $22,338,948

Cap space gained: $1,012,519

Attributing 8m of new signings as made possible by that trade just feels wrong for the obvious reason.

I'm assuming you guys didn't watch yesterday's game.

Well, then you are wrong. Thats the difficulty with that sort of assumption.

I never said that about RoLo. I think he's solid and that's about it.

They didn't have to include Calderon in the deal. Another 2.5 mil in contracts would of made it work. Instead they got CHI to take on Calderon who they in turn had to dump using 2 2nd round picks. That's what I mean by opening up the cap space. It wasn't necessary but they got them to take it on. This is a guy with zero value who they dumped. That's a positive, right?

Did you watch the game? If you did, would you disagree that DRose played extremely well in that first quarter?

I'm not trolling you guys. We can have different opinions on the DRose deal and I assume we'll end this current conversation not changing each other's minds on grading the trade.

Oh, dumping Calderon was good for NYK ignoring all else.

But I would rather have Lopez and Calderon's expiring than just Rose. And that was made worse by signing Noah to make up for not having Lopez. {Grant, the 2nd, and Holiday are all minor things that don't change any calculus.}

And yeah, I watched. Was very happy with how the game went, although Noah's free throws at the end made that feel more uncomfortable than I would have liked.

I hate to grab one play or one game and read too much into it, especially when sometimes it happens to be versus a bad team (Sac is 23rd in the league defensively for instance and has been an awful 3-8 on the road)

Overall Rose's early season numbers aren't all that strong:

RPM -2.77 { -0.51 ORPM -2.26 DRPM} 66th out of 83 pg's.
BPM: -1.3 {0.3 OBPM -1.6 DBPM}

His TS% is back near his career numbers (51.6%) which still is below league average, and his assist rate is down.

[bondom34]

FTR, the Knicks play mildly better with Rose on than off court this year, not surprising given he plays with Melo and KP mostly. The defense however is nearly 12 points per 100 worse when he's on court. He's the worst starter for NY by BPM, has one of the worst RPMs among PGs, and to this point that's him "over performing".

[Capn'O]

FTR, the Knicks play mildly better with Rose on than off court this year, not surprising given he plays with Melo and KP mostly. The defense however is nearly 12 points per 100 worse when he's on court. He's the worst starter for NY by BPM, has one of the worst RPMs among PGs, and to this point that's him "over performing".

At this point, I'm more interested in the trend line than the ranking. And by "interested," I mean "interested" and not "haha, you were wrong Rose is actually great" as I have my own serious reservations with him. IIRC, just recently, he was the worst PG in RPM but the eye test tells me he's making progress in finding his teammates, picking his spots, and defense. The things that improve your RPM because you're playing better team ball. His jump from the worst to meh reflects that. He's still holding those putrid games from earlier that sack the rankings. So does he continue to improve? Level off? Revert? That's what we (and hopefully the Knicks brass!) should be looking at.

Westbrook went for 27/18/14 on him.

On under 40% shooting Those Iverson assists! But do I really need to tell you that he's doing that to everybody? RWB is bananas, man.

[DOT]

FTR, the Knicks play mildly better with Rose on than off court this year, not surprising given he plays with Melo and KP mostly. The defense however is nearly 12 points per 100 worse when he's on court. He's the worst starter for NY by BPM, has one of the worst RPMs among PGs, and to this point that's him "over performing".

At this point, I'm more interested in the trend line than the ranking. And by "interested," I mean "interested" and not "haha, you were wrong Rose is actually great" as I have my own serious reservations with him. IIRC, just recently, he was the worst PG in RPM but the eye test tells me he's making progress in finding his teammates, picking his spots, and defense. The things that improve your RPM because you're playing better team ball. His jump from the worst to meh reflects that. He's still holding those putrid games from earlier that sack the rankings. So does he continue to improve? Level off? Revert? That's what we (and hopefully the Knicks brass!) should be looking at.

Westbrook went for 27/18/14 on him.

On under 40% shooting Those Iverson assists! But do I really need to tell you that he's doing that to everybody? RWB is bananas, man.

I think he's pretty much just an average point guard for now, and I don't think he's going to improve much more from that. If he can give us what he's been giving us the last few games for the rest of the season, I have no problem keeping him, because anyone else we get will cost at least as much, probably more, and having continuity is something the Knicks always lack

[Andre Roberstan]

At this point, I'm more interested in the trend line than the ranking. And by "interested," I mean "interested" and not "haha, you were wrong Rose is actually great" as I have my own serious reservations with him. IIRC, just recently, he was the worst PG in RPM but the eye test tells me he's making progress in finding his teammates, picking his spots, and defense. The things that improve your RPM because you're playing better team ball. His jump from the worst to meh reflects that. He's still holding those putrid games from earlier that sack the rankings. So does he continue to improve? Level off? Revert? That's what we (and hopefully the Knicks brass!) should be looking at.

Yeah, he's been better than he was with the Bulls, though that's not saying much. My gut tells me to trust the long-term sample over the short-term one, but he might be at average starter level by advanced stats by the end of the season. Who knows.

[bondom34]

FTR, the Knicks play mildly better with Rose on than off court this year, not surprising given he plays with Melo and KP mostly. The defense however is nearly 12 points per 100 worse when he's on court. He's the worst starter for NY by BPM, has one of the worst RPMs among PGs, and to this point that's him "over performing".

At this point, I'm more interested in the trend line than the ranking. And by "interested," I mean "interested" and not "haha, you were wrong Rose is actually great" as I have my own serious reservations with him. IIRC, just recently, he was the worst PG in RPM but the eye test tells me he's making progress in finding his teammates, picking his spots, and defense. The things that improve your RPM because you're playing better team ball. His jump from the worst to meh reflects that. He's still holding those putrid games from earlier that sack the rankings. So does he continue to improve? Level off? Revert? That's what we (and hopefully the Knicks brass!) should be looking at.

Westbrook went for 27/18/14 on him.

On under 40% shooting Those Iverson assists! But do I really need to tell you that he's doing that to everybody? RWB is bananas, man.

I think at this point, the entire thread was pointed at NY having Rose and Noah or Calderon and RoLo, plus a bunch less payroll next year.

He's been mildly better than last year, similar to 2 years ago, so still a well below average starter paid like a star. And at the same time trading Lopez for him meant they signed the Noah deal. Which looks really bad in hindsight and worse if there are any injuries.

[sportscrazy]

I think he's pretty much just an average point guard for now, and I don't think he's going to improve much more from that. If he can give us what he's been giving us the last few games for the rest of the season, I have no problem keeping him, because anyone else we get will cost at least as much, probably more, and having continuity is something the Knicks always lack

In terms of maintaining chemistry, I have no problem with keeping Rose, paying him higher annually, etc. I do have a problem with a deal that goes beyond 2 seasons. We need his contract to expire when 'Melo's does and not a minute later.

[dakomish23]

This is funny, as certain Knicks fan(s) kept saying he was worth a late lotto/mid 1st pick and an additional prospect when he did wear orange and blue.




In terms of the cap space gained by the Lopez trade:

Calderon $7,708,427
Lopez $14,000,000
Grant: $1,643,040
Total: $23,351,467

Rose: $21,323,252
Holiday: $1,015,696
Total: $22,338,948

Cap space gained: $1,012,519

Attributing 8m of new signings as made possible by that trade just feels wrong for the obvious reason.


Well, then you are wrong. Thats the difficulty with that sort of assumption.

I never said that about RoLo. I think he's solid and that's about it.

They didn't have to include Calderon in the deal. Another 2.5 mil in contracts would of made it work. Instead they got CHI to take on Calderon who they in turn had to dump using 2 2nd round picks. That's what I mean by opening up the cap space. It wasn't necessary but they got them to take it on. This is a guy with zero value who they dumped. That's a positive, right?

Did you watch the game? If you did, would you disagree that DRose played extremely well in that first quarter?

I'm not trolling you guys. We can have different opinions on the DRose deal and I assume we'll end this current conversation not changing each other's minds on grading the trade.

Oh, dumping Calderon was good for NYK ignoring all else.

But I would rather have Lopez and Calderon's expiring than just Rose. And that was made worse by signing Noah to make up for not having Lopez. {Grant, the 2nd, and Holiday are all minor things that don't change any calculus.}

And yeah, I watched. Was very happy with how the game went, although Noah's free throws at the end made that feel more uncomfortable than I would have liked.

I hate to grab one play or one game and read too much into it, especially when sometimes it happens to be versus a bad team (Sac is 23rd in the league defensively for instance and has been an awful 3-8 on the road)

Overall Rose's early season numbers aren't all that strong:

RPM -2.77 { -0.51 ORPM -2.26 DRPM} 66th out of 83 pg's.
BPM: -1.3 {0.3 OBPM -1.6 DBPM}

His TS% is back near his career numbers (51.6%) which still is below league average, and his assist rate is down.

Holiday has actually been pretty fruitful for this team. I'm not saying we won the deal because of him, but he's been a pleasant surprise that seems to fit well with whomever he plays with.

I personally am not a fan of the Noah deal. I love the player, hate the contract. Particularly for the lack of team options at the tail end, when it's likely to be an abomination (if it isn't one now). In theory his skill set would be a good fit next to Melo and more importantly KP, but in reality he hasn't been good. He's been agressive on the boards and makes some nice passes, but in not sure he would live up to a contract for half the amount. On the free throws, I was wondering why we took Noah AFTER we got under 2 minutes. A lot of weird decisions by Abby's father.

Im grading the deal in a vacuum, even though that's not how roster construction works. I think in a vacuum, it has paid off for NY. Would we rather have kept RoLo ans still gotten those guys? I think everyone would sign up for that. Do I think giving up RoLo was worth getting DRose and Holiday? I can speak for myself and say I think they made the right move.

We'll see how it plays out.