thebuzzardman wrote:Richard4444 wrote:thebuzzardman wrote:
Bey and even Vessel are better than Obi, his recent flashing aside. It was also a weak draft. By all accounts the Knicks wanted Maxey, who is better, but failed to position themselves. They also traded #33 when several useful young guards were still available. I guess we'll have to wait for those super duper trades when the Brock Aller genius of trading away low first rounders for buckets of 2nd rounders pays dividends.
And if we have to discuss IQ and Mitch as the KNicks high water marks of drafting the last 5 years, then my point is proved.
1) I agree Vassel and Bey are better than Obi. Haliburton too. They are easier fits. They are very solid 3&D players.
2) I don't agree with the "position themselves talk". We were aiming for the playoffs. And probably would be too expensive to move up in the draft. Furthermore, we only missed Maxey for 2 spots. And we would never know if we could have IQ with #33. We probably would have to choose between IQ and Maxey.
3) There were not a lot of younger guards left on the draft at #33. Only Saben Lee and Tre Jones. They look like good players. But they are still struggling for minutes in tanking teams for more than one year. It was not a great opportunist cost. If we have grabbed one of them, we would not have the need/roster spot to draft Deuce.
There were certainly some good players around the area of Grimes, McBride and Jokoitchbitus.
Again, the Knicks made moves in the context of some future payday.
Grimes seems decent, McBride seems decent in the context of SL/preseason.
My point is the Knicks were drafting BADLY with Frank and Knox. Those two drafts set the Knicks back at least two years and possibly more, in terms of building the team. Now, it's like time travel here, because if they weren't bad, then Knicks don't draft #3, but the Knicks got VERY unlucky drafting high in a weak draft, and wound up with one of the most uncompelling #3 picks in YEARS.
But the Knicks made the ordinary pick in RJ, which is fine. Most of the league would have done that. A genius level move would have been to trade back.
You know, I'm kind of beating this to death. The Knicks draft poorly because they lack vision. They lack vision because a) The FO's are bad (Isiah, Phil, Mills, Mills Perry) b) The FO's are always changing. See prior list.
Which probably goes back to Dolan. Dolan never hires the right guys in the first place, going back, what, 18 years? He replaces them, so it's always a new group trying a slightly different strategy, while also having to "prove something" to Dolan to stay employed, so they chase shorter term results, either on their own or at his mandate.
The RJ draft though this one is an example. RJ is a JAG. It happens. So, a team with vision should be tanking hard. They should look at the upcoming drafts and know that the 2019 isn't that strong after the very top, but that the 2020 draft is fairly strong in a deep way.
So, they wind up not tanking hard enough to get the difference makers in the 2019 draft, or making any sort of trade etc to get a difference maker (Edwards, Ball) - and yes, I would have traded RJ here. That same team would know that 2020 is the draft to tank for, but KNicks decide to "win to impress"
Hey, at least Rose & Co have a vision and they are pretty much going about it. Maybe Dolan lets them have enough time and continuity to go about it. A better org would have had a better plan due to better continuity, a few years ago, and we wouldn't need to have the "big time FA" rescue us.
Also, mainly I'm just riffing that RJ isn't that great and Knicks would suddenly have to being batting .1000 on every single pick to make up for frank/know/rj, but that's not realistic because no team does, just randomly every year some team gets really lucky/makes a great move in the draft and it's NEVER the Knicks. Ever.
