"Death to the Pessimistic State of Mind" - Nas Voice: NYK '23 Pre-Season Thread

[Wargames]

I like him skill wise. He has a high ceiling, the issue is his ball usage is 32%, he looks this good on a team where he has a constant green light.

 

[RickyGQ]

Don’t see it. He was at 54 touches a game this year with 17 field goals and about 6 free throw attempts a game in 34.5 minutes to get 20 points on a putrid 51% TS.

It would take a lot for him to average that 25 a game a season or two from now. It would take a significant leap as a shooter and shot creator and those are not things that are easy to improve on.

Shooting is the easiest thing for any basketball player to improve.

 

[ISO]

Shooting is the easiest thing for any basketball player to improve.

It isn’t especially FT shooting.

 

[ISO]

I hesitate to debate with people who speak like they have a crystal ball, so that's one

Gobert was defensive player of the year last year and runner up this year. Utah Jazz defense was basically "Rudy save us." I know it's easier to shyt on him because he's easy to game plan for, but on a team with more defenders (or a better number one), they go far with him as the second best player. That's two

RJ doesn't really have that far to go to have a similar statline to Mitchell. I ran a comparison of their stats from Jan 1 on: On/Off Court Compare Traditional

Not really seeing anything definitive that tells me that RJ will never be in Donovan's league. He's 6'1 and 25 years old. He's not going to have the longevity that other star guards his size has unless his defense improves significantly. He's not a superstar yet. He couldn't beat a Dallas team with Jalen Brunson as it's best player more than once in 3 games. What is the allure here to trade RJ who at the very least can accomplish that same feat of losing to a Luka-less Maverick team (which I personally don't think he would do if you swapped them)?

RJ has 4 years to be the same age as Donovan now and accomplish more. You want to trade that for a guy who's never proven to be anything more than a big fish in a small pond?

My last thing: when are you gonna learn from past history? Trading for Donovan Mitchell and giving up our highest upside young talent is the Melo trade again. Been there, done that. Get stars to play next to the young talent we already have. Periodt

It isn’t Donovan’s fault that Utah’s defense is so reliant on Gobert and that their offense is so reliant on him. Utah is a flawed team that peaked and is at best good for 50 wins and a second round exit.

R.J. does have a lot to go to reach Donovan’s stat line. There’s a significant efficiency gap 57% TS to 51% TS and Mitchell has averaged 28 points per 36 minutes the last two seasons. Mitchell is on an entirely different level as an offensive player. A level that R.J. will never reach because he flat out doesn’t have the athleticism or skill to do so.

Donovan is 6’1 but he’s also swole with a 6’10 wingspan if we got him now we would have his entire prime.

What the hell is R.J. going to do to beat Dallas? At his current development level he is a very easy player to scheme for in the playoffs he wouldn’t do shyt.



I also don’t think trading for Mitchell would cost us as much as trading for Melo.

 

[ISO]

lmao you need to relax. for a guy with "no moves" he somehow has a higher career high than every single one of the players you named as a 3rd year player. at least kp made an all star game...but availability is the best ability.
oddly enough for a guy touted with an nba ready body his skillset development has to make him be viewed as a project. he may never be a superstar but he'll be a consistent 20ppg guy as long as his efficiency increases. he's gonna be a slow burn....him at 21 compared to him at 25 will probably be a different animal. the worker in him is gonna get those shooting splits up. the stiffness in his game is slowly dissipating...just looking at him from his rookie year tape til now
unless you think iq is steph curry reincarnated im not sure you can say he's a better prospect. his skillset is more modern basketball ready ...but as a shooter he hasnt shot over 40 percent from the field thus far in his career....but the splash plays he makes tells your brain his ceiling might be higher. man we thought alonzo trier was NICE but theres more to basketball than isolation ability.
we have done rj zero justice with how he's used and the players he plays next to.
boy spent 98 percent of the time with non-spacing center, a pf that cant really shoot either, multiple terrible point guards. shoutout to elfrid payton....and we're supposed to believe he's been put in a position to succeed.
IQ and RJ's game compliment each other extremely well but our coach never played them together.
RJ is amongst league leaders(and everyone in the top 20 are all allstars or fringe all stars with 1 or 2 exceptions..rj being one) in fastbreak points while we play literally the 2nd slowest pace in the league while always having a traditional rim runner in the game and a ball stopper like julius randle while also playing with a non-point guard that walks the ball up in alec burks that he's played 90 percent of his minutes with.
rj is gonna average 22+ next year on better splits. you just gotta let the aesthetic bias go for a moment and just let rj be who he is.
there are obvious holes in his game....but development isnt linear.
rj vs the heat is just a flash to what he might be in the future with a more consistent jumper and hunting mismatches so he can use his physicality and that was against a healthy top 5 defense.

This is ultimately irrelevant it’s just a hot night his legs were fresh after an injury lay-off. I’m judging him off his entire body of work.

We can scapegoat the coaching and his teammates all we want but ultimately this is a player that hasn’t been efficient on any level. He doesn’t do himself any favors with his lack of touch from floater range, inconsistent outside shooting, lack of handle and shot creation. None of this stuff is an easy fix or something that players generally improve on significantly in their careers.

 

[Wargames]

 

[RickyGQ]

It isn’t especially FT shooting.

Show me the players who’ve gotten worse as shooters as their career went on? (Obviously not including players who’s games fell off due to laziness or off court issues). As long as they have the will and the mental makeup, most every player retires a better shooter than they were when they came into the league. Sometimes a significantly better one depending on how bad they were. Unless you think RJ’s hang ups are mental, i don’t see how we can just up and say he’ll never be a decent shooter when that’s probably the biggest thing holding him back from the next big leap.

 

[JMurder]

It isn’t Donovan’s fault that Utah’s defense is so reliant on Gobert and that their offense is so reliant on him. Utah is a flawed team that peaked and is at best good for 50 wins and a second round exit.

No but it's his fault that HIS defense is so ass that that's really the only way Utah's defense can be an average one

R.J. does have a lot to go to reach Donovan’s stat line. There’s a significant efficiency gap 57% TS to 51% TS and Mitchell has averaged 28 points per 36 minutes the last two seasons. Mitchell is on an entirely different level as an offensive player. A level that R.J. will never reach because he flat out doesn’t have the athleticism or skill to do so.

They're two entirely different players with different strengths and weaknesses. RJ doesn't need Donovan's athleticism or skillset to close that efficiency gap. He just needs to improve in the areas he already has. He's already getting to the line a grip more than Mitchell, so if he fixes his FT% that's more than half the battle. He might not ever be as efficient but he can get in that realm of stat line via his own lane

Donovan is 6’1 but he’s also swole with a 6’10 wingspan if we got him now we would have his entire prime.

I'm not sure what the wingspan means for his longevity in a premise where he doesn't improve defensively. My point is that we may only get the best of him for 5 years when RJ can easily be here for double or triple that.

What the hell is R.J. going to do to beat Dallas? At his current development level he is a very easy player to scheme for in the playoffs he wouldn’t do shyt.



I also don’t think trading for Mitchell would cost us as much as trading for Melo.

Was Dallas scheming for anyone in round one?

If they were, it was probably just Gobert. Anyway, you missed my point completely. Dallas won because Donovan only impacted the game on one end of the court (inefficiently which is the basis of your RJ criticism). We've already seen how RJ vs Luka played out in-season. If you wanna tell me that he wouldn't have handled his defensive assignment in the playoffs, I'm just gonna disagree.

Long story less long: D-Mitch was bricking shots, getting cooked by Spencer Dinwiddie, and losing in the first round against a team missing their star player. I'm willing to stick with RJ over a guy like that

 

[JMurder]

How would y'all feel if we got Ousmane Dieng?

 

[Wargames]

How would y'all feel if we got Ousmane Dieng?

 

[Peter Popoff]

Welp, been nice knowing y'all cats. I started off on a little site called Allhiphop, got stirred up in some controversy as Sourpatch Kid. When that shyt shut down, cats split and went to ablackweb. Apparently my shyt got banned and new account hasn't been approved. It's time for me to ride off into the sunset of Bolivian.

 

[Wargames]

You can post if you go into preference and disable "Use the rich text editor to create and edit messages"

They fukked this site up something horrible. I'm posting on bgol again and that shyt aint for sports talk

 

[storyteller]

You can post if you go into preference and disable "Use the rich text editor to create and edit messages"

They fukked this site up something horrible. I'm posting on bgol again and that shyt aint for sports talk

Fam, good looks on that tip. Nothing working on the site for me, but at least I can drop a post here and there now.

 

[Ironman]

You can post if you go into preference and disable "Use the rich text editor to create and edit messages"

They fukked this site up something horrible. I'm posting on bgol again and that shyt aint for sports talk

Good looks man I haven't been able to post in days smh

 

[KnickstapeCity]

Y’all saw my nikka Big dikk Ben Stiller on the JJ Redikk podcast.




Breh is a true Knick fan.