It’s Hopeless

When I last wrote about the Knicks, almost a year ago, it was to talk about the strange parallel between Porzingas and Bernard King. in that post, I mentioned how King only played six more games for then Knicks after his injury. According to ESPN, Porzingas may never play another game as a Knick as he wants to be traded.

Its hard to fault him. The Knicks are a disaster and have been since Jeff Van Grundy resigned in 2001. The last 18 years have seen them have a losing record 15 times and win only one playoff series. 11 different head coaches have presided over this dumpster fire and the team is currently on pace to win 16 games.

And as I write this, the news is breaking that they have traded Porzingas to Dallas for Dennis Smith, Jr and a whole bunch of cap space. So the plan is to try to sign two max free agents and hit the Zion lottery? Good grief.

Heres the official deal as announced by the Knicks.

The team has acquired guard Dennis Smith Jr., center DeAndre Jordan, guard/forward Wesley Matthews and two future first round draft picks from Dallas in exchange for forward Kristaps Porzingis, and guards Tim Hardaway Jr., Trey Burke and Courtney Lee.

Jordan and Matthews are going to be traded or bought out and with THJ gone, the Knicks are really, really, going to stink. The problem is, the worst record in basketball only guarantees you a top-5 pick these days you don’t get any more ping pong balls than the second or third-worst teams.

NFL Follies

Sunday gave us two of the best, and most frustrating, football games you will ever see. The NFC Championship was marred by a double missed call of enormous importance. The AFC Championship showed us once again why the NFL has stupid overtime rules.

Let’s start in New Orleans where the referees missed two calls on the same play that would have left New Orleans in an almost no-lose situation. The problem is that there is no mechanism in replay for a review of a call that wasn’t made.  Now I don’t think we want the NFL to create a system where pass interference is reviewable if it hasn’t been called. That would create six hour games. But, there are two changes they could make.

First, similar to college football, allow reviews for targeting. In the play in question, the defender clearly made an illegal helmet-to-helmet hit. That’s a safety issue and something that should be reviewable even if it isn’t called.

Second, add another official during playoff games who utilizes the overhead cameras to look for missed penalties. The official can zoom in on certain area and make calls that officials on the field miss. MLB adds to extra umpires during the playoffs, why can’t football?

As for the AFC it was a wonderful game, but the NFL has to change the overtime rule. I’ve said it before, but championships should not be settled on a coin flip. Yes, just like two years ago, the Patriots executed when it mattered, but change the coin flip in those two games and we might have a Falcons Suoer Bowl victory and the Chiefs heading to one. That’s dumb.

I’m not suggesting the NFL change the rules for the regular season, unless they want to adopt the far-superior college rules, but in the playoffs both team should get the ball once. After that it becomes  sudden death game and whatever happens happens.

QB Roulette

While everyone says the Giants have to take a QB in the first round this year, they better be sure about the guy if they do. Consider these stats which apply to the years since the last time the Giants spent a first rounder on a QB (Philip Rivers in 2004)

40 QBs have been first round picks.

Those 40 QBs have produced 14 Pro Bowl seasons.

Those 40 QBs have produced 149 years as starters out of a possible 275.  (If you were drafted in 2018 you had 1 possibles start year, if 2017, you had 2, etc.).

So, we can say about 10% of the starting seasons for first round QBs have been Pro Bowl caliber.

Now consider the QBs take in the remaining rounds 2-7.

There have been 128 of them.

They have produced 16 Pro Bowl Seasons

They have 89 start years ( I didn’t calculate the possible years because that would be intense).

So, there have actually been more Pro Bowl seasons from the QBs drafted after the first round from 2005 on than the ones drafted in the first round. Now granted, there are/were some pretty good QBs who were first round picks that weren’t in this sample like Peyton, Eli, Big Ben, and Philip Rivers. But, that is balanced by the fact that both Brady and Brees weren’t drafted in the first round and they have 26 Pro Bowls between them that aren’t included for that group.

To me, this proves one thing. You absolutely need a QB, but reaching for that QB can have fateful consequences. You have to trust the GM to make the right call in the draft. If he thinks there is a potential franchise QB, take him in round 1, if not, take someone else and maybe you can find that QB later.