The Strickland October Mailbag, Part One: Draft ranks, LaMelo threats, and rewriting history
Welcome to the first-ever mailbag here at The Strickland! Assuming reality endures, or at minimum we do, this will hopefully become a monthly tradition. Many thanks to the readers here and on Twitter who submitted questions. Take care, everybody. Here we go.
1) I know you like a few different characters in the draft, but I'm curious what your top eight looks like. And what about 27 and 38? Fill needs? Accentuate strengths? What are the needs? Are there strengths?!
— stingy d
Remember in The Dark Knight when the Joker, visiting Two-Face in the hospital, makes this face?
He looks uncomfortable. Like he’s smiling for the camera knowing it’s not a pretty smile, knowing it’s expected, knowing as soon as we see it we’ll realize we should’ve been careful what we asked for. That’s how I feel offering my top eight — uncomfortable. I’ll play along, but I don’t think you’ll like what you get. So here goes: if I were building a team from scratch, this would be my ranking:
1. Killian Hayes
2. James Wiseman
3. Isaac Okoro
4. Obi Toppin
5. Anthony Edwards
6. Kira Lewis Jr.
7. Deni Avdija
8. Onyeka Okongwu
You may have noticed a certain mostly-consensus top overall pick missing. Yes, LaMelo Ball is not in my top eight. I am — and this may be better proof that a merciful God exists than anything — not an NBA general manager. I’m answering Stingy’s question in the spirit in which it was asked. He didn’t say “Who do you think experts rank as the top eight prospects?” He asked for mine. This is not me predicting anyone’s future. I’m not saying Hayes will have the best career of these players, nor that LaMelo turns out worse than Kira. It means, given what I’ve read and conjectured regarding strengths and risks, these are, in order, the types of projects I’d like to build around.
I think Hayes offers the best combination of surefire qualities — good size, good defender, good pick-and-roll instincts — and room for growth: he improved as a shooter from deep and is a near-90% free throw shooter, which bodes well for improvement over time. I think his risk/reward profile is the most appealing. While we’re frequently subjected to “The big man is extinct!” prattle, three of this year’s four finalists featured All-Star centers. Size sans skill is going the way of the polar bear. Talented bigs never go out of style. Wiseman is a big, long, athletic center. Call him Jell-O. As in “There’s always room for.”
Okoro is my personal favorite: He seems like a real sweetheart, defends like it’s the only side of the coin and just seems like a playmaker, someone who’ll never lead his team in assists or 3-pointers but comes up with the big dish, the clinching basket, the loose ball that turns the tide. Toppin gets a lot of criticism for not projecting as a good defender, which, I mean., come on, man. How many draft picks enter the league as good defenders? How many veterans are good defenders? Toppin is an exceptional shooter and explosive scorer from the rim to beyond the arc. You wanna stand around waiting for two-way perfection like it’s freaking Godot? I’ll take Toppin and focus on the half of the glass that’s overflowing, thank you very much.
I think Edwards will be okay if he lands somewhere that allows him to be okay. There’s already as much expectation on him as anybody besides Ball (who we’ll get to). Put him in a good situation and give him a few years to grow into his pro self and he’ll be fine. Send him somewhere that eats messiahs for breakfast and it could turn sour. Lewis Jr. might be a top-three prospect if he were three inches taller or 20 pounds heavier. He does a lot of everything, but starring in college versus competing in the NBA is like being a good lover to your partner and then making the jump to erotic films. Some people make the jump. Most realize the new normal is nothing like the old one.
Avdija appeals because multitalented forwards are a lifelong kink of mine, and anyone as young as him who’s had time to marinate at a top international club pro’ly has some good flavor down to the marrow. I would also enjoy seeing his hair game evolve over the years. Lotta potential there. Okongwu is a defensive presence who’s efficient around the basket and plays well off the ball, all of which I am happy to build my team with.
I hear all the talk about Ball being unselfish, how his passing skills could be the best skill of any player in this draft class. Cool. My concerns with Ball somewhat deal with him and somewhat with stuff completely out of his control. There’s the shooting — his form and its results, neither of which inspire confidence (yet; obviously this is still a very young man). Ball is barely 19 and seemingly very smart, so there’s room for a lot of growth on the defensive end; that he doesn’t project as a plus-defender isn’t in and of itself a reason to write him off. But I don’t know if he can shoot or defend. I worry about his passing being taken away from him with defenses not worried about his shot. I worry he’ll be targeted on the defensive end a ton, because of who he is and what he can’t deal with (yet).
I worry about prodigies’ proclivities to pick up bad habits as they’re rushed through their development. I once had a very young piano student who I thought was a genius. Every week when the lesson ended I’d show him what song to work on in the book, and I’d play it for him once. Without fail every time I saw him at the next lesson he’d have the piece down cold. I was elated with his progress. It took me a while to learn the truth: the kid couldn’t read music. At all. He was hearing what I played, memorizing it, and practicing till it matched. There is something commendable to that, something you can’t teach. There’s evidence of a gifted ear. There’s also assuming someone is fluent in music when they can’t read a single note. I worry the push to turn LaMelo pro will succeed at the cost of what might have been because he was robbed of valuable time in utero. I worry about his gifts camouflaging his gaps.
I also worry about everything around Ball. Not LaVar, necessarily. No matter how outsized the father may seem to us, most 19-year-olds are blessed by evolution with enough width of vision to shrink their parents down in scale, and if LaMelo has any gift, it’s vision. I just worry that he could turn out to be a 15-year pro who averages like 14, 8 and 6, yet is viewed as a bust because of what we thought he could/should be.
Speaking of…
2) Can LaMelo threaten to stay in NBL?
Had to look this one up. Here’s what I found re: what happens when a player refuses to play for the team that drafted him after I consulted a website and The Strickland’s own legal eagle, resident barrister Marty Wilpon:
"The team retains his draft rights for a period of time and basically he doesn't get to play in the NBA until either:
- He signs with the team;
- The team trades his draft rights and he signs with the new team;
- His draft rights expire and he enters the next draft (if he doesn't want to sign with that team, then once THOSE draft rights expire he can become a free agent). The draft rights last for one year, normally (basically until the next draft), but if he signs a contract for a non-NBA team then they last until one year after that contract expires."
I was confused by this, having remembered the Knicks drafting Frederic Weis in 1999, him never joining the team, and them finally trading his rights in the Patrick Ewing Jr. deal 9 years later. Thus the following exchange with the only Wilpon I can tolerate:
martywilpon: Since Weis kept signing contracts, they never lost his rights.
Miranda: Do you think that runs indefinitely? Can a player never escape the team that drafted him so long as he keeps playing elsewhere?
martywilpon: Yeah, I think that’s the case. LaMelo would have to take a year off from organized basketball to get away from the [Illawarra] Hawks or whoever.
And there you have it.
3) Could Tom Thibodeau get Obi Toppin at the 4 to work out?
Yes. James Harden can score but isn’t a defender to write home about. Same for Kemba Walker, Kyrie Irving, Amar’e Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony, Reggie Miller, Dominique Wilkins, Chris Mullin, etc. Thibs is a coach down to his nuclei. He gets it. Coaching is like dating in your 30s: it’s all about maximizing your strengths and hiding your weaknesses for as long as you can. You know they’re going to emerge, but you try to keep them in the dark long enough so they don’t cost you the whole game. I trust Thibs.
4) You can undo one Knicks transaction in history. Which one do you choose?
— Visions of Future Shump
If you’re talking transactions that could have occurred but didn’t, it’d have to be the Knicks almost landing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Julius Erving in their primes. But assuming you mean undo something someone did, I have two nominees.
One was the Chauncey Billups amnesty in 2012. Long story short: Billups had a team option for the last year of his contract, the Knicks picked it up, there was a work stoppage, the stoppage ended, the Knicks had a shot at Tyson Chandler because Mark Cuban was too smart to let his team defend the title, so a little more than half a year after picking up the option, they amnestied Billups. If they’d kept him and the amnesty, they could have used it on Amar’e Stoudemire when he broke down. Maybe Chris Paul ends up a Knick when he’s closer to 26 than 36. Who knows what that could have led to? But I bet it’d have spared us the Paul rumors of 2020, which have completely reversed the mental health I’ve worked to achieve post-pandemic. Make that trade and I may not be responsible for my actions.
My other annulment would be the Kristaps Porziņģis trade. Not because it was that bad a trade; it’s still too early to judge, depending what the Knicks do with the draft picks and the cap room they gained. I’m just sick. To. DEATH of hearing people KVETCH about it so much. KP scores 25 one night? The Knicks got fleeced, the sky is falling, yadda yadda yadda. KP slumps for a week? Anemic snake, unreliable, yadda yadda yadda. The man wanted a five-year max deal with no protections. The Knicks weren’t comfortable with that. Dallas took a five-year gamble. I don’t wanna hear about the trade again until 2024.
That’s all for part one of this special collector’s edition mailbag. We’ll get to part two soon, should God will it. وَعَلَيْكُمُ ٱلسَّلَامُ.
