2015 NY Knicks offseason thread, Los Almighty appreciation thread

don't know the full schedule but our 1st game is 7/11 at 4:30

NBATV shows the games & MSG probably will, too
 
i agree about the 82 games.. you just dont know with injuries... everyone said the cavs would win the whole thing and nobody even though the warriors had a chance to even get to the finals before the season started
 
you go boy said:
i agree about the 82 games.. you just dont know with injuries... everyone said the cavs would win the whole thing and nobody even though the warriors had a chance to even get to the finals before the season started
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Well that's just not true lol. Lots of people put the Warriors in the contender discussion. Not on NT, but they got a lot of love heading into the season.
 
B+ Offseason by Philip.


Last thing we needed was 4's or 5's taking the same shots as Melo and taking up his space to work. I was somewhat upset when we drafted Porzingis, but then I realized that he more talented than a lot of Euros. Yes, he played in Europe. Yes, he played against mostly non-NBA talent. Fact is he is 7'1, has a fluid jump shot, and is super athletic. Improve his defense and ball handling and he'll be a legit perennial All-Star.

Lopez, O'Quinn, and Williams were good signings. Lopez adds more value than Aldridge or Monroe because of what the team needs.


If we had a more experienced coach, I think we sneak into the playoffs depending on health.
 
Damn Greeks :smh:

And I was about to take a trip out to Mykonos and Santorini for a few weeks at the end of the month. Was really looking forward to going "Greek" on a few Greek women.
 
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A buddy of mine who's based in Paris works for this PE firm out there and writes monthly essays on his opinions of whats going on economically on a global scale. I've enjoyed each and every one of his "strategy" reports.

Debts that cannot be repaid won’t be


We are writing two thousand words on Greece even though we claim no inside knowledge of what will happen there in the next few hours or days. Rather, we want to put what is happening in some historic perspective. We believe this will help us come to a judgement about what may happen in coming months and years. While we do not expect events to impact our investment strategy in the near-term, Greece leaving the euro is now a real possibility and that may be a catalyst for some general market disruption in the months ahead.


The resolution to this crisis must include a significant restructuring (forgiveness) of Greek sovereign debt. This will be the first time such a thing has been needed for a member of the euro area and, according to the IMF, the first time it has been needed in a developed world economy since 1950. To many, unfortunately including many German politicians, this appears to suggest that Greece in 2015 is unique. How wrong, and dangerous, that is.


For at least as long as there have been interest rates there have been creditors and debtors. The chart below shows interest rates going back over 5,000 years. It comes from a recent speech given by Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England. Haldane had made an off-the-cuff comment that interest rates have never been lower than today and was challenged “how do you know?” Thanks to his research assistants, he now knows he was right.


Source: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/speeches/2015/828.aspx
So what else can we learn from the last 5,000 years? The first thing is that the history of credit is also the history of debt forgiveness.
The concept of gaining benefit from lending to someone else derives from a time when all societies were based on agriculture. Therefore a debtors’ payment to a creditor would be in the form of land, food and/or animals. However, agrarian societies are extravagantly cyclical with, quite literally, feast or famine dependent on the climate, and on whether a passing army had devoured your assets on its march to a war.


For a creditor, that volatility meant that your debtor could quite easily run out of assets with which to pay you. In ancient societies, once a debtor ran out of land, food and animals, the debtor became the repayment. He, and his family, became his creditors’ slaves.
The first attempt to tackle this rather divisive situation was made by Hammurabi (around 1,750 BC), the King of Babylon who created some of the oldest surviving legal codes including that agrarian debts should be cancelled in times of flood or drought. In addition, on ascending the throne, each new ruler in the Hammurabi dynasty cancelled all debts.


The Hammurabi laws (all 282 of them) were written on a stone slab that is now in the Louvre in Paris. Principles written in stone may not be a popular idea today but it worked for over a thousand years in the ancient world.
Part of the reason regular debt forgiveness could be done was that the King was himself likely to be a large creditor and the other large creditor tended to be the local Temple. Temples were the recipients of largesse from people seeking divine approval and were therefore asset rich and able to supply credit. But both these institutions benefited in the long-term from peaceful public acquiescence to their power so the occasional populist debt forgiveness was preferable to more short term profit. It had the additional benefit of creating the conditions for a new round of profit to be made from new debtors.


Once economies began to become more sophisticated however there was more desire for credit which created new opportunities for individuals, rather than the sovereign or the representatives of the Gods, to become creditors. Over time the creditors became dominant to the extent of significant proportions of the population were slaves to them. In modern parlance, inequality became so great that it threatened the stability of society. Or in even more modern parlance, the creditors became too big to fail.
This produced assorted crises including one in Athens in 594 BC.


In the years leading up to 594 BC the laws created by Draco around 620 BC had produced a society where all power rested with those who could afford to own armour and bear arms. The penalty for everything from loitering to murder was death (hence the derivation of “draconian”). Many debtors were enslaved and society was exceedingly unstable.


At that point the nobleman (and poet) Solon became the Archon or ruler of Athens and produced a new legal code (also written on stone slabs) which included the creation of classes of citizenship which broadened the rights of the majority of Athenians to the extent that it is regarded as the beginning of democracy. Solon also freed all slaves and decreed that a debtor could not pledge his person in the future. There is debate among academics but it is also possible that he devalued the currency (based on silver in those days). Although his reforms did not last in the near term, 100 years later when Athenian democracy took hold it was with reference to the laws of Solon.
There were many other debt related crises in the ancient world, not least those that led to the demise of the Republic of Rome in 27 BC and the demise of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. Into the modern world and there are almost too many to mention although our own Edward III in 1345 deserves one for repudiating his debts to his Italian creditors. Indeed the tendency for monarchs to arbitrarily repudiate their debts was one reason why they began to become unpopular.


There is certainly some evidence to suggest that the curbing of monarchical power in England during the 17th century created the conditions for the development of a more sophisticated credit system. The Bank of England was founded only six years after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 because, as the Bank of England’s own website puts it “People sensed that the country was on the brink of a tremendous expansion of trade, but one vital element was lacking: what was needed was a bank or "fund of money" - more liquidity, in modern parlance - to drive the trade of the country.” The Bank in turn looked to the model of the Amsterdam Wisselbank which since 1609 had been lending to the City of Amsterdam and the Dutch East India Company and had helped make the Netherlands the pre-eminent European power.


The great thing about providing credit to a city or state rather than to a monarch was that the debt did not depend on the survival of the individual monarch. The beginnings of European democracy created a much more reliable debtor to lend to as even the nascent democracy had taken the power of taxation from the monarch.


Is any of this relevant though in the 21st century? Today the debt issued by a nation state in an advanced economy is the “risk free rate” in that economy. The reason the nation state should, in theory at least, be able to borrow money more cheaply than any private institution is that it has behind it the power of taxation. This doesn’t always work out as theory suggests. In particular, the aftermath of war tends to create problems for nation states, as it has done since the age of city states and Roman Empires. Hence the need for periodic debt restructurings across Western Europe, not least in Germany, in the first half of the twentieth century.


But the risk free rate can only meet that definition if the state has complete control over its ability to repay. That control is derived not just from tax but also crucially from the ability to control the printing press on which the currency is produced.
The problem within the euro area is that the authority to tax is local but the authority to print money is not. So a nation that runs into trouble requires assistance from the other nations to acquire the currency it needs to pay its debts. Hence Greece is dependent on the European Central Bank (ECB) for euros.


The ECB can extend credit to a member state as long as that state continues to pay off its prior commitments to the ECB. 3.5 billion euros of Greek debt held by the ECB matures on July 20th. If the Greek government cannot pay the money owed to the ECB then the ECB should stop supplying Greece with euros. This is the most significant near-term catalyst that may determine if Greece stays in the euro and that is what requires action to be taken by Greece and its creditors sooner rather than later.


The reality is that Greece cannot afford to pay the ECB so it requires some debt forgiveness. But there is no mechanism in place within the euro area structure to allow the different treatment of one members’ debts to others. Given the lengths to which other nations within the euro area have gone to avoid a debt restructuring, any concessions to Greece create the possibility of emboldening nationalistic parties across the region, including those in Spain and Portugal where elections are due by the end of this year.


Where is today’s Solon you might reasonably ask? Somewhere within the euro area body politic there needs to be an effort made to find one. If the euro area creates a template of how to restructure the debts of a member state then it will have taken a significant step toward institutionalising the single currency. That will be worth sticking on a stone slab. There is one available here http://www.theguardian.com/politics...ate-resting-in-peace-in-a-south-london-garage
But to imagine that will get done by July 20th requires a leap of faith that even the most ardent Europhile is unlikely to be able to make. So that leaves us with three choices.


First, a deal could be struck along the lines of the one on offer prior to the Greek referendum on July 5th. This would involve no agreements on restructuring debt but perhaps an extension of the time allowed for Greece to make the reforms and public spending cuts demanded by the creditors. On the face of it this seems unlikely to be acceptable to the Greek government in the wake of the referendum. But compared to the alternatives below it may look good.


Second, the euro area concedes something on debt restructuring perhaps along the lines of “details to be determined later” but requires the Greeks to give something new in return. That would almost certainly include a tax on bank deposits. This was a part of how the Cypriot euro crisis was tackled. The crucial difference between Greece and Cyprus though is that there were plenty of bank accounts with more than the insured 100,000 euros in them. These uninsured deposits could be seen as fair game on the basis of that lack of insurance and because it was a tax on the rich and therefore politically acceptable.


In Greece though any tax on bank deposits will have to start at lower deposit levels which will be extremely unpopular as it would affect ordinary Greeks. If the tax was 10% it would raise around 14 billion euros from the depleted bank accounts. That 10% loss would only be acceptable if the alternative was a larger reduction in value of the deposits--the sort of reduction that would come from leaving the euro for example.


Which brings us to the third option, the most dangerous one for Greece, the entire euro area and indeed the rest of us. Greece is as member of NATO and is situated at the heart of the Mediterranean. It is therefore critical that it remains an integral part of Western Europe.


But option three sees Greece walking away and creating a parallel currency on the road to leaving the single currency in as orderly a way as possible. This is the outcome for which there is little popular support in Greece and which creates the greatest existential risk to the single currency. It seems the least likely, at least by July 20th. It would mean a greater loss of purchasing power for all Greeks, in the short run, than the tax on deposits mentioned above.


It is impossible to know how much a New Greek currency would fall relative to the euro but 20-40% is a range of guesstimates one has seen from commentators. It seems mad to think that is something that could gain popular support. But if there is no admittance by the rest of the euro area that Greece simply cannot repay its debts that is the outcome that we will see, if not in 2015 then at some point in the not too distant future.


As the economist Michael Hudson has written, debts that cannot be repaid won’t be. At some point the rest of Europe will have to accept that simple truth.
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I actually got a chance to see the Original Code of Hammurabi when I went out to Paris a few years ago. Pretty cool piece of history, I must say.
 
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Did we get Swaggy/ Iggy yet?.......
mean.gif


Would have liked Brandon Jennings tho, always lit MSG up
 
Bobby Marks believes Knicks built good foundation in free agency
July 6th, 2015 3:50 pm
Josh Newman

The Knicks did not score big with a marquee name in free agency this month, but now that the dust has started to settle, what Phil Jackson has been able to do with $28 million in cap space isn’t exactly being frowned upon in some circles.

“I like all four players that the Knicks got,” former Nets assistant general manager Bobby Marks told SNY.tv on the 4 Quarters Podcast Monday afternoon. “They went with kind of hitting singles instead of going for a home run. I think they’ve done well, it’s a start.

“They were one of the worst teams last year and you have to walk a little bit before you can run. I like what New York did, I think they set a good foundation there.”

Since free agency negotiating opened on July 1, Jackson has secured deals with Aaron Afflalo, Robin Lopez and a sign-and-trade agreement with the Orlando Magic to acquire Queens native Kyle O’Quinn. Those names are not as attractive as Greg Monroe, Marc Gasol, LaMarcus Aldridge and DeAndre Jordan, but combined with draft Kristaps Porzingis and Jerian Grant, it has been a productive first offseason for Jackson.

“I would give them a solid B right now,” said Marks, who has recently done television work for ESPN and been a must-follow on Twitter since free agency started thanks to his reputation has a strong cap guy. “I think they were behind the 8-ball a little bit just from coming off a 17-win season. I like the two picks with Porzingis and Grant. I think it was a hard sell trying to lure some of these big-name free agents to New York and you’re seeing that in L.A. right now. They’re going through the trade market and guys at the end of free agency.”

Arguably the biggest question now becomes how will these pieces, some of which are unproven, fit with Carmelo Anthony? That will be one of the most interesting dynamics of the 2015-16 Knicks as Anthony, 31, returns from season-ending knee surgery.

For those screaming for Jackson to trade Anthony and start a true re-build, that would be difficult at this time as Anthony still owed in excess of $100 million over the next four seasons. In addition, Anthony has a no-trade clause in his contract, so the Knicks are not sending him anywhere at any point without his approval.

“When they sold Carmelo on the plan when they were recruiting him, I would be interested to know what they actually sold him on,” Marks said. “Was this part of it? Was it going to be a rebuild? Carmelo’s gotta come back and show that he’s healthy, he’s coming off that knee injury, so that will be an interesting dynamic.

“They still owe him about $100 million for four years and he’s got that no-trade clause, so even if they wanted to move him, he can dictate the process. He’s also still an elite player, so it will be interesting to see how these pieces work with New York.”
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The Foundation mention :nerd:
 
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