Knicks Links: Joakim Noah undergoes shoulder surgery

Who’s ready for some links today?

I SAID WHO’S READY FOR SOME LINKS TODAY?!

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Just kidding, nothing is that exciting in Knicks land today.

Here’s something to listen to while you read:

It just struck me that that song and Food & Liquor are over 10 years old now. Damn.

Kristaps rises back to the top of the link power rankings

— So yesterday it was announced that KP would be followed around/catered to/coached/lectured on the triangle/have his butt wiped by Knicks assistant Josh Longstaff as he prepped for the Eurobasket tournament to compete with his native Latvia.

It would’ve been reasonable to assume that the Knicks packed Longstaff in an oversized wooden shipping crate themselves and sent him to KP’s doorstep in Latvia, but, in a turn of events, Porzingis actually asked for Longstaff. Per Stefan Bondy of the NYDN:

...a source close to Porzingis said the power forward wants Longstaff as an assistant coach with the Latvian national team this summer. It would be a relatively small commitment from Longstaff for the European championships - a tournament that only lasts a few weeks - and makes sense from the Knicks perspective to have one of their own monitoring Porzingis overseas.

An unconfirmed report from European basketball reporter David Pick stated Longstaff is already slated to join Porzingis in Latvia. Although that wouldn't be surprising, nothing was finalized as of Tuesday eventing, according to a source. Longstaff had already been mentioned by Porzingis' brother as a possibility to fly to Latvia for training purposes.

— The New York Times’ Harvey Araton is a couple weeks late to the “Porzingis lashes out against dysfunction” party, but he wrote arguably the best column on the matter to date. Because he works for the New York Times.

— Yes:

— Former Knicks in the playoffs seems to be one of the flavors of the week in the Knicks’ corner of the internet (a corner that I can only imagine smells of year-old cheese and Jim Dolan’s fedora sweat), and Yaron Weitzman of Bleacher Report delves into the painstaking details of this year’s OAKAAKs playing late into April.

— Marc Berman of the NY Post reminds you that, yes, Joakim Noah sucked this year, and yes, he’s getting paid a lot of money. (Also, he just had his shoulder surgery.) I mostly just found it funny that with a headline that reads Joakim Noah gave the Knicks more than poor play, injuries and drug shame, the only silver lining that he could really give was that Porzingis said Noah was a good presence in the locker room before he got hurt. I mean, he was also a pretty good rebounder.

Consider yourself redeemed, Joakim, the voice of Porzingis hath set you free from damnation in Marc Berman’s eyes.

— Kobe Bryant came to the Tribeca Film Festival to promote his film “Dear Basketball,” and was of course asked about Phil Jackson and the Knicks. He appears to have taken Phil’s side, but as always, his comments were still a tad frosty about his former coach:

“I’ve been around Phil for a very, very long time and I think that people tend to forget that there’s a lot of hardships that take place. I mean, even when he was with Chicago and with us certainly, There are a lot of dark times people tend to forget that stuff, they tend to forget the disagreements, the arguments they tend to forget that stuff. You gotta have a winter to truly enjoy spring and a lot of times you want to jump straight to spring but it just don’t work like that.”

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“From a basketball perspective it’s all about what do you (Carmelo) want to do? Phil can be tough and I certainly know about that, I wasn’t the easiest person to work along with as well. Those things can work themselves out if you trust the fact this man has a lot of championship rings for a reason doesn’t mean he’s always right, but it mean’s he figures things out more often than not.”

Mostly platitudes, but yeah, take it for what you will.

Let’s nicely chat about our favorite albums in the comments today, shall we?