Friday, May 10, 2024
United Wholesale Mortgage Fires Frank Vogel
May 10, 2024, 10:26 a.m. ET10 minutes ago10 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
With Madeleine Westerhout off the stand, and Michael Cohen not expected to begin testifying until next week, we’re now anticipating a group of witnesses who we’re less familiar with. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be important.
I’ve made the mistake here of referring to some witnesses as “dry.” A forensic analyst from Montana who is attending the trial recognized me in line yesterday and told me I should stop doing so: She pointed out, correctly, that especially in a records case like this, the “dry” evidence is often the most important. We appreciate her and all our close and careful readers.
Sometimes I put aside my microscope and go to the telescope: Donald Trump was our president.
America has done a lot right in its history. The American experiment thrilled the world. The country has been a beacon, and I'm not going to go there on America's wrongs. It's people are as virtuous as any other...They elected Donald Trump as their president, and may again. WHAT?!
Opening Statements Are Not Evidence; Blanche Didn’t Open Any Door in Opening
I just re-read Todd Blanche’s opening statement again. He gave an anodyne opening. Never said Stormy Daniels had lied about sex, or anything; never said “We deny that they had sex”, NOTHING! If there is a conviction, the case is coming back like a boomerang. Let’s refamiliarise with Justice Merchan’s stated ground for denying the mistrial:
Merchan said Trump’s lawyers opened to door to detailed testimony about the alleged sexual encounter when they asserted in their opening statement (https://apnews.com/trump-trial-hush-money-live-updates-stormy-daniels-day-14#0000018f-5f11-dc6a-abff-5fdb7af20000) that no sex had occurred, telling them: “Your denial puts the jury in the position of choosing who they believe.”
Here, Justice Merchan says Blanche, talking about Michael Cohen shouldn’t be “testifying from the podium.” That is, Merchan knew, he had just so instructed the jury, that what the lawyers say is not evidence.
No Words. smh
Stormy Daniels
@StormyDaniels
Real men respond to testimony by being sworn in and taking the stand in court. Oh...wait. Nevermind.
6:58 PM · May 9, 2024
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66.7K Views
Merchan Fucked Up BIG TIME
Remember, what the lawyers say in an opening statement or at any time thereafter is not evidence.5 The lawyers are not witnesses. What I say is not evidence. I am not a witness. In other words, you must decide the case on the evidence and what the lawyers say at any time is not evidence.
I was doubting myself. Thought maybe NY law was different from FL law. So I looked it up. There it is in black and white. The New York State standard jury instruction on opening statements.
AP:
Merchan said Trump’s lawyers opened to door to detailed testimony about the alleged sexual encounter when they asserted in their opening statement that no sex had occurred, telling them: “Your denial puts the jury in the position of choosing who they believe.”
Holy shit. Folks, that is just wrong on the law.
AP:
“There were many times, not once or twice, but many times when Ms. Necheles could’ve objected but didn’t,” the judge said.
In particular, the judge said, the defense should’ve objected to prosecutor Susan Hoffinger’s question about whether Trump used a condom, which led to Daniels’ response that he hadn’t.
“I agree. That should never have come out. That question should never have been asked and that answer should never have been given,” Merchan said. “For the life of me, I don’t know why Ms. Necheles didn’t object.”
[As I wrote in the annotated NYT post, a judge cannot let the sins of the defense attorneys deprive the defendant of a fair trial. A conviction can get reverse on ineffective assistance of counsel if the judge lets that happen.]
*Annotated
May 9, 2024, 5:02 p.m. ET2 minutes ago2 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
After insisting to the defense that he barred certain details “to protect your client,” Justice Merchan...says, “I disagree with your narrative that there’s any new account here.” He is citing specific issues with the defense's arguments, saying that instead of denying the falsification of business records, they denied the sex with Daniels. “That in my mind allows the people to do what they can to rehabilitate her and to corroborate her story. Your motion for a mistrial is denied,” he concludes.
[Oy vey. Rehabilitation is allowed. You can ask the same question on re-direct that you did on direct when the defense has crossed the wit. on the point. BUT THE WITNESS REPEATING THE SAME TESTIMONY IS NOT CORROBORATION.]
May 9, 2024, 4:58 p.m. ET7 minutes ago7 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
And now, Justice Merchan again criticizes the defense for not objecting to testimony that was later used in a motion for mistrial. He says he agrees that the question about whether Trump wore a condom should not have been asked or answered. But he says he does not know “why on earth” Susan Necheles, the defense lawyer, didn’t object to that question.
[This has bothered me every time that I have read it. I'll try to tease my bother out: 1) Merchan rules at some point, "You can't elicit that testimony." 2) the prosecution elicits that testimony. 3) defense objections are sustained. At one point Merchan said on Tuesday that he himself cut off the questioning. Merchan was hard on the prosecution that day (Tuesday?). So if, as a judge, you know that the prosecution has gone someplace that you prohibited them to go, like e.g. the condom, what do you do? You can wait for a defense objection. You can intervene yourself. Both of which Merchan did. But if you do the latter, you're second-guessing the defense. Maybe it's part of their strategy to not object. But Merchan is not crediting Necheles with strategic lawyering, he is criticizing her as an incompetent. A judge is not judging the lawyers. He is judging the fairness of the trial that the DEFENDANT has a fundamental right to.]
May 9, 2024, 4:59 p.m. ET6 minutes ago6 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
This could not be going much worse for the defense. Not only is Merchan signaling that he will almost certainly reject their mistrial motion, but he’s dressing down their lawyering in front of their client, the former president.
May 9, 2024, 5:02 p.m. ET3 minutes ago3 minutes ago
Alan FeuerReporting from inside the courthouse
He’s even criticizing specific lines of their cross-examination, chiding Necheles in particular for leaning into the most awkward and uncomfortable parts of Stormy Daniels’s testimony with her questions in a way that he says he simply didn’t understand.
[Maggie Haberman has blogged previously that Justice Merchan is harder on Necheles than on the other defense attorneys.]
May 9, 2024, 4:55 p.m. ET9 minutes ago9 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
Justice Merchan begins to address the mistrial motion. He says that after ruling against the defense's request for a mistrial on Tuesday, he went back and reviewed many of his past decisions, studying them in his chambers. He says that he came away satisfied. His voice is trembling a bit as he interrupts himself. He says at every trial, the evidence comes in a different way. Why is he saying that now, he asks? Because in going back to opening statements, he sees that the defense “denied that there was ever a sexual encounter between Stormy Daniels and the defendant.”
[See annotation to Brom's 4:58 post. "opening statements": That's simply wrong as I annotated Feuer's 4:56 pm blog post.]
May 9, 2024, 4:56 p.m. ET7 minutes ago7 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
The defense opened the door to Daniels’s testimony, Merchan is saying. He seems to be suggesting that what the prosecution did in response was perfectly appropriate.
[Okay, wait, we're getting doors opened backwards. The prosecution goes first. They open doors. The defense responds.]
May 9, 2024, 4:56 p.m. ET7 minutes ago7 minutes ago
Alan FeuerReporting from inside the courthouse
Merchan is effectively saying here that Trump’s maximalist position of utterly denying the sexual encounter with Daniels had taken place clearly opened the door for the prosecution to introduce specific evidence that it did occur.
[Let me think that through as I type: Trump: I deny sex. I'm charged with business records fraud for paying off Stormy for sex. I also deny business records fraud for paying off Stormy for sex. I was being extorted and paid Stormy off to protect my wife and family. Stormy testifies and said we had sex. Now, what is the defense supposed to do? Not cross her? Limit their cross to "You don't know anything about business records?" "No. How would I know?" PERHAPS. Stormy said she received hush money from Cohen/Schiller/Trump, whomever. Trump's lawyers claim it wasn't hush money. Michael Cohen did it on his own. It was response to an extortion.
[Well, that's not a good defense. There's an impressive paper trail. But what was the defense to do when Stormy testified that they fucked and the client says they didn't? I think any lawyer, any judge, knows that you have to cross her on the sex. But...they didn't have to. "My client's not charged with fucking her, your Honor. He's charged with paying her her off. It doesn't matter if the sex is true."
[Merchan: Trump denied sex, ergo opened door to proof of sex. Did Trump deny sex? He hasn't testified yet. Did the government introduce tweets, etc. where Trump said, "I didn't have sex with her"? Well, yes. He has tweeting that she was a liar, repeatedly; that's denying the sex. Is the defense opening, Blanche saying that Trump didn't have sex evidence? NO. The jury is specifically instructed that what the lawyers say is not evidence.
[This is a tough position for the defense to be in.]
May 9, 2024, 4:58 p.m. ET5 minutes ago5 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
A judge also concerns himself with being overturned on appeals, which can be very embarrassing, especially in a high-stakes trial such as this. By saying he went back and reviewed his own decision, Merchan sends a signal to appeals judges who might review his work here, that he took that first motion for a mistrial very, very seriously.
[Merchan is doing the internal corroboration bit, now. "I went back and reviewed everything." "I KNOW I was right." You can review until the fucking cows come home. It doesn't matter if you were wrong. That doesn't help Merchan on appeal.]
May 9, 2024, 4:50 p.m. ET53 minutes ago53 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
Joshua Steinglass said that the details elicited about the sex act were important because they corroborated other parts of Stormy Daniels’s story. For instance, at their dinner before having sex, according to Daniels, Trump asked her about safe-sex practices in the porn industry. Prosecutors later asked Daniels whether Trump used a condom. Steinglass argues that fewer than 10 questions actually elicited salacious details.
[That's the same bizarro world legal argument as below. This is INTERNAL corroboration. There is no EXTERNAL evidence that Daniels and Trump had sex. Daniels didn't save a semen sample, wasn't secretly recording it. There is NO external corroboration that I am aware of. If the prosecution calls, e.g. Keith Schiller, Trump told him to go up to Stormy to proposition her for Trump, that would be something, and something powerful.]
He has a problem. This is not normal.
Reporting from inside the courthouse
Trump is snoozing through this section of the testimony.
Excellent reporting by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, NYT
As he walks into the courtroom at 9:30 a.m. each day of his trial, Donald J. Trump scans the benches for familiar faces.
He has glared at George Conway, an antagonist who is reporting on the former president’s criminal case for The Atlantic magazine.
People close to Mr. Trump have worried about whether long days in the courtroom have had an effect on his mental state. He has been forced to sit silently for hours as witnesses like Stormy Daniels, the porn star whose story of a liaison set the case in motion, have insulted him in deeply personal ways. Before the trial, Mr. Trump’s advisers discussed the need to have people who Mr. Trump finds supportive nearby when he looks back from the defense table — both for his sake and so that jurors can see he has people standing with him.
AP: At one point, the judge told defense lawyers during a sidebar conversation — out of earshot of the jury and the public — that he could hear Trump “cursing audibly.”
Trump is risking direct criminal contempt of court in front of, and perhaps within the hearing of, the jury. That is multiples of seriousness above posting things out of court. There is also risk that Trump, if he were to blurt out, "I never had sex with her!" or even "Liar!" that he would be considered to be testifying, in which event the prosecution would be able to cross-examine him. We are nowhere near that point but Justice Merchan should warn Trump of both risks, that he would be held in direct criminal contempt of court, jailed, physically gagged while in court, and that any substantive, testimonial outburst, however brief, could subject him to cross-examination.
24 min ago
Trump’s team will once again call for a mistrial
By MICHAEL R. SISAK (AP)
Before breaking for lunch, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche told Merchan that the defense plans to renew its call for a mistrial based on Daniels’ testimony. Blanche also said they will seek to prevent former Playboy model Karen McDougal from testifying and that they will make further arguments pertaining to the gag order.
Merchan said he would send the jury home at 4 p.m. and subsequently take up the defense’s arguments.
Harvey Weinstein's rape conviction in New York court got overturned on appeal because of all of the "bad acts" evidence that the judge there let in. Here, this isn't even a rape case, it's a falsified docs case with intent to interfere in the 2016 election, but Stormy Daniels was able to testify that she felt physically forced into sex with Trumpie. I did not find that testimony at all persuasive, but that is not the point. The point is that the prosecution did not have to call Daniels and they did; they called her and then she gave surprise, irrelevant, potentially inflaming testimony on force that clearly was prejudicial to the defendant's rights. I thought Justice Merchan should have granted the mistrial last week. I think he should grant it now. And then they want to call McDougal. The more testimony the judge lets in about sex the more off-topic the trial becomes.
Not what you meant, but Yes
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
Stormy Daniels is finished. The most intense witness we’ve experienced thus far.
Oh, that's never good. Not for lawyer, not for client. That is also the reason that this cross went on longer than I, as a former criminal trial lawyer, would have liked. Still, Necheles struck some telling blows. Daniels' testimony is not quite complete, but near so, and to me, the defense raised reasonable doubt on the key element in the charge: that Trumpie's motive in the payout was the election. The alternative defense motive is protection of marriage and family. The prosecution did not prove that beyond a reasonable doubt with this witness, in my opinion, not even close.
Necheles appears to be playing to her client’s ego
She resumed questioning by asking Daniels if she agreed that Trump was the “biggest celebrity” at the golf tournament where they initially met and if she recalled that people were following him around.
Trump was among the players in a field that included Ray Romano and Maury Povich, as well as football legends Jerry Rice, John Elway, and an early career Aaron Rodgers.
“He did very well at that golf tournament, right?” Necheles suggested.
Cross of Stormy Daniels Has Ended
? Maybe I missed a memo. It was not my impression that Stormy was speaking quietly nor that she wanted for energy.
Testifying is grueling. I feel a lashing out, or tears, coming from Stormy.
May 9, 2024, 11:44 a.m. ET4 minutes ago4 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
The jury is back and so is Stormy Daniels, as Susan Necheles continues her cross-examination. …Daniels is still speaking quietly. …Daniels is fighting back, but with a little less energy.
May 9, 2024, 11:53 a.m. ET3 minutes ago3 minutes ago
Kate ChristobekReporting from inside the courthouse
Stormy Daniels continued to insult Trump up until the end of her cross-examination, at one point even questioning which indictment of his Susan Necheles was referring to. She quipped: “There were a lot of indictments.”
Maggie HabermanReporting from inside the courthouse
Just to remind readers, as Susan Necheles seeks to challenge Stormy Daniels's story by describing her encounter with Trump as a “supposed” meeting at a hotel, we saw evidence on screen that Daniels had not just Trump’s bodyguard, Keith Schiller, listed in her phone, but his gatekeeper, Rhona Graff.
May 9, 2024, 11:15 a.m. ET11 minutes ago11 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
…Necheles notes that in Daniels’s book, she describes the early part of the encounter, writing that she made him her “bitch.” Necheles seeks to suggest there’s an inconsistency here, because Daniels wrote about being aggressive with Trump but then testified that she was intimidated when he approached her for sex. …
May 9, 2024, 11:02 a.m. ET13 minutes ago13 minutes ago
Maggie HabermanReporting from inside the courthouse
Susan Necheles spent many, many minutes drilling down on what Stormy Daniels meant when she said she and Trump had dinner but didn’t eat. It’s a pretty picayune distinction that the jurors can probably pick up on. It's starting to feel like Necheles is swinging a hammer over and over this minor semantic choice just for the sake of it.
May 9, 2024, 10:58 a.m. ET17 minutes ago17 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
Susan Necheles is addressing something that Stormy Daniels has long said, which is that she did not eat while in Trump’s hotel room in 2006 — presenting evidence that Daniels has at times described that episode as having been a “dinner.” It may seem minor but the defense is likely hoping to show the jurors that Daniels’s memory cannot be trusted in this description of something that happened just before she says she and Trump had sex. Daniels, though, is still fighting back, describing the encounter as a “dinner” but saying no food was ever served — which is why she’s always harped on the lack of food in interviews
Daniels addresses potential paranormal experiences
By JAKE OFFENHARTZ
In one of the trial’s odder moments, Daniels was pressed about her experience dealing with a ghost — which may have just been a marsupial.
Asked by Necheles about her claim that she lived in a New Orleans home that was “haunted and the spirits attacked you,” Daniels launched into an explanation of her possible encounter.
“The house had some very unexplained activity. We brought in experts, people to measure the electromagnetic fields, religious experts, scientists,” she said. “A lot of the activity was completely debunked as a giant possum that was under the house.”
The line of questioning appeared aimed at undermining Daniels’ credibility while giving Necheles a chance to highlight that Daniels is working on a paranormal investigation show called Spooky Babes.
It's not odd; it's the witness who's odd. This is effective cross-examination on how odd the witness is and why she has no credibility.
By MICHAEL R. SISAK
Many jurors are viewing the back and forth between Necheles and Daniels the way they might watch a tennis match, swiveling their heads between the lawyers’ lectern and the witness box with each question and answer. Some jurors scribble notes, others lean back in their chairs.
Well, I'm not there. How do I know? Just from my experience with similar witnesses as a criminal trial lawyer, I think the prosecution has lost the jury on this witness.
Effective answer by Daniels.
By JENNIFER PELTZ, MICHAEL R. SISAK
Turning pointedly to Daniels’ career as an adult film actor, writer and director, Necheles asked: “You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear real?”
“The sex in those films is real, just like the sex in that room,” Daniels replied. “The character themes might be different, but the sex is very real. That’s why it’s pornography, not a B movie.”
Regarding her account of having a sexual encounter with Trump — a claim he denies — Daniels said: “If that story was not true I would’ve written it to be a lot better.”
“Because you’re a good story writer, right?” Necheles responded.
Effective point on cross. (AP)
By JENNIFER PELTZ
Necheles confronted Daniels with two statements she signed in early 2018 denying that she ever had sexual involvement with Trump or received money to keep quiet. She said her then-lawyer, Keith Davidson, advised her to sign it and that she was told that Trump’s then-attorney Michael Cohen was pressing him to get her to do so.
Necheles noted that by then, Trump wasn’t running for election — an apparent effort to buttress the defense’s argument that the then president’s reasons for wanting to squelch the claims weren’t related to his political ambitions, but rather to protecting his family and reputation.
“I wouldn’t know what he wanted to protect,” Daniels said.
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
An all-important exchange just now: Susan Necheles asks Stormy Daniels about her experience making porn films. “You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real,” she says. Daniels responds, “That’s not how I would put it.” She is momentarily taken aback, and then adds, “The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.” What jurors make of this — and of the accusation that pornography is akin to fabricating from whole cloth a sexual encounter — is incredibly important.
Maggie HabermanReporting from inside the courthouse
Susan Necheles now brings up something that was inevitably going to be part of cross-examination: Stormy Daniels’s work as a medium. “You’ve made a show and a podcast claiming you can speak with dead people, right?” The goal is to make her seem unreliable as a narrator. Daniels tries to make a joke around one her paranormal interests, and the jurors don’t react.
May 9, 2024, 10:27 a.m. ET3 minutes ago3 minutes ago
Jesse McKinleyReporting from inside the courthouse
Susan Necheles just noted that Stormy Daniels has “an online store where you sell merchandise,” accusing her of “shilling” online. Daniels responds: “Not unlike Mr. Trump.”
May 9, 2024, 10:28 a.m. ET2 minutes ago2 minutes ago
Jonathan SwanReporting from inside the courthouse
Daniels smirks as she looks at celebratory tweets she sent on March 30, 2023, the day Trump was criminally indicted for the first time. She posted about drinking champagne and selling “Team Stormy” merchandise.
Whataboutism, and he got it from the Russians.
May 9, 2024, 10:19 a.m. ET5 minutes ago5 minutes ago
Maggie HabermanReporting from inside the courthouse
Watching Susan Necheles attempt to pull Stormy Daniels apart, I am reminded of a point we made in coverage about Trump not long ago. His goal is not to make people think he’s pure so much as his goal is to suggest his antagonists are all impure.
Jonathan SwanReporting from inside the courthouse
The defense’s playbook is very clear: Portray Daniels as a money-grubbing, sleazy, dishonest operator who tried to use Trump to get fame and riches from the anti-Trump resistance. Every aspect of her questioning hits at one of these themes.
Reporting from inside the courthouse
Stormy Daniels… [is] also seeking to snipe at Necheles’s word choices, as she seeks to avoid losing a round to the defense lawyer, arguing about whether or not she did in fact accept money to keep silent and insisting she wanted her story out. But she’s in a tough spot: at the end of the day, she was paid nearly $100,000 after her representatives took their cuts and her story did not get out in 2016, when she was paid.
Yeah, she can’t plausibly argue that. Sleazy lawyer, sleazy witness, sleazy defendant.
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
The defense is now showing a statement that was released in January 2018, in which Daniels said that she did not have an affair with Trump. But Necheles did something clever, changing the wording to suggest she denied having sex with Trump — and Daniels agreed, not splitting hairs about the wording here. …
May 9, 2024, 9:59 a.m. ET5 minutes ago5 minutes ago
Alan FeuerReporting from inside the courthouse
What’s interesting about this defense strategy is that Daniels is, of course, not on trial here. While the issue of her truthfulness about her motives in selling her story goes to the larger question of her credibility about things like, say, her sexual encounter with Trump, Trump’s own motives in seeking to silence Daniels’s story about that encounter are much more central to the charges in this case.
May 9, 2024, 9:55 a.m. ET4 minutes ago4 minutes ago
Susanne CraigReporting from inside the courthouse
Stormy Daniels is pushing back on Susan Necheles, taking little the lawyer says at face value. “Show me where I said that,” Daniels just said, forcing the defense to produce exhibits to back up their allegations.
May 9, 2024, 9:56 a.m. ET3 minutes ago3 minutes ago
Jesse McKinleyReporting from inside the courthouse
Necheles had pulled up the wrong transcript and audio snippet to try to illustrate that Daniels had called her lawyer weak-willed — she used another impolite term — in the negotiations over the 2016 deal with Michael Cohen. When the right tape and transcript is found, her voice is not on the tape; it is Cohen and Keith Davidson, her lawyer at the time.
May 9, 2024, 9:57 a.m. ETJust NowJust now
Jonathan SwanReporting from inside the courthouse
The jurors just heard an audio recording of Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels's former lawyer, telling Michael Cohen that Daniels was desperate for the money and was panicked that her leverage to get it would disappear after the 2016 election because she expected Trump to lose. Davidson describes hearing Daniels say this to him on the phone, but Daniels denied it to the court shortly after the tape was played. The main goal of the defense’s questioning of Daniels this morning seems to be to establish for the jury that she was motivated by money above all else.
May 9, 2024, 9:39 a.m. ET15 minutes ago15 minutes ago
Jonah BromwichReporting from inside the courthouse
Susan Necheles, the defense lawyer, begins the questioning by saying that in 2011, Daniels denied having had sex with Trump. The prosecution objects and the judge instructs Daniels not to answer. Necheles moves on, saying that Daniels changed her account in 2016, when she was trying to sell her story.
In past appearances I’ve seen Necheles ask questions she knows will prompt objections. She's aware, as are many courtroom veterans, that just because something is stricken from the record, it doesn’t mean the jury didn’t hear it. Indeed, sometimes jurors pay more attention then.
Tatum O'Neal’s Achievement: 51st Anniversary Celebration
Sometimes a great accomplishment gets dismissed as a one-hit wonder, the only achievement in an unremarkable life. But when you do what Tatum O'Neal did...
...and when you do it when you're nine years-old, you're not a one-hit wonder, you're a wonder. You're not time-bound, you transcend time and become timeless.
Tatum O’Neal’s life has been filled with pain and tragedy, but fifty-one years ago today she ascended into the company of the Immortals, and God turned to Job and said, “Look I made another one!”
Wednesday, May 08, 2024
Manhattan Spring "On the anniversary of Willis Reed's dramatic emergence..." Doodoo doodoo doodoo doodoo
On the anniversary of Willis Reed's dramatic emergence from the locker room before Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals to lead the Knicks to their first title, Brunson sent the Madison Square Garden crowd into a frenzy when he came out to warm up at halftime after missing the entire second quarter while the Pacers surged ahead to a double-figure lead.
Manny Hatty 99 Indy Pindy 91, End 3Q
EARTHQUAKE! Manhattan 25-8 3Q, 88-81, 4:09 3Q
Brunson’s back, Willis Reed-like. Only 8 points in 16 mins.
NY is on TO now and I bet when they broke the roof on the Garden about flew off.
Queer Latifah 🥂
@TheAfrocentricI
If the Knicks don’t have Brunson, idk man. I was always worried about this potentially happening with Tom’s coaching style.
9:12 PM · May 8, 2024
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435 Views
What's Thibodeau's "coaching style"? Look at these snips of minutes played from G1:
Thibodeau rode Jimmy Butler hard-hard in 🌬️ and in🧊.
Oh! Brunson got hurt!
"Sore foot". He's questionable to return. I take back that "Knicks" fans know their team will come back.
HT Manhattan 63 Indiana 73
Garden partiers know that they're team will come back. "Heat" fans don't know that.
I was in my car and couldn't type this: With one-tenth of a second left in the 1Q, "Miles" "McBride" fouled ex-Manhattanite Opi Tobbin shooting three. That bonehead play allowed Indy to tie the score.
The Case for Corrupt: Case Closed.
“All she’s really done today, though, is make official what everybody — including Jack Smith — already knew, which was she had no intention of getting this case to trial,” Cobb told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Tuesday.
…
Cannon said she still has “eight substantive pretrial motions” she must rule on, but Cobb argues that she’s had months to sort out various pretrial motions.
“So, you know, this is something that I think it was always her objective, frankly, to prevent this from going to trial,” Cobb said, as highlighted by Mediaite. “But also, I think, you know, her … inability, wholesale inability, to do it was made palpable.”
Cobb argued that Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, said her decision to boot the trial was a “combination of bias and incompetence.” He said her decisions, such as scheduling a hearing about the Justice Department’s trial team, are “really inexplicable” and “tragic.”
“She has not honored the public’s interest for one day in this case, as she has sat in her office, apparently paralyzed from ruling on easily resolvable motions. And sadly, this case will not go to trial, notwithstanding the fact it’s one of the most important cases in history and could have easily been tried in advance of the election,” Cobb said.
Barry Jackson Lowers on Pat Riley
Time for significant changes: Here’s exactly
The sample size is now large enough, the body of evidence so overwhelming, that the highest levels of the Heat’s brain trust now must privately acknowledge what was painfully evident to many of their fans 10 months ago:
This nucleus — with an aging Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo continuing to be your top two players (as opposed to your second- and third-best players) — isn’t good enough to win a title…
This "nucleus", this "core", does not include Tyler Herro.
Heat president Pat Riley never made that admission Monday; in fact, he pushed back and said that a great team can still have Butler as its best player.
But there’s no evidence to support that. Consider that the Heat lost 12 of its final 13 home games against talent-rich teams. …
What’s more, Miami closed by losing 12 consecutive home games to teams with sure-fire Hall of Famer players in uniform. …That’s not a blip. That’s proof that your roster — healthy or unhealthy — can’t measure up.
Absolutely right. But "availability" is Riley's, public, prescription.
Change is needed. There simply cannot be a Year 6 of this core, this root-canal offense, this stale product, this environment when the Heat can’t even go a week without losing a player to an injury or injury management.
…
Let’s start with these four uncomfortable questions:
▪ Should Butler be on the table in trade talks?
By pointing out that Butler was essentially warned a year ago about missing too many games, and by saying Butler should keep his mouth shut when it comes to trolling other teams when he’s injured, it was almost as if Riley was seeing if he could needle Butler into asking for a trade.
Riley also said the Heat doesn’t want to trade him, but then added the qualifier “not right now.”
Here, in our view, is how the offseason should go:
1). Determine if a package not involving Butler or Adebayo can net an All-Star player in return. …
Tyler not part of core.
I’m skeptical…We’ll see. But this is the course that Miami first must exhaust.
2). If it’s clear that the answer to Question 1 is no, determine what Butler could extract in a trade and seriously consider it.
Take the step from “seriously considering it” to “aggressively pursuing it” if he makes clear that he would become a malcontent if not given the contract extension…
Option 3, not labeled as such:
If neither option 1 nor 2 leads to any sort of substantive roster change, then consider a significant lateral move …
I’m not clear what Jackson means by a “lateral move” is. Not getting better, reshuffling the deck for the sake of newness? I'm not sure what he means by "significant", if e.g. he considers Terry Rozier to be a "significant lateral move".
— late in the summer — because there’s a corrosive effect to staleness and stagnation. …
That seems to be what he means. Riley used a near-equal: "erosion".
The worst thing the Heat could do is come back with this cast for a sixth season and expect different results.
(Definition of insanity). Jackson is repeating himself. He's caught between the walls of reasonableness and reality.
Option 4, not labeled as such.
The view here is that a Butler extension for 2026-27 — but not quite at the max — is prudent only if the Heat can acquire another star to play alongside Butler and Adebayo. Then you can justify it by saying “this is our core for three years, for better or worse.”
This is circuitous. Jackson has gone from “option 1”, a star in exchange for role players (“I’m skeptical”), to “option 2”, trade Butler for a star, to option 3, “a significant lateral move” that doesn’t bring a star, to option 4, extending Butler "only if" you can get another star.
But if Herro and the Heat’s other assets cannot snag that type of player, giving Butler $58 million in 2026-27 — when he’s 37 — seems foolhardy when your core won’t be good enough to compete for a title.
Tyler not part of core.
What’s clear is that the Heat has extracted everything it can from a roster featuring Butler as its best player.
Now let’s be clear: Butler’s time here has been a rousing success...
But he shouldn’t be untouchable, not after a clear offensive decline, not after indications that the tire tread has begun to wear thin.
There’s also this element to it: Is there anything Riley or coach Erik Spoelstra can do to make Butler play more games, especially if the organization gives him an extension? Very likely not. ...
I agree. This is a shot at Riley's cure: everyone should play 70-80 games.
...
▪ What if Riley, who wants to win every year, and an ownership group that loathes rebuilding is offered a package for Butler that would make the team less competitive next season but better positioned for the future?
The Heat fundamentally disagrees with the idea of trading top players for draft picks and rebuilding over multiple seasons. Heat officials have studied this approach and they’re convinced it usually doesn’t work.
So barring a stunning change of heart, that’s not going to be the direction the Heat takes, even if Butler asks for a trade.
But should it be?
Again, Jackson is caught between reasonableness and "Heat" reality.
No, because if the Heat misses the playoffs next season, it would owe unprotected future picks to Oklahoma City in 2026 and Charlotte in 2028...
Now though, he hangs himself on his own petard. Trading Butler for mainly draft picks, becoming "less competitive next season", i.e. falling out of the playoffs into the draft lottery (we barely got in the last two seasons with this roster), would lose us our 2026 and 2028 "unprotected" picks. So that doesn't work. That would be reshuffling draft picks, getting worse in the process and losing unprotected lottery picks. Giving Jackson the benefit of the doubt, that's illogical. However, I do have a doubt. I like the non-Jimmy roster: Bam, Tyler, Terry, Duncan, Caleb, Jovic, 3J. In any trade of Jimmy we would have to get back another warm body, and a decent one, preferably a point guard or Big, however aged and expensive. Add that player to the new core and I don't think it's unreasonable that we would make the playoffs again. But that's just my opinion.
The view here is that taking a step back to try to take a step forward in 2025-26 should be considered only in one very specific circumstance: If the Heat:
1). Determines in trade talks that its assets, including Herro and other young players, cannot deliver an All-Star player in return and if (Jackson's emphasis)
2). By far the best trade offer received for Butler is a package of first-round draft picks and a good young player who’s simply not as good as Butler, and (Jackson's emphasis) if Butler makes clear that he will be a malcontent if not traded. (And Butler has given no such indication of that.)
Diagramming this:
Regress=no star in Herro trade + first rounders +good young player in Butler trade +Butler malcontent if not traded. Reasonableness: Jackson is "skeptical" we could get a star for Herro, et al; is convinced we will fall into the lottery if we don't get star; is convinced that we will fall into lottery if we trade Butler which we should only do if he's a malcontent, for which there is no indication. That's not reasonable lol.
If the Heat finds that it doesn’t have the non-Butler, non-Adebayo assets to dramatically improve its team, then trading Butler for first-round picks and a pretty good young player should be considered only [his emphasis] if Miami isn’t offered a talented veteran player in return, such as the Knicks’ Julius Randle or the Pelicans’ Brandon Ingram.
So Jackson has added a new option: Trade Butler for Randle or Ingram and if that doesn't work trade Butler for first rounders and pretty good young.
But such a move would be risky because of the lifting of future first-round protections.
And he's back in his circle.
I've lost count of his options but this is another one.
▪ Should the Heat continue to automatically say no whenever a team asks for Adebayo?
Miami lost any chance to acquire Kevin Durant, Mitchell and Damian Lillard when it rejected overtures for Adebayo. In each case, the Heat’s decision seemed justified.
But are there players beyond, say, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Doncic, and Anthony Edwards (who aren’t going anywhere), that should compel the Heat to put Adebayo in play?
If there are, it’s a very short list.
The view here is that Adebayo is a keeper, the player the Heat should most want to build around. (And I believe the Heat feels that way.)
So it's both unreasonable and unrealistic. But the "Heat" should still listen. Okay.
But here’s the reason Miami cannot automatically say no on Adebayo without at least listening: Their two other best players — Butler and Herro — likely won’t extract better players in return. Adebayo might, as the fulcrum of a trade package. Be very reluctant to trade him. But nobody should be untouchable, either.
I agree with him. Bam might get you a better player whereas Jimmy and Tyler would not.
▪ What if a talented, 50 cents on the dollar asset again becomes available that would take the Heat even deeper into the luxury tax?
Only Micky Arison and Nick Arison can make that call, and it’s easy to spend someone else’s money.
But let’s consider one alternate path that was available last summer:
I dislike alternative histories. They are navel contemplation imo. However, this path not taken by Miami, taken by their arch-enemy instead, was a masterstroke.
Acquiring Kristaps Porzingis before Boston could.
That three-team trade sent Marcus Smart to Memphis, and Smart had more value than anyone Miami would have offered.
But this is important: Remember that Washington received only fairly modest returns in that three-team deal: Tyus Jones, Danilo Gallinari and Mike Muscala, in addition to the draft rights to Boston’s 35th overall pick in last June’s draft.
Miami likely could have made a more appealing offer to Washington. Porzingis is due $29.2 million and $30.7 million the next two seasons.
That trade likely would have sent the Heat’s luxury tax payroll to even higher levels next season, but it would have left the Heat with Butler, Porzingis, Adebayo, and possibly Herro. You would feel much better about that team than the one you have now.
I agree. Porzingis was a HUGE addition to a much more talented Boston roster. Put him on the "Heat" and the step up would have been even greater. It's a very reasonable alternative history suggestion by Jackson...But the "Heat" didn't take it when they could have and the reason probably is what Jackson suggests, Mickey Arison's reluctance to pay the luxury tax (Avoiding taxes is a family trait; Mickey inherited it from his father Ted). Mickey Arison will go into hock for a superstar; he will not for a lesser player.
The Heat says it didn’t pursue Bradley Beal because it didn’t want to be hamstrung by his no-trade clause. That ultimately was a smart decision; Beal — who came to Phoenix with four years and $207 million still due him — was limited to 53 games by injury, though he averaged 18.2 points and shot 43 percent on threes.
The Heat is willing to pay a luxury tax; it’s paying $15.6 million in taxes this season and is on track to pay a tax next season.
The question is whether the Heat would be willing to pay tens of millions in annual taxes, considering the punitive competitive elements for teams with particularly high payrolls.
If [my emphasis] another Beal or Porzingis type ...
This is why I detest alternative histories. What is "another Beal or Porzingis type"?
...— with big talent but an onerous contract — becomes available this summer at a modest trade price, the Heat must decide just how much money it’s willing to lose on luxury taxes. If it’s a good player without significant injury history, the view here is to jump on it, because counting on a Herro-centric package to land an All-Star seems wishful thinking, even though the attempts must be made.
Alternative histories are beguiling because you can write the ending you want. It's the exciting reverse chronological appeal of the draft. You can imagine Justise Winslow as a star. You can imagine, with more evidence, Porzingis as a star. But. Last summer Porzingis was not viewed as a star; he was viewed as an iffy player with a not-great reputation. An artist must have the ability to see what others don't see. Brad Stevens had that vision with Porzingis. Pat Riley and Andy Elisburg didn't. Or Mickey and Nick Arison's wallet wouldn't let them.