I hate grades. I never assigned any during the semester and only did at the end after each student told me via email or an in-person conference what grade they felt they deserved, and why. As a professor, I rejected grades as utterly irrelevant for assessing performance or reflecting growth. As a sportswriter, I embrace them due to nostalgia for pieces I grew up reading and the need to keep the bosses happy for at least one more paycheck. So today I’m grading the 2021 Knicks’ usual starters. We’ll get to the bench in a day or two.
Julius Randle = A
After Kevin Durant, fresh off his Achilles tear, surprised no one two summers ago by joining forces with Kyrie Irving but surprised many by doing so in Brooklyn rather than Manhattan, the Knicks pivoted to signing Julius Randle, after which this they/them wrote:
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