A Few Suggestions
Both for Knicks PR and the head coach
Before we get to actual basketball, a word about yesterday’s public relations snafu.
(If you have no interest in reading any more about this story, feel free to skip ahead to the next heading, which I certainly wouldn’t blame you for.)
There were quite a few people who defended James Dolan’s decision (if you think this came from anywhere else, think again) to have the Knicks PR Twitter account send out the following message late yesterday afternoon, nearly 24 hours after Richard Jefferson first stated on a Nets broadcast that he retired rather than playing for the Knicks, who according to him, wanted RJ on their roster:
What Jefferson did - tell a boldface lie to poke fun at an organization he knew was an easy target, and for which no one would hold him accountable - was kind of gross.
That’s not to say the Knicks status as league laughing stock hasn’t been well-earned (it has). Likewise, if this was merely a former player coming on the broadcast who had no pretenses about being a member of the media, perhaps this would be more forgivable, if no less emasculating for fans.
But Jefferson purports himself as a member of the media, broadcasting Nets games and regularly performing under the circus tent that used to be ESPN (who, to be clear, still employs some of the absolute best reporters in the business who take their job with the pride it deserves) and saying basically whatever he wants.
Is it reporting? Is it opining? Is Jefferson somehow a “lesser” member of the media, and thus, afforded more leeway? Who gets to make that decision? Are these answerable questions in 2019? Are they even worth asking?
These are very real, very important inquiries, and ones that perhaps should have been spurred into a larger discussion, perhaps even with this incident as the generator.
Of course that was never going to happen, because it’s the Knicks, and hardy har har. This, I understand, is incredibly frustrating, because I myself was incredibly frustrated by the whole damn thing.
My frustration is partly with the Knicks themselves, who haven’t been able to get out of their own way long enough to avoid this type of jab, but it was also with the lack of accountability that exists in the media at large. The collective media (and I realize there really is no such thing, but just go with it for the moment) takes themselves incredibly serious, to the point that every mass layoff at yet another longstanding outlet is treated as an assault on that which makes us different from apes. And yet, not one person thought it was appropriate to even raise the topic of whether Jefferson crossed a line with the lie he told on air, and worse, because of the nature of reporting nowadays, many people took as fact.
And if the Knicks PR department were acting in their capacity as judge or jury, they’d have had every right to respond as they did. Sadly, this role does not exist, and never will.
PR stands for public relations; i.e., your job is to improve the opinion outsiders have of the company you work for. For the Knicks, this is a particularly hard job, maybe the hardest in all of sports. It doesn’t make what happened yesterday any more defensible.
The reason for that is simple: if your job is to make the organization look good, doing something which you know full well will have the exact opposite effect is de facto negligence. Existing on the moral highground here is akin to taking a walk down the yellow brick road. Neither exists. It is a fantasy. Their is no right and wrong, only reality.
Spreading this to the Knicks organization as a whole, their job is to win basketball games. Yesterday’s tweet makes that immeasurably harder as well, as there is not a single player, agent, coach or executive anywhere who looked at this and said “Good for them, standing up for themselves and righting this egregious wrong.” Instead, it just extended a laugh track that had more or less died out, and surely reinforced the “same old Knicks” belief in the eyes of many.
No, the only thing James Dolan thought he was helping yesterday was his own wounded pride, which of course is the most ironic thing ever, not only because it didn’t have the intended effect, but because his pride has been the genesis of so much of what has gone wrong for the Knicks that makes them the butt of jokes in the first place.
So with apologies to every Knick fan who was happy the team stuck up for itself, this was not the way to do so. Instead, a Twitter user @BalakeeMartinez suggested to me, they should have publicly offered Jefferson a chance to try out for the Westchester Knicks and tagged him in it. That would have been funny. This was just sad.
For those still unconvinced, I have a closing story:
I was a fat kid growing up. It wasn’t fun, because other children nicknamed me Pillsbury and would poke my belly and expect me to make a funny noise. Trust me when I tell you: there is no greater indignation than the look on a mother’s face when she tries to explain to her son why he needs to shop for jeans in the “Husky” section of Macy’s kids.
I don’t remember if I ever complained to a teacher or my mom or dad about other kids making fun of me, even though it hurt and to this day prevents me from having a bite of any delicious food without a side of self-loathing. What I do know is that ever since college, when I finally lost weight and didn’t dread looking in the mirror anymore, I’m a much happier person for it.
None of this is fair or healthy. Life isn’t fair. That holds true even for the Knicks, who have earned nobody’s benefit of the doubt, but also don’t deserve what comes their way in the form of constant derision either.
Still, sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and get on the damn treadmill.
Get good. Then, I can promise you, we’ll all be a whole lot happier.
And now…Basketball!
I wrote both Friday and yesterday about how many of the Knicks issues started and ended with Julius Randle. He’s not giving his all on defense far too often, and his insistence on taking certain inefficient shots is part of what has bogged the offense down at times.
Noticeably absent from both critiques was an assault on the coach who either hasn’t wanted to or chosen not to reign him in. It’s quite clear by now that Randle isn’t being used in the optimal fashion, which is as a finisher, not a creator (if you haven’t yet checked out the Randle section in Kevin O’Connor’s Ringer piece from last week, you really should. It gives numbers that drive home just how out of his element Julius is at the moment)
Of course, if I’m going to get on the coach for misusing Randle, it would be irresponsible of me to not propose an alternative.
The alternative isn’t, as some would suggest, “run an offense.” The Knicks already do that, as detailed by Brian Oringher here. Granted, all of the plays in this video came during New York’s nationally televised home game vs Dallas, when the entire roster was certainly on its best behavior.
Still, there is an offense being run here. It’s just not happening nearly enough. As I cited yesterday, despite the Knicks having the 12th-ranked second quarter offense and 11th-ranked third quarter offense in the league, they still sit at 29th overall, largely due to being dead last by a mile in the first quarter and 27th in the fourth.
First for the bad news: the fourth quarter will continue to be a struggle. That’s when defenses hunker down and stars are forced to take over. The Knicks, notably, are short on stars, and as a result, have won all four of their games either in blowout fashion (vs Cleveland) or with unlikely suspects coming alive down the stretch (Portis vs Chicago, Frank & Mook in the Dallas games).
So while there might not be much New York can do to improve their performance in tight games down the stretch, that’s not what really matters here. This season was always about functionality, not outright success. Getting the Knicks young core pieces experience in close games, as a part of an offense that is functional from beginning to end, should have always been the goal.
As such, there are two areas of obvious growth that should not only carry forward for years to come, but help them this season as well.
Suggestion 1: Run
Run like the wind. Run like young me striving for the baseline in a game of dodgeball. Just run.
The Knicks aren’t doing nearly enough of this right now. New York is 27th in pace, and according to Cleaning the Glass, is 24th in frequency of transition plays, but even that number is deceiving. The Knicks are 29th in frequency of transition plays off live rebounds (off steals, they’re 11th, which is great).
I could run a marathon in the time it would take me to upload all the clips of Julius Randle bringing the ball up the court as if he were on his way to a colonoscopy. Even Frank will sometimes jet up the court, but either because not enough of his teammates have joined him or he simply isn’t confident enough to try and penetrate the defense on his own, he pulls back as if there is a force field around the arc.
Of course there are reasons for this. The Knicks have the sixth best defensive rebounding percentage in the league in part because they commit to not letting opponents crash their own boards. That takes bodies, and leaking out in transition before a rebound is secured can result in an easy make for the opposition.
But the teams ahead of New York in defensive rebounding rate also rank first (Bucks), 15th (Spurs), 17th (Jazz), 18th (Sixers) and 29th (Magic) in pace. It can be done, and we have the proof, both from DSJ:
…and from Frank:
That second play didn’t even come off of a live rebound, but from an inbounds pass. This no doubt drove the Nets coaching staff nuts, but these opportunities are out there, especially in the first quarter, when teams are still getting settled in.
The Knicks first quarter pace is 102.12, which is 21st in the NBA. Compare that with the Wizards, another team short on talent, who lead the NBA in first quarter pace at 108.43, which is part of the reason they’re a surprising 5-9 and have -1.0 net rating despite being pegged by some as the worst team in the league. Despite Washington getting out and running, they’re still the eighth best first quarter defensive rebounding team in the league, one spot ahead of - you guessed it - the Knicks.
This is eminently doable for New York, especially with the biggest back court in the league who’s more than capable of rebounding their position and Julius Randle, who is capable of being the best transition big this side of LeBron James if he stopped playing like he was stuck in Jell-O.
Would it make sense to insert a speedier guard (Dot or Ellington, perhaps?) in for either Marcus Morris or Randle, and have them sprint back first to open up driving lanes for whoever gets it and goes? Yes, but I’m a broken record on this one already. At the very least, a quick hook on one of those two bigs would suffice. Similarly, having Taj and/or the remaining big set the occasional flare screen would help things as well (h/t to Dallas Amico), which is something we haven’t seen much of.
Suggestion 2: More lobs
I know, I know…we’ve been calling for more pick and roll involving Mitch all year, and they don’t simply materialize on every possession. Defenses know how much the Knicks want to do this too, and game plan against it accordingly.
It doesn’t mean more such plays aren’t possible with a little more creativity and common sense. One tip: actually setting a screen helps:
That slight bump from Randle here was more than enough to dislodge Patty Mills and force Rudy Gay between a rock and a hard place. Aside from Randle lollygagging up the court this year, the next most troubling thing about him has been his reluctance to set actual screens. Perhaps plays like this will remind him that if he commits to using his body like the brick shithouse it is, good things will happen.
Check out this play, and specifically, who’s out on the court. Surrounding Frank and Mitch, we have three shooters that defenses at least need to honor: Bobby Portis, Kevin Knox and Damyean Dotson. As a result, this look opens up:
There’s also more than one way to skin a cat. Later in the same game, with the same lineup, the Hornets are now anticipating a screen, and Dotson’s man starts to hedge early anticipating a necessary switch. Portis then pivots and goes to the foul line, momentarily putting two men on Dot and forcing Mitch’s man to make an impossible choice. He chose…poorly:
You also don’t need to run this with a traditional point guard. Here, against Philly, Mook is initiating the action. The key is Frank, whose defender needs to pay him some mind because he’d shot it effectively throughout the evening. As a result, his man can’t hedge and disrupt Morris with the ball, and RJ and Julius are respectable enough from the corners such that their men can’t abandon them either. As a result, Embiid doesn’t stand a chance.
Here’s the same set a few minutes later, this time with Randle’s man hedging to the lane to prevent the lob. The right play was a pass to Randle in the corner, which is a shot he should hit (Of course, Randle himself made a similar pass to Ntilikina this weekend, and Ntilikina missed. It’s a make or miss league, as they say, but experience taking these types of shots is invaluable.)
If the Knicks are going to keep Mitch in the second unit, it makes a lot of sense to continue to surround him with shooting (Portis, Knox and Ellington or Dotson) as it makes these types of plays all the more accessible. That leaves one of Dot or Wayne to slot into the starting lineup, and push RJ down to the three. That pushes Julius or (more likely) Mook onto the trading block.
For as much as Morris has probably been, on balance, the Knicks best player thus far, this might be addition by subtraction. Would I rather see Randle go instead, even with the acknowledgement that these adjustments could unlock some of the parts of his game that has thus far eluded him and the team? Yes, but that’s not going to happen, and at the end of the day, this is about putting the kids in situations that will help them grow as players. These changes (should) accomplish just that.
Stock Watch
A look at what’s new with PredictionStrike, our sponsor
Taking a look at the biggest PredictionStrike risers and fallers from last night’s games (remember to use code KFS when you sign up for $10 extra market money to play with), a couple names jump out:
Rudy Gobert’s stock price has plummeted from $6.05 just a few games ago to $3.40 now. Since the beginning of November, hes been averaging 15.7 rebounds and 2.7 blocks per game before missing the last two with a bum ankle. He was questionable for Monday’s game before being ruled out, so the safe bet is he plays soon, possibly as soon as tomorrow against Indiana. You’ll never be able to get in on him at a lower price.
I highlighted Jerome Robinson a few weeks ago when his stock price was under a buck, and now he’s trading at just above $2. He’s finally getting consistent minutes, and even though that hasn’t yet translated into consistent points (he’s scored just seven over the Clippers’ last two outings), his projections are so low that just about any production is translating into a price increase. Now might be the time to buy.
Help Us Help Others!!!
Our Thanksgiving Drive is coming down the home stretch!
We’re now within $500 of our goal of $3500, which will help feed 100 needy families on Thanksgiving. Frank Ntilikina (I committed to donate $2 for every point he scored from last Wednesday to this Tuesday) will make his final addition to my existing $62 commitment tomorrow night vs the Raptors. I’ll be making my donation right after that game ends, so there’s still time for you to do so as well!
To donate, click here, and once again, thank you to everyone who has already given!
On This Date: Nate Robinson hits game winning three in post-Thanksgiving thriller
by Vivek Dadhania (@vdadhania)
The New York Knicks & Philadelphia 76ers certainly turned this post-Thanksgiving Saturday into a basketball thriller at Madison Square Garden. Nate Robinson hit the buzzer-beating three in the right corner in overtime to stun the 76ers by a score of 105-102.
That’s it…see everyone tomorrow!