And then there's Damyean Dotson
by Jonathan Macri
Over the last month, I’ve used this space to dig into some of the players/pairings that figure to play a prominent role for the Knicks, not only this season, but for many years to come.
Thus far, those names have been obvious: Mitchell Robinson, Julius Randle, RJ Barrett and on slightly more uneven ground that will hopefully level off soon, Dennis Smith Jr. I’ll add Kevin Knox to that group as well.
(What’s that? You want an offseason analysis piece on what Knox needs to improve upon from his rookie year? Sure…here you go.)
Outside of those five (and maybe Iggy Brazdeikis, who should have league MVP wrapped up by mid-February), no one else feels like a safe bet to be around beyond this season.
Part of that is probably just due to the fact that we’re not used to anyone sticking around for more than a few years (only one Knick, in fact, has played more than 500 games for the franchise since the year 2000. Tweet your guesses to me @JCMacriNBA. Hint: it ain’t Melo).
Mostly though, it’s unclear as to whether the front office is convinced anyone else deserves the designation of “core” piece, and most fans don’t seem to disagree.
We know about Frank, who feels like he’s been living on borrowed time in New York since February. Allonzo Trier put up truly impressive efficiency statistics for a high-usage rookie guard, but the perception is that he needs to make another leap as a playmaker and a defender to warrant getting time on a good team (lucky for him, Trier seems to thrive on doubters). Almost everyone else on the roster is viewed as a short-term stopgap who will be gone if and when this team is ready to contend for anything of note.
And then there’s Damyean Dotson.
Every NBA player comes to a career crossroads at some point, and Dotson may very well be at his already. We’ve seen plenty of guys start slow, and then with bigger minutes put up bigger numbers. Because Dotson hardly got any time as a rookie and was on such a godawful squad last year, it’s still unclear whether he’s an empty calorie box score filler or whether – as I’ve argued on more than a few occasions – he can be a valuable piece on a winning team.
Despite my confidence in the former second-rounder, no outcome would truly shock me this season. You could argue he’s as likely to be out of the rotation when camp breaks as he is to be a permanent fixture in the rotation. I think people are sleeping on the latter as a real possibility.
Let’s start with the contract. I’ve seen a bunch of Twitterati suggest that Dotson’s impending free agency means that the team should no longer make a significant investment in his progress. This is patently ridiculous. Aside from the fact that there’s a version of Dotson who is exactly the type of player any franchise should want to invest in (more on that in a bit), New York’s long term cap sheet is clean.
“But we need to keep it that way” is a likely refrain. This is like the plot of a bad romantic comedy, where the guy/gal meets the man/woman of his/her dreams, but is so scarred from past relationships that they sabotage the developing romance before it even gets off the ground (only, of course, to give in in the end).
Hopefully the Knicks brass has seen enough of these movies to realize that there’s no use fighting fate. The front office passed an important test this summer by not handing out any deals they’re likely to regret. Looking at the landscape of contracts just signed, there were also none the Knicks were reasonably in the running for that made you jealous as a fan. Two gold stars!
That doesn’t mean Perry and Mills should keep cycling through one and two-year deals until a superstar decides to come. Twenty-something role players fostered in your system should be kept around if the price is right and they help the cause.
The first of those questions is still up in the air. Dotson is restricted, and what he does this year will go a long way in determining his market value in what is shaping up to be a paltry free agent class. Finding reliable deep threats who can eat up minutes is harder than you might think, and Dotson was one of only 30 players to see 2000 minutes last season and shoot at least 36 percent from downtown on at least six attempts per 36 minutes.
Of course, it could be easily argued that the only reason Dotson saw all those minutes was because of the Knicks’ paucity of talent. The fact that he has the worst average plus/minus of all 30 players on the list by a wide margin supports this point (he’s at a minus 5.9; Kevin Huerter is next up at minus 2.1).
That only means Dotson isn’t Superman, not that he can’t contribute to winning. Prime MJ wasn’t getting last year’s Knicks into the playoffs, and the advanced stats say that New York was a better team with Dame on the court than with him off by just over two points per 100 possessions. That’s not much, but it also isn’t nothing.
Offensively, we’ve already seen enough to have significant hope. For starters, the 3-point shooting is already solid and should take another leap. If he improves by half as much as he did from his rookie season to last year, he’ll be at exactly 38 percent. That alone means you’ll always find work at this level. Shoot 38 percent and be able to move a little with the ball? Now we’re talking.
Last season, Dot scored 1.08 points per possession as a pick and roll ball-handler, which ranked 13th among 308 qualified players. This play against the Suns shows part of why that was:
Kelly Oubre knows what’s coming and valiantly fights through a Noah Vonleh screen, but Dotson turns the corner so sharply and with enough burst that it doesn’t matter, and shows his athleticism around the rim with the up and under.
Dot’s finishing is one of the areas of his game that needs to improve, as he was only 56 percent around the rim last season according to Cleaning the Glass. Plays like this (not to mention some improved spacing) show that he has it in him to get better.
The other component of this stat is his passing on the pick and roll, which we saw significant improvement on from his first year in the pros. This well-positioned bounce pass to a diving Mitch is a great example:
Dotson’s ability to move with the ball is necessary to his development as a player, not necessarily because he’ll need to rely on it a lot, but because opponents need to know he has it in his bag. With a full year of Dennis Smith Jr. and the offseason additions of Julius Randle and RJ Barrett, Dotson’s ability to space the floor is what’s going to keep him on the court more than anything else.
Dot’s proficiency from downtown is part of why I argued in this space last week that either he or Wayne Ellington should start ahead of RJ Barrett, another player who needs the ball in his hands as opposed to being able to do something with it if necessary. Interestingly enough, Ellington was one spot ahead of Dotson on the pick and roll ball-handler leaderboard at 1.10 points per possession. In addition to their shooting, each would offer a more than respectable release valve in times of need.
That’s not where the similarities end between Dotson and his new teammate. Of all the improvements Dot made last season, none were more pronounced than his ability to hit threes early in the shot clock. Of the 87 players who attempted at least 50 deep balls with 18-to-22 seconds remaining, Dot’s 47.5 conversion rate was 6th in the NBA.
Second on that list? Wayne Ellington.
Add this to the list of reasons New York should try to play at a quicker pace next year, but that’s a conversation for another day. Where Dotson is concerned, his offense seems perfectly suited to be a complementary piece on just about any team. His rebounding – maybe the best part of his game in comparison to his peers – also allows for legitimate positional flexibility without the usual sacrifices. It’s the other end of the court that raises some concerns.
It’s not that Dotson’s defensive numbers are bad; quite the contrary, in fact. Of the 50 Knick pairings to see the most court time last season, Dotson was part of three of the top four by defensive rating. The top two feature Dot with Frank Ntilikina and Mitchell Robinson, respectively. At the very least, if he’s surrounded by decent defenders, Dotson won’t be the weak link.
That being said, he does way too much stuff like this:
You see plays like this far too often from Dotson – one’s that aren’t apparently bad at first glance, but with a closer look reveals some flaws. He isn’t falling asleep or wanting for effort, but merely doing (or not doing) something small that directly leads to a bad result. Here, it’s digging a bit too hard into the paint and reacting a tad too slowly to get back to sharpshooter Landry Shamut in the corner. When people talk about “court awareness,” this is the type of thing they’re referring to.
Here’s another example, this time the opposite: Dotson is guarding Michael Carter-Williams, maybe the worst shooter in the entire league. Despite this, he both fails to anticipate and fails to react quickly enough to the cut from an unguarded (keep up that effort, DSJ!) Ryan Arcidiacono:
These types of plays come in different forms for Dotson, whether they be taking a poor route around a screen, jumping too early (or too late) to contest a jumper, or failing to maintain the proper footwork to guard against either a shot or a drive from his man on the perimeter.
The numbers also suggest that he especially struggles defending the fast break. According to Cleaning the Glass, opponents last season scored 6.5 more points per 100 transition possessions when Dot was on the floor. A lot of the time, he finds himself in poor position to guard teams on the run, and tends to pick up his fair share of silly fouls in these situations. Here’s some, umm…not so fancy footwork versus the Suns:
While none of the above is pretty, it’s far from a death sentence. Most of what ails Dotson’s defense is correctable, and most importantly, he tries. Considering his rookie year was essentially a lost season, there’s no reason to think a significant improvement can’t still be in the cards.
If it is, Whole Team Dot (easily my favorite nickname of any current player) should join the group of young Knicks that we hope will be calling New York home for the foreseeable future. He definitely started from the bottom, and while he’s not quite “here” yet, there’s more than enough evidence to suggest he’s well on his way to getting there.
Thanks for reading, talk to you next week!