Back to Reality?

After three straight losses, was the eight straight nothing but a mirage?

Good morning! It’s good to be back! Thanks for not minding the day off yesterday that allowed me to celebrate Christmas unencumbered with the fam. Aside from the result of the game, it was a good one, as I hope yours was as well. Let’s get to the basketball…

Game Recap: Knicks 112, Sixers 119

⌚️30 Seconds or Less: For three quarters, this looked like it would nudge its way onto the list of great Christmas Day games in franchise history. New York came out looking as locked in on the offensive end as they have all season, taking it to the league’s second-ranked defense. They did it by combining high-level shot-making with crisp and purposeful ball-movement, resulting in 27 assists on 36 made field goals through three quarters. Unfortunately, they couldn’t boast the same level of efficacy on the other end for a variety of reasons, and once their fourth quarter scoring subsided, a 21-4 Sixers run turned a classic into a borderline blowout.

Pick Your Storyline

In the spirit of Christmas morning, in which my kids both ended up with more toys than they’ll know what to do with, here’s a grab back of options to suit your palate, in no particular order.

🏚 Home Woes? The name of the emoji preceding this subheading is actually “derelict house,” which is both hysterical and sad, both on its own and when you put it in the context of the World’s Most Famous Arena.

So is there an issue here? New York fell to 8-10 in their own building following Sunday’s loss, their third straight L at MSG. Their offense is about five points per 100 possessions better at home but their defense is worse by about the same margin. On the plus side, they have two single-digit home wins - over Charlotte in OT and over Cleveland to begin their winning streak - in which one could argue the fans helped inspire them to victory. By the same token, in four tight homes losses to the Grizzlies, Blazers, Raptors and Bulls, the other team made the big plays in the closing minutes. New York has also had games at the Garden in which the wheels came off to varying degrees in the second half, with yesterday being the most recent example.

Looking at the collective evidence, your viewpoint on this probably depends on what you think home court is supposed to mean. Opposing stars being intimidated and playing worse than normal? In my lifetime, that’s never even happened when the Knicks have been good, let alone when they’ve stunk. Coming up big in big moments? The variability on their ability to do so seems to fluctuate evenly, regardless of location.

On the whole, it’s hard to look at recent wins against the Cavs, Hawks and Warriors and not feel like the home crowd played a role in helping the Knicks put their foot on the gas in each instance. At the same time, that crowd hasn’t been enough to overcome opposing stars doing their thing and the lack of said stars on the home roster. I wouldn’t call that a home court dis-advantage, but they probably don’t have a great advantage either, or at least not as much as they’d like.

⭐️ Star Light, Star Lite: Joel Embiid and James Harden…I mean, what top two are you taking over them in the postseason, assuming they play like they did (and get the whistle they received) on Sunday? The two combined for 64 points, 20 of which came from the line, while Harden chipped in 13 assists. Did the refs help out? Sure, but that’s the way it goes with these two. New York tried everything. Nothing worked.

The Knicks have now played 10 games against players likely to end up in the top-10 in MVP voting when all is said and done: Joel Embiid, Luka Doncic, Devin Booker, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum, and then Giannis and Ja twice each¹. They have lost every time. In all other games, they are 18-6. Their remaining six losses (to DeRozan/LaVine, Siakam, SGA, Grant/Simons, Trae and Donovan Mitchell) haven't exactly been at the hands of slouches either.

The Knicks, for this season at least, are trying to break the NBA mold with a whole greater than the sum of its parts. To do so, they have a few players who can vaguely resemble top-20 guys if you squint hard enough during the right game, but who lack the night in, night out “you can’t guard me” consistency of the league’s All-NBA ilk. In the end, the fact that they’re 18-16 without that true “star” should be taken as a positive, but it doesn’t change what the front office seemed to know all too well when they nearly went all in for Donovan Mitchell in the summer.

🙈 More Defensive Woes? After New York’s last game against the Mavericks a little more than three weeks ago, they were 26th in the league with a defensive rating of 114.2. Since then, they’re second in the NBA, giving up 106.5 points per 100 possessions, but that skimpy figure has suddenly become misleading:

• 8-game winning streak: 98.9 defensive rating, 1st in the league, 2.6 points per 100 possessions above 2nd place; 6.3 / 100 ahead of 3rd

• 3-game losing streak: 128.7 defensive rating; 30th in the league

This might normally be chalked up to the happenstance of a small sample size were it not for a few factors, the first of which is the recurring common denominator for Knick losses: an avalanche of threes for the opposition. Over the eight straight wins, New York limited opponents to 28.5 percent shooting from deep and just 9.5 made triples per game. Over the last three losses, those numbers have jumped to 13.7 and 39.4. On the season, teams are hitting about five more threes per game and shooting about 10 percent higher from deep in Knick losses as they are in Knick wins.

We also have the small matter of a postgame presser from Sixers’ wing Georges Niang, who lit up the Knicks as Philly pulled away in the final frame:

New York Basketball @NBA_NewYork

“I mean, I don’t know why they were playing in a drop coverage. I probably haven’t seen that since college maybe” — Georges Niang (all four of his threes in the fourth quarter) on the Knicks

Going back and rewatching Niang’s four made triples, it struck me that his definition of drop coverage is slightly different from what we’ve seen earlier this season, where the man guarding the screener on a high pick and roll (often Julius Randle) drops so far below the point of the screen that the ball handler has a wide open look.

Here’s how the four threes from Niang actually happened:

• Hartenstein is covering Niang at the top of the arc, sags off to soft double Harden in isolation, Harden kicks to Niang, Hartenstein can’t recover in time, splash.

• Harden / Niang high pick and roll with Randle guarding Niang and Grimes guarding Harden, Randle switches onto Harden with Grimes trailing, Harden passes back to Niang, Grimes can’t recover in time, splash.

• Same action except Grimes recovers in time, although Brunson was already coming over from the corner to help. Seeing this, Niang quickly hits Melton in the corner, Brunson jumps past him for a desperate contest forcing Grimes to help, Melton hits Niang, and neither Grimes nor Randle can get to him in time, splash.

• With the lead 11 and under two minutes to go, Harden iso’s against Julius at the top of the arc, Grimes (guarding Niang) shades over and when Harden kicks to Niang, Grimes overplays the passing lane but doesn’t get the steal. Splash.

The common denominator is Harden, who the Knicks were incapable of covering one-on-one. Every domino that fell started with him.

Combining this point with the one above about how poorly New York has faired against star players this season, I generated another breakdown:

• Knicks in 10 games vs MVP candidates: 119.3 DEF RTG (league equivalent - 30th)

• Knicks in 24 other games: 108.7 DEF RTG (league equivalent - 2nd)

Is it really that simple? New York can guard teams without the best offensive talent in the league but are rendered inept against the best of the best? Maybe. And maybe the best way to fight fire is with fire, which is why the Knicks need a transcendent talent of their own. In the meantime, this problem doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon.

🌊 Tide Turning? With three straight losses, the question now needs to be asked: are we headed back towards a season that feels like an exercise in futility?

I’m not so sure. As I wrote in a recent newsletter, the best sign for a team is that they rank in the top 10 in both offense and defense. Going into last night’s games, the Knicks were one of just two teams to clear both bars, joining Boston and New Orleans. That’s the good.

The not so good: New York has neither an elite offense nor elite defense to fall back on, ranking 9th in both categories on the season. The result is a 10th ranked average point differential, behind the five teams ahead of them in the East and the top four in the West.

If we go by the results thus far and look at the next dozen games…

…it’s more than possible we’ll see them stay above .500 past the halfway point, which takes us to three weeks before the trade deadline. If they’re still at or around 6th then, it’ll be interesting to see what the front office decides to do.

💫 Stars of the Weekend 💫

⭐️ Immanuel Quickley: Only 3-of-10 from deep between the Bulls and Sixers games but scored 26 points on 17 shots overall. When he’s this efficient, he is arguably the Knick that takes the least off the table at both ends of the court.

The only knock - and it is the ultimate in nitpicking - is that the offense continues to stagnate in big spots against high level defenses when Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle are off the floor and the IQ / RJ combo needs to run the show. That happened on Christmas, when New York scored just two points in the opening four minutes of the fourth quarter. Things didn’t get much better after Quickley went out, of course, as the Sixers cemented the game with a 14-4 run before IQ re-entered for an injured Brunson a few minutes later.

Now closing in on the halfway mark on the season and with all the different lineup combinations the Knicks have used, Quickley’s 99th percentile league-wide defensive on/off differential should be confirmation of his impact at that end of the floor. Consider that the Knicks, the 9th ranked defense in the league, have given up 117.8 points per 100 possessions in the 842 minutes IQ hasn’t played. That sure as heck isn’t a coincidence.

⭐️ ⭐️ Julius Randle

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ RJ Barrett

I struggled with this probably more than I should have.

Julius Randle had two dynamite offensive outings, totaling 64 points on 50 percent shooting with 20 boards, seven assists and just two turnovers. It’s hard to ask him to play much better than he is on that end of the court. Defensively he was getting targeted a bit, but not as much as Brunson, and he’s holding up the better of the two when it occurs.

This and-one down the stretch against Chicago should have gone down as one of the defining moments of his season…

…but it’ll be lost to time because of how that game ended in tragedy. His shot-making for three quarters on Christmas was as good as we’ve seen all year, and even in the fourth, he was 2-of-5 with one turnover.

RJ Barrett’s fourth wasn’t quite so nice. He was 1-of-8 with two turnovers, and each of his five 2-point misses came on either low percentage mid-rangers or contested drives. In all instances, an outlet pass was waiting to be made, as Immanuel Quickley identifies here:

The poor fourth ended a day to forget for Barrett, as he shot 6-of-21 and finished with 17 points.

So why is RJ the 3-star player for the weekend? For one, his 44-point gem on Friday was that good, as I plan to (finally) cover in detail later in the week. Second, I’m not about to blame a 22-year-old for getting some tunnel vision on national television a day and a half after the game of his life. Third, putting Sunday’s fourth quarter aside, Barrett’s process over these two games has been everything this team needs from its fourth year wing.

The most important thing to happen in this bonkers Knicks season is RJ’s progression over the last month. Friday night was the highest point yet in that rise from the ashes.

🏙 Game Night 🏙

Who: Mavs

Where: Dallas

When: 8:30 pm

Injury Report: Jalen Brunson is questionable with a sore hip that knocked him out of the Christmas game midway through the fourth. For Dallas, Knick legend Kemba Walker is questionable, while Josh Green, Dorian Finney-Smith and Maxi Kleber are out.

TV: MSG and NBA TV

Halftime Zoom: Click here to enter.

What to watch for: Can the Knicks beat a really good player? New York hasn’t been swept by the Mavs in a season series since the 2015-16 season. Now would be a good time to keep that trend going.

🗣 News & Notes ✍️

🏀 Ian Begley reported after the Sixers game that prior to their winning streak, New York’s front office had internal discussions about attempting to acquire Tobias Harris. Any imminent interest seems to have dissipated, but Begley made sure to note that Harris has fans in the Knicks brain trust.

Realistically, there are two sorts of trades that could have bought (or can bring, I suppose) Harris to New York: Julius Randle plus one of Fournier or Rose, or Fournier plus Rose without Randle involved. Given that Harris has played exclusively at power forward for several years, I’m guess it’s the former. Either way, it would likely have involved draft compensation going to Philly, as Harris is expensive but good, and his mammoth contract expires after next season. With Randle playing like he has been, one figures the Knicks have since changed their thinking, but who knows.

🏀

That’s it for today! If you enjoy this newsletter and like the Mets, don’t forget to subscribe to JB’s Metropolitan, or his hockey newsletter, Isles Fix. See y’all soon! #BlackLivesMatter

1. Rounding out my top-10: Nikola Jokic and probably Zion.