Better Late than Never

The Knicks end their home stand with a much needed win.

Good morning! After a hellaciously frustrating week, the Knicks closed out the home stand with a much needed W, and go into an extremely difficult part of their schedule with at least a bit of positivity. There are still more questions than answers, but for at least 26 hours or so, the Knicks (and their fans) can smile.

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Game Recap: Knicks 110, Clippers 102

The Knicks got off to one of their hottest shooting starts of the season, putting up 39 points in the first quarter, but thanks to a nearly equally hot shooting Clipper squad, LA managed to hang around and threatened to take the lead a few time late in the second. Thankfully the third quarter started with a boom in place of the usual doom, as RJ Barrett took command of the offense and scored or assisted on nine of New York’s first 11 points in the period, getting them out to a comfortable cushion that they’d never relinquish.

3 Takeaways

⓵ Shoot to Win. Once again, the Knicks proved that basketball is a simple sport at its core: if the ball goes in the basket, it usually leads to wins.

Yesterday the Knicks started off hitting 7-of-8 from downtown and wound up shooting 44 percent from long range. They are now 7-0 when they hit that mark, and are 16-3 when they get above at least 37.8 percent. They’re 6-21 when they don’t reach it. As much as we hem and haw about rotations, starting lineups, players meshing and whatever else, it really isn’t that complicated.

(Well…kind of. New York’s six wins when they shoot under 37.8 percent from deep have all come when they’ve held opponents under 100 points. Defense still matters, it seems. There is a still a world where this team can overcome inconsistent shooting as long as they D up like they did last season. Some more good news: the Knicks have the third ranked defense in basketball over their last 15 games.)

⓶ More rotation questions. Missing from yesterday’s action was Kemba Walker, who sat out the first game of a back to back with a sore knee. Thanks to his absence, Thibs was able to avoid any potentially dicy rotation decisions, as he played Burks with the starting five and gave minutes to both Cam Reddish and Obi Toppin off the bench.

If Walker plays tomorrow (and the indication is that he will), my guess is that Reddish doesn’t get off the bench. Yesterday he remained on the pine in the second half as Thibs played just nine guys, perhaps not trusting that Reddish was well-versed enough in the game plan to close out the win.

If Kemba plays tomorrow and Reddish doesn’t, does it mean anything moving forward? Not necessarily…but it will if the front office doesn’t somehow loosen this roster up.

⓷ Cam Time. It probably wasn’t the debut either Reddish or most fans expected, but all in all, it was five solid minutes, including one coast to coast bucket that looked about as smooth as anything a Knick has done this season:

It was never wise to suspect he’d walk into 20-plus minutes a night, if for no other reason than that those minutes simply aren’t available, for all the reasons I’ve discussed here for weeks. He’ll just have to make the most of the PT he gets in the meantime.

Obi Dunk Contest Prep of the Game

I would bet a not insignificant sum of money that Obi will be competing in Cleveland in a few weeks. And then I’ll bet a few more bucks he takes home the trophy.

Toppin was part of a nice 9-0 second quarter run that helped give the Knicks a cushion after LA made a push to start the quarter. He continues to wait patiently for his turn.

Offensive Possession of the Game

Why can’t it be like this all the time?

All in all, the ball movement yesterday was solid, although hitting shots early certainly seemed to loosen them up. Funny how that works out.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ Immanuel Quickley: I went back and forth between IQ and Julius Randle for this spot.

Of the two, Randle (24 points on 15 shots) was more important to the win. He hit two threes and scored 10 points in a first quarter that set the tone for the game. He also had a few really nice passes, including this perfectly timed dime that waited until Alec Burks relocated to the corner:

After this, Julius hit two of the three remaining Knick field goals and initiated the action on the third (see the Fournier three above). They don’t win the game without him.

And yet, it is against my basketball constitution to reward someone who continues to make watching games feel like walking on eggshells, wondering when the next maddening possession on either end will occur. There were no shortage of standouts here (see: any of Randle’s seven turnovers, many of which came with an insistence on not passing immediately out of doubles, let alone see them coming ahead of time), but for me, the trophy goes to a more subtle moment:

What, exactly, is Julius doing on this possession? Because of his refusal to come out and guard the perimeter, Alec Burks needs to guard not one, not two, but three Clippers here. Once Batum (Randle’s man) occupies Burks with the initial screen, Ju’s radar should go off: “someone is open! I should go find that person.”

Nope. Just meandering in the paint, ostensibly to honor the “no penetration” defense, but really just being lazy. He probably sees Amir Coffey and figures, meh, no biggie…except that Coffey is shooting 39 percent from deep this season. He’s had multiple made threes in six of his last seven games. This shit drives me up a wall.

IQ had just three field goals and didn’t shoot it particularly well, but doesn’t know how to take a play off and had six assists - his fourth time in the last seven games with five or more - including this dime to the aforementioned Mr. Randle:

There was a moment earlier in the game when IQ tried to wave Julius to a certain position and Randle refused, instead insisting on getting the rock in the high post. Randle got it, and threw it directly to an LA player shortly thereafter. Getting Jules to be a more willing off-ball contributor, like he is here, is the great untapped potential of this offense. It just takes being willing.

⭐️ ⭐️ Nerlens Noel: Thanks to an ankle injury Mitchell Robinson suffered in the third quarter, Noel wound up playing 26 minutes yesterday afternoon. His defense was solid the whole time, and he contributed three steals, two of which lead to points and the other of which prevented the Clips from getting a shot off at the end of the quarter. The Knicks also scored on all three of the possessions he got offensive rebounds, and he was 4-of-5 from the field himself.

Mitch said after the game that he was “all good…just a little tweak.” Maybe that means he’s back tomorrow, but given how cautious the team usually is with injuries, I wouldn’t be surprised if he sits out the Cavs game. Noel can’t do all the things Robinson can, but if he plays like he did yesterday, he’ll be more than acceptable.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ RJ Barrett: I toyed with giving Nerlens this designation, because he was better in his role than RJ was in his. Barrett, after all, made just 6-of-19 shots from inside the arc, which just isn’t very good.

But a large majority of those looks were good shots, with RJ (28 points total) putting pressure on the rim in a way that made the defense uncomfortable. Of those dozen two-point misses, the Knicks got offensive rebounds on five of them. And the makes, well…

Some of them were pretty nice.

RJ exited this game ranked 37th in restricted area makes with 114 on the season. Among true wings, that puts him below only Miles Bridges (190), Jayson Tatum (151) and Anthony Edwards (144). That’s the good news. The bad news: among all 36 players ahead of him, only Russell Westbrook has a lower field goal percentage from close range.

So that obviously needs improving. But there’s also only three players ahead of RJ on this list who are younger, and two of those - Edwards (61.5 percent from the RA) and Franz Wagner (57.6 percent) - have similarly low conversion rates to RJ’s 57.3 percent.

All of this is to say that while he still needs work, there’s reason to remain hopeful, especially when he can fill up the box score like he did yesterday with 14 rebounds, six assists and only one turnover.

This was also the latest indication that Walker + Randle + Barrett = too many cooks in the kitchen. The trade deadline is 17 days away. More thoughts to come soon…

Standings Update:

It could be worse…

🏙 Game Night 🏀

Who: Knicks at Cavs

When: 7:00 pm

Where: Cleveland

Who’s out: Collin Sexton, Ricky Rubio and Lauri Markkanen for sure, and Rajon Rondo is questionable. For the Knicks, we’ll see about Mitchell Robinson and Kemba Walker.

Halftime Zoom: Click here to enter!

What to look for: How does New York deal with Cleveland’s size, especially if Mitch can’t give it a go?

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#NYK75: No. 30 - Amar’e Stoudemire

All-Time Franchise Ranks:

• Games Played: 255 (63rd)

• Points scored: 4411 (36th)

• Scoring average: 17.3 (20th)

• Rebounding Average: 6.7 (45th)

• Win Shares: 20.8 (38th)

Best Stat: Only Knick to play at least five seasons in New York and maintain career averages above 17 points, six rebounds and 51 percent from the field.

If you read the above “best stat” and knew nothing more about the context of Stat’s time as a Knick, you’d think he should be closer to 3 than 30 on this list.

But of course, context is everything¹. For one, Stoudemire would never have made it to five seasons if his contract wasn’t so onerous, as the Knicks had no choice but to keep him because he became an untradeable albatross midway through his pact. Hell, one of the best What If’s in Knicks history is the alternate universe where they use the amnesty provision on Amar'e, and not Chauncey Billups, to accommodate the Tyson Chandler sign and trade in the summer of 2011.

But Stat was just coming off a season in which he made 2nd Team All-NBA and finished top 10 in voting for MVP. Even with his late season woes, cutting him loose would have been a radical move².

It also would have been the correct one. After that first season, the best success New York had came with Chandler manning the middle and the Knicks going small with Melo at the four. Stoudemire, minus the freakish athleticism that once made him one of the NBA’s dominant forces of nature, merely slowed the offense to a halt whenever he got his touches, in a way that ran counter to the high octane attack the Knicks perfected during the 2012-13 season.

And yet here he is, all the way up in the top 30. Why am I being so generous? For three reasons:

1. His first season here was that good. It has only three peers since the last truly great Ewing season 25 years ago: Melo in 2012-13, Melo in 2013-14 and Julius Randle last season. If we’re getting even more specific, his two-month stretch from late November to late January in which he averaged 28.6 points, 9.2 boards, 2.8 assists, 2.6 blocks on 50 percent shooting is the single most dominant period of play a Knick has put forth since Ewing’s lone All-NBA 1st Team campaign in 1990.

2. He wanted this challenge of playing in New York. Was he handsomely compensated for taking on that challenge? Yes, yes he was. Was there a long list of suitors willing to give him the same contract with no injury protections? Perhaps not. Still: many a great athlete have taken the bag to come play on the brightest of stages, and most never give anything close to what Stat did.

3. Without him, Melo doesn’t come. That’s my belief, at least. Your milage on Anthony may vary, but the early part of the last decade was the only success they had in a 20-year stretch. It was driven by Carmelo’s presence, and Stoudemire’s arrival was the driving force in getting him to demand a trade here in the first place.

So here’s where he lands. Is it too high? Perhaps. But peak matters, as does longevity, even if much of his tenure was fractionally as effective as the beginning.

(And hey…we can always blame D’Antoni for running him into the ground.)

🏀

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 new hockey newsletter, Isles Fix. See y’all soon! #BlackLivesMatter

1. The stat is also incredibly disingenuous. Patrick Ewing shot 50.8 percent for his career and of course dwarfed Stoudemire in the other areas. Bill Cartwright averaged just under 17 points, but shot just over 55 percent from the field in his eight seasons here. Walt Bellamy and Bob McAdoo were also statistical monsters but were only here for four and three seasons, respectively.

2. 👎 👎