Briefing: April 23
About Knicks fans, tanking, and "plans"
Good Morning,
Two articles were published this morning about Knicks fans: One, by Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic, detailing the thoughts of three long-time Knicks fans on the final night of the regular season; another, by Dave Colon, on how Brooklyn-based Knicks fans are grappling with the recent rise of the Nets.
The fundamental question in both articles is why Knicks fans are still…well, Knicks fans, after all of the losing?
“It's [considered] immoral to cut the suffering part out of the equation and just show up for the good times. That the satisfaction will be greater if you endure the suffering. Which is, of course, ridiculous and stupid.” Brooklyn resident, Robert Silverman, explained to Dave Colon, adding, “but I also kind of believe it.”
This leads us to the question that surrounds the entire organization heading into the summer: are “the good times” just around the corner?
But before we get into that, let’s take a look back at the season we just finished. In an interview on The Jump with Rachel Nichols (video provided later in the newsletter), David Fizdale drew some criticism from the local media for noting, “the season went according to plan.”
We can debate whether Fizdale should be more humble in talking about one of the worst seasons in franchise history, but more importantly, let’s discuss why the Knicks (and their fans) are able to speak so glowingly following a 17-65 season.
“I’ve seen a lot of losing,” season-ticket holder Marc Reiner told Mike Vorkunov. “In fact during that time I’ve seen very little winning. This year, even though by number of games they’ve lost just as many as ever… This year even with all the losing it really has not been unpleasant compared to the other years because of the youth we’re playing. We have the promise of a good future for the first time in years.”
For the first time in perhaps the entire Dolan era, Knicks fans seem confident in the direction of the organization.
But why? Are fans just irrationally optimistic? Or do the realities of roster building in the NBA lead fans to accept short-term failure as a means to long-term success?
Basketball is a game, no different than playing Monopoly or chess. Developing a strategy in these games is coming up with an optimized plan given the constraints (rules) of the game. The decisions made by the Knicks’ front office suggest they are following a strategy that is really a product of how the league operates under the current CBA.
There are three fundamental ways the Knicks can improve their roster: trades, free agency, and the draft. In utilizing these avenues to improve their roster, the Knicks face two key constraints:
The salary cap. As much as people talk about “tanking” for a draft pick, the record of the 2018-19 Knicks is as much a product of their desire to have maximum cap space in 2019. This prevented them from signing players last summer to longer than one-year deals, which reduces the market for available talent. It also contributed to them making trades involving productive players.
A weighted lottery system. Teams with higher lottery odds have a better chance of finding premium talent in the draft. As long as the lottery odds are weighted to reward teams with the worst records, it makes sense for teams to consider that in how they allocate playing time and resources in a losing season.
Take away these two constraints, and everything is different. Both the team and the fans would no longer see the incentive of clearing cap space and losing for higher lottery odds as a positive outcome. Fan expectations would change. The team’s on-court results would be bolstered by roster decisions made independent of salary or development.
And let’s not forget about player development. Can you win a lot of games when your roster is filled with teenagers and players still on rookie scale contracts? Is there value in playing a guy like Mitchell Robinson over a veteran like Enes Kanter if you believe Robinson’s long-term value to your team will be greater than Kanter’s?
Knicks fans have suffered through losing seasons when the roster was filled with has-beens and overpaid players who they knew would never contribute to a winning team. Worst of all, the compensation from those lost seasons was often forfeited away, as the Knicks traded multiple first round draft picks in the early 2000s.
Times are finally different. The players that fans watched struggle through this season offer promise to be contributors on a winning team in the future. The team is stocked with 7 first round picks over the next five years. Most of the fat in the Knicks’ salary cap evaporates this summer. In other words, there is hope that the team can use free agency, trades, and draft picks to continue to improve their roster. Sounds simple, right? It has taken a long time for the Knicks to get here.
So did the Knicks 2018-19 season go according to plan?
Stefan Bondy asked me this question yesterday, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized there isn’t a binary answer. If you had put together a PowerPoint presentation of the Knicks “plan” before the season started, it would have included several objectives, many with offsetting costs and benefits. Below is just a sampling:
Did they mend their relationship with Porzingis? No
Did Ntilikina show improvement over last season? No
Did they win as many games as they thought? No
Was James Dolan on his best behavior? No
But…
Did they spend time developing their young players? Mostly
Did Mitchell Robinson exceed expectations? Yes
Did Allonzo Trier exceed expectations? Yes
Did they clear cap space? Yes
Did they improve their lottery odds? Yes
Did Fizdale help rebrand the organization? It appears so
Why did the Knicks suck this past season? Because the team wasn’t good enough, a familiar tenet to Knicks fans over the past 20 years. Why is this year’s version of sucking different? Because if you look at where the team stands along their timeline to rebuild the roster (given the age of their young players and cap space situation), and then consider the opportunities they have created for themselves to actually execute on their “plan” to improve the roster, you can see the 2018-19 season is as much a byproduct of trying to build a winner as it is an indictment of a “failed” plan.
What does Macri think?
I don't often agree with Stefan Bondy, but on his point of whether the Knicks season went according to plan in the wins/loss column, I've always been on the same side. The Knicks knew they would be bad, but not this bad. If I had to guess, they probably wanted to end up somewhere in the vicinity of 30 wins.
Where I disagree with Bondy is in calling out Fiz for a lack of humility. While I do think the "according to plan" line was a tad over the top, my guess is that he was referencing the overarching "plan" to give the young guys ample minutes and end up with a high draft pick. Also, realistically, does anyone think coming out and saying the year was a failure would have been the way to go?
The more interesting point to me (and my apologies if you'd had to listen to me pontificate on this before) is whether what the Knicks did this season can be defined as tanking, and more generally, what it even means to tank?
This topic came up between John Schmeelk and I on yesterday's KFS pod (shameless plug), when we spoke about Fizdale's coaching this year and how much fans should be worried about things like his rotations and his end of game decision-making.
Here's where I come down: he rarely made decisions that gave his team the best chance to win, but also never made decisions to actively try and lose - at least not ones that didn't have some sort of theoretical ancillary benefit.
Playing Kevin Knox over 2000 minutes is the easy example; but even things like obsessively shuffling rotations and not playing the team's best defenders at the end of a game where they desperately needed a stop stand out as "tanking" examples.
But is this really tanking? He wasn't tactically trying his hardest to win, but he was hoping guys would start to step up to the plate and produce where they hadn't before. Instead, we saw the same frustrating inconsistencies, most notably from Emmanuel Mudiay, but also from Tim Hardaway Jr. and Enes Kanter when they were still here. I'd argue that by the time you'd have expected the plug to reasonably be pulled, the latter two were gone and Mudiay's competitors for playing time were all injured.
Add it all up and you get 17 wins. Does this count as tanking? If a few more of those close early-season losses went the Knicks way, would we have seen a different approach? Who knows. What I do know with complete certainty, however, is that the "Was this or was this not tanking" discussion is one I'll be happy to leave behind when next season begins.
Watch Fizdale on The Jump
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Remember when…
April 23, 2013: Carmelo Anthony scores 34 points leading New York to an 87-71 win over Boston at the Garden and a 2-0 series lead in the First Round of the Playoffs.
April 23, 2000: Latrell Sprewell holds Vince Carter to 16 points on 3-20 from the field in his first NBA Playoff game, a 92-88 Knicks win. (Vivek Dadhania with more)
April 23, 1997: John Starks is named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year for the 1996-97 season after averaging 13.8 points over 26.5 minutes in 77 games (76 off the bench). He received 84 of a possible 115 votes.
April 23, 1988: Knicks earn first playoff berth in four years with an 88-86 victory over the Pacers in the regular-season finale at Market Square Arena. Patrick Ewing records 19 points and 10 rebounds and Kenny Walker blocks Steve Stipanovich's close-in jumper at the buzzer.
April 23, 1972: Three Knicks eclipse the 20-point mark, as New York advances to the NBA Finals with a 111-102 Game Five victory at Boston. Dave DeBusschere scores a team high 24 points. Jerry Lucas adds 23 points and Walt Frazier posts 21 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists.
April 23, 1952: Knicks force a Game Seven in the NBA Finals, defeating Lakers 76-68 at the Armory.
Thanks for reading, talk to you tomorrow!