Discerning Reality
The Knicks are 5-6 under Mike Miller. This feels...some type of way.
In this Newsletter:
The numbers seem so black and white.
And, well, that’s because they are. That’s the thing about numbers…they’re incapable of lying. Let’s start here:
5 is more than 4. Yay for simple math!
Taking this a step further, 5 out of 11 is really more than 4 out of 22. Now we’re getting deep.
Another easy one: Minus 2.5 (the Knicks net rating under Mike Miller, 20th in the league since he took over) is better than Minus 10.9 (their rating under Fiz, which was dead last).
Then there’s the nitty gritty stuff, like the fact that the simplified defensive scheme New York is now running is not only eliminating looks at the rim (4th lowest rate in the league according to Cleaning the Glass; NY was 21st under Fiz) but doing better at preventing corner threes as well (15th under Miller; 25th under Fiz).
The sum total is that teams have recently had shot profiles against the Knicks that make them look like, well…the Knicks. Opponents are taking nearly a third of their shots from the midrange against New York with Miller at the helm, good for 10th in the league. Under Fizdale, teams took under a quarter of their shots between the rim and the arc, which was third worst.
On offense, the Knicks have thankfully been less like themselves. They’ve gone from taking the 4th most long midrangers in the NBA over the first 22 games to the 10th most (Rome wasn’t built in a day). They’re also hitting more of these inefficient shots (42.0 percent versus 35.9 percent prior to the change), making these attempts slightly less wince-inducing.
Perhaps most encouraging, they’re (barely, but still) in the top half of the league in frequency of shots at the rim (15th) and from the corner (13th) under Miller, making them one of only eight teams that can make such a claim in that time frame.
And then there’s the progress made by individual players.
Julius Randle’s resurgence has been well documented. Along with a bunch of All-NBA caliber talent, he’s one of seven dudes putting up 22 & 9 over the last 11 games. These are nutritious calories too, as the Knicks are outscoring teams while he’s been on the floor while getting smoked when he sits.
But most Knick fans couldn’t care less about Julius (although that’s a stance we should probably start to reconsider) and are just worried about the theoretical “core” building blocks of this team. To that end…
Some of these numbers even seem to understate the truth.
Mitchell Robinson, for example, has played 95 games for the Knicks, and it seems like only recently have we seen ample instances of low hanging fruit like this:
It’s not terribly complicated, yet over the first 84 games of this man’s career, the Knicks scored at a rate lower than the most pitiful offense in the league (their own).
Most damning of all, it got worse over the summer. In 66 games last season, New York had an offensive rating of 103.3 with Robinson on the court. Over the 18 games he played under Fizdale this season, that number went down, to 99.9. You could coach Mitchell Robinson and figure out a way to get at least a point per possession, and yet it wasn’t happening.
Under Miller, that number has shot up to 111.8, which is equivalent to the fifth best offense in basketball, and about what you’d expect from a guy whose instruction manual reads “Throw high; let catch”
Again, this isn’t rocket science, nor is it creative math. Mitch is averaging exactly the same number of fouls per game - 3.6 - under Miller as he was under Fiz, and yet is getting five more minutes per contest and has seen nearly a 50 percent uptick in his field goal attempts per night (7.4 from 5.1).
Want to see some real magic? Under Miller, the three-man combination of Julius Randle, Mitchell Robinson and RJ Barrett - three non-shooters - have a 110.3 offensive rating in over 120 minutes and are outscoring teams by 8.4 points per 100 possessions. The same trio played 164 minutes under Fiz, scored 97.1 points per 100, and had a minus 14.1 net rating.
Now with all of that, the question comes down to figuring out how much is real.
The recent schedule - which has featured five games against the worst ten defenses in the league, including three games against the bottom two - has helped matters immensely. Fizdale’s Knicks played the the top six defenses in the league a total of ten times, which is pretty insane when you think about it.
Fizdale also had the luxury of a fully healthy Elfrid Payton for exactly one of those ten affairs (he was injured during a game vs Chicago and returned to a minutes limit against Denver). Without Payton, Miller’s Knicks have scored just 103.2 points per 100 possessions, which would rank second lowest in the league (although it’s still higher than the 101.1 Fizdale’s Knicks scored without Payton manning the offense).
There’s also the small matter of that player’s only meeting, which Mitchell Robinson himself gives credit to as the true cause of the turnaround.
All together, it’s no wonder many fans are still leery of bestowing the key to the city on Mike Miller, including my old partner in crime:
He’s not wrong to be skeptical. 11 games is nothing in the NBA, especially with the excitement of a new coach. Through the first 11 games of this season, the Suns and Timberwolves had seven wins apiece. They’ve combined for nine in the six weeks since.
Here’s why though, as we end a dreary year in a dreary decade in what has thus far been a dreary century, I’m OK with being more optimistic than not:
This season was never supposed to be about getting there (wherever “there” is), but only about showing signs of progress. Under Miller, we’ve been getting them. Little things like sensible rotations and substitutions, better SLOB and BLOB plays (God bless hoops acronyms), and more spacing (Damyean Dotson has already seen 23 or more minutes six times under Miller; it happened just three times under Fiz, who made him a DNP-CD four times early in the season. Dotson took just five field goal attempts in the season’s first nine games) have resulted in a baseline of competence that has helped produce all of the fancy stats above.
With Fiz, you think about the pressers, and the soundbites, and the fact that it always seemed to be a little too much about him. It was endearing at first (he certainly sold me), and even this season, came off as deflecting blame from his players at times. After a while though, you wonder how much effort went into appearances and not the nuts and bolts of the job.
And then you read stuff like Marc Berman’s Sunday snippet that “Fizdale also didn’t integrate his coaching staff well enough, exclusively talking to Keith Smart during games while excluding others,” and it sort of starts to make sense.
That doesn’t mean the current decent times will continue to roll.
After a New Year’s Day “Welcome Home” game against old buddy Carmelo Anthony, Miller and crew go on the road. As we continue to ponder the $64,000 question of what the rest of this season will bring, it feels like we’ll have far more answers after they return back to New York in 10 days, and even more after the next 14 games, 10 of which come against current playoff placeholders.
In a season full of arbitrary, intermediate assessments, that seems like a good one to look forward to next.
Couldn’t come at a better time. The trade deadline will be here before we know it.
Player Spotlight (Get Mitchell Robinson to All-Star Weekend)
We quoted some advanced numbers for Mitchell Robinson before, but those really undersell just how much he’s been balling under new head coach Mike Miller, and really, all season long.
Robinson is the only player in the NBA this season averaging 15 points, 10 boards, three blocks, and at least one steal and under one turnover per 36 minutes. He’s tied with Rudy Gobert for the league lead in field goal percentage among players who have averaged over 20 minutes. Opponents are shooting 12.9 percent worse around the rim when he is in the game, which is in the NBA’s 99th percentile according to Cleaning the Glass. There is no 100th percentile on the site.
In short, for all the consternation over his foul issues, this is a player who continues to emerge as an absolute star in the making. Despite this, last season he somehow wasn’t a part of NBA’s All-Star festivities, even though he had already shown these signs in full force (even with an injury that kept him out for a month).
All-Star Weekends are made for players like Mitch (and pretty soon, we’ll be able to say the same things about All-Star Games, if the Knicks can ever get their shit together), so I thought we’d use today’s PredictionStrike Player Spotlight to launch the official KFS campaign to get Mitch to Chicago, at least for the Rookie vs Sophomore game, and ideally for the dunk contest as well, because really, why the hell not.
Right now, somehow, Mitch is still trading at under $3.00 per share, but he’s been steadily going up, likely because projections haven’t yet caught up to his increased usage and effectiveness under Miller.
By the time All-Star Weekend is here, count on his price skyrocketing. The Knicks figure to loosen the roster soon with a few trades, and I’m betting Mitch averages close to 30 minutes a night from here on in. Invest away.
And hey, if you somehow haven’t yet boarded the PredictionStrike bandwagon, click here and enter code KFS when signing up for $10 added to your initial investment of $10 or more.
New Podcast
Last one of the decade! Lots of good stuff here, but the best is at the end, when I discover a fake DSJ trade that I’m 100% convinced is going to happen for all the reasons I explain on the podcast. I dare you to disagree.
News & Notes
Simple one today, just in case there were any misgivings about what the next few weeks have in store…
…and in case you missed it…
On This Date: Knicks hire Red Holzman as head coach
by Vivek Dadhania (@vdadhania)
This is from a few days ago, but it’s a good one…
In a franchise altering move, the Knicks fired Dick McGuire and hired Red Holzman as head coach. McGuire – a native of the Bronx – spent 8 years playing point guard with the Knicks and was a 7-time NBA All Star. After a stint as player-coach and head coach with the Detroit Pistons, the Knicks hired him as head coach in 1965.
See you tomorrow for a special end of the decade newsletter!