Early Season Check-In

We're a sixth of the way through the season. Let's assess what we've seen so far.

Good morning! The Knicks start their west coach trip tonight at 10 pm against the Suns. They will once again be without Deuce McBride, while the Suns will be missing Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal and possible Jusuf Nurkić, who is questionable. I’ll be on halftime for all you night owls. Come join.

Early Season Check-In

After 14 games, we’re as close to a sixth of the way through the season as we’re going to get (13.67 games is technically one sixth of 82 games). With New York about to embark on a tough west coast swing, this seems like as good a time as any to check in on how they’re doing.

There are a few other lines of symmetry as well. The Knicks have played seven at home and seven on the road. Entering play last night, they’d faced three teams in the top five in net rating (Cleveland, Boston and Houston) and three teams in the bottom five (Chicago, Philly and Washington). It is as representative a sample size as we’re going to get.

So…beyond the 8-6 record, how are they doing, what’s going well, what isn’t working, and which things should we be keeping an eye on?

(note: all rankings below are from before last night’s games and use NBA.com’s stats page unless noted otherwise)

Offense

New York’s basic statistical profile is more or less what we should have expected, ranking third in the league in offensive efficiency. That ranking deserve some extrapolation though.

With a decent chunk of the season now in the books, the Knicks are one of three teams who have gained clear separation from the rest of the league, with Boston and Cleveland being the other two. All three teams have offensive ratings between 121.1 and 122.1 points per 100 possessions, which would make them the second, third and fourth teams in league history to top the 120-point mark, joining last year’s record setting Celtics offense. The fourth place Lakers (117.7) trail the Knicks by 3.4 points per 100 possessions, and the fifth and sixth place Warriors and Kings are even further down at 116.7 and 115.9, respectively.

If we look at a breakdown of the top offenses on Cleaning the Glass (which has slightly different numbers because it filters out garbage time), we’ll see some notable commonalities that give us even more information about how they’re doing it.