Getting back to Normal
...and a word about our Thanksgivign Drive
The hardest part of talking about the Knicks right now is figuring out how to talk about the Knicks right now.
We thought that this season we’d finally have 82 games worth of “normal” basketball conversation…how is RJ’s game translating? Is it his free throw form, or is it in his head? Is Mitch actually better suited to come off the bench, at least for a little? Has Kevin Knox taken a step forward on defense? Is Point Julius an experiment doomed to fail, or does it just need more time to marinate? How does Frank keep getting even more handsome?
(maybe not that last one.)
But this is New York, and it’s the Knicks, and there’s no such thing as having a basketball conversation that ends with just what’s happening on the court. Everything needs to relate to the big picture. “Point Julius” can’t just be about Julius Randle the player, but instead needs to inspect his fit as leader of the team. Is he being selfish? Are we seeing stubbornness in action, or a player ill-equipped to deal with the role for which he was brought on? Which is worse?
And the dominoes only start to fall from there. We have to ask whether the coach is an idiot for trying this out in the first place, or whether the front office is a bunch of idiots for even giving the coach that choice, or employing that coach at all, because didn’t they bring him on to attract stars, and now that this didn’t happen, what the hell’s the point of keeping him? But also…wouldn’t firing him before you’ve even pre-ordered your Thanksgiving turkey be yet another piece of evidence of organizational incompetence - one more sign that a culture of fear exists in the Garden, where it’s every man for himself, all under the omnipresent eye of You Know Who?
You can fall down this rabbit hole with almost literally any seemingly simple basketball question as your starting point (trust me, I come across the cheshire cat on a daily basis). It’s tiring!
Yet this is where we find ourselves once again. Is the solution not to ask these questions in the first place, and stick our heads in the sand? As much as I wish I could, it doesn’t feel like that’s the answer.
But neither is obsessing over this stuff to the point of not knowing which end is up.
So I’m going to compromise. Barring any other craziness, I’m leaving behind the big picture stuff that has come up over the last week in the rear view mirror…but not without first posing a theory (and apologies if you’re reading this after listening to the latest podcast, where I also posed this to Jeremy Cohen):
Last week, Marc Berman reported that Dolan was, as many theorized, behind the impromptu Scott & Steve presser:
Then, the next day, Woj released a report stating that Steve Mills was already laying the groudwork to fire David Fizdale. Following that report, unsurprisingly, the entire league and surrounding media expressed a great deal of sympathy for…David Fizdale.
Finally, mere hours after the report dropped, we saw all three men - Fiz, Perry and Mills - seemingly yucking it up at practice. None of this makes any sense…at least not at first.
But what if: it was understood between all parties that the postgame presser was Dolan’s idea, just as it was understood that Fizdale needed to fortify his own position, hence the leak to Woj? And what all three were laughing about the next day was how this tit for tat was merely the cost of doing business inside the Garden?
If that’s the case, it presents a bit of a silver lining: maybe everyone is still on the same page, and it’s just a matter of figuring out how to keep the owner at bay for long enough to figure out how to make these all pieces fit.
(Welcome to New York, where coming up with a theory to explain away organizational infighting is cause for celebration! Baggage claim is to your right.)
Under normal NBA circumstances, for a team stocked with several young players at risk of getting benched for high-priced vets by a coach trying to save his job, this would be a problem. But (thankfully, for once) when are the Knicks ever normal?
On balance, New York’s best players this season have been, in some order, RJ Barrett, Mitchell Robinson, and Frank Ntilikina. Kevin Knox is still working out the kinks on defense and had a rough outing on Saturday, but he’s still their best high-volume shooter. Damyean Dotson has the on/off metrics of prime Steph Curry, albeit in just under 100 minutes. DSJ seems to have figure some stuff out Thursday night.
All of this is to say that if this coach’s back is indeed up against the wall, all it means is that we should be getting more, not less, of what we want.
Does that also mean they’re close to rising from their currently 29th ranked net rating? Saturday provided equal parts encouragement and discouragement where this was concerned.
Largely using a zone scheme, the Knicks held the Hornets to 80 points through 42 minutes of action before Charlotte proceeded to score 23 points in the final six minutes. For as much as New York allowed an ungodly number of threes throughout the game (45 through those first 42 minutes, several of them open), the defense was working. Other than Devonte Graham, the guys shooting those bombs were the ones you’d want doing it.
Where the defense broke down, as Fiz told me after the game, was in New York’s late overcompensating on guarding threes, which allowed Charlotte to roll unimpeded to the hoop again and again. They only missed one shot in the last six minutes - a Rozier three - and with the exception of the last shot and one other Graham deep ball, every point was scored at the rim and on free throws.
On one hand, the coach recognized that the switching scheme they previously employed was allowing quick guards like Graham to roast them on drives. Saturday night, they simply picked a different poison. Up until they diverted from that plan, it was working just well enough.
On the other hand, they did indeed divert from that plan. Perhaps that’s a mistake one should expect from a young team desperately trying to hold onto a lead. It can be excused. What is harder to excuse, 13 games into the season, is this:
On the left, you’ll see a Rockets-esque, picture-perfect shot chart for 2019. On the right, the Knicks chicken pox, as Jeremy referred to it on today’s pod.
Granted, a lot of those circles are filled, and this isn’t even a conversation if Frank Ntilikina gets to Graham a millisecond sooner on that final shot. The devaluation of the midrange is one of those touch-point NBA issues of the moment, and we’re still wondering whether those who haven’t eschewed it completely are way ahead of the curve or way behind it. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Knicks shoot more long two’s than all but four teams in the NBA, and are worse shooting them than all but seven. That’s not a great combo.
All of this will go into assessing Fizdale’s long term viability for this job, as well as whether the front office erred by giving him players who enjoy taking these types of looks to begin with. If there’s a correct blend to achieve, they haven’t figured it out yet.
What they have gotten right, and what I’m leaving this weekend most encouraged about, is the notion of building around players who are far more apt to deal with the New York roller coaster than most. Take a listen to RJ and Mitch here, in a clip from Sunday’s practice:
Being carefree and able to have devastating losses roll off your back isn’t always a great look, but this season, with this team, it just might be the best quality these kids can have.
As long as they remain accountable, that is…which leads me, of course, to Frank. After the cameras stopped rolling on Saturday night, a few of us remained around his locker talking about that last play. His last words to us were clear: “It’s on me.”
Whether he’s right or wrong is immaterial. But he cares, as does everyone on this team, still, despite all the noise and turmoil surrounding what has been an absolute bear of a month.
Hopefully now, things can normalize (whatever that means around these parts). A few wins wouldn’t hurt. Saturday they let one slip away - a learning experience for a team whose curve gets steeper with each passing day.
All part of the journey.
(Speaking of the journey, ICYMI over the weekend, I wrote about the one I’ve taken en route to covering a game at the Garden for the first time. Check it out here if you want to get in your feelings a bit to start off your week)
Stock Up, Stock Down
No Knicks made the list of either the highest risers or biggest losers for PredictionStrike as of Monday morning (if you haven’t checked out our sponsor yet, click here to do so and use code KFS for an extra $10), but one name that jumps out is Jerome Robinson.
You may remember Robinson as the Clippers other lottery pick last year aside from SGA, but he was quickly forgotten after draft night thanks to a rookie season that saw him barely get on the floor. His stock price jumped up so much because he got a ton of mop up duty - 32 minutes, to be exact - in Sunday’s 49-point blowout vs the Hawks.
But he responded to all that time with 21 points on 8-of-13 shooting, and it came one game after a 17-minute outing in New Orleans. This is an organization that doesn’t mind waiting for growth from high pedigree players, so perhaps this is a sign of Robinson turning a corner. At a little more than a buck, he might not be the worst long term investment to make.
Help Us Help Others!!!
Our Thanksgiving Drive is officially under way!
With the help of FeedingNYC.org, we’re helping feed NYC families on Thanksgiving. Every $35 we raise will feed one needy family. You can click here to donate.
In addition to the money we’ve already raised on the charity site, we also raised $340 with raffle sales on Thursday, and even better, Penn 6 agreed to donate an additional $1000 to our cause! To show your thanks, feel free to visit them for a drink or dinner before or after Knick games (they’re on 31st, just off of 7th, right down the block from the Garden), and look out for news of another meetup there soon. We truly appreciate their generous support.
In the meantime, feel free to join me in making this donation experience a little more fun. Starting tonight, I’m going to donate $1 for every point Frank Ntilikina scores over the next four games (from tonight to next Sunday). I’ll be tweeting this out later, and you should feel free to tweet out your stat/donation combo as well…it only helps the cause!
News & Notes
compiled by Michael Schatz (@mschatz99)
Willy Hernangomez (who notably didn’t get off the bench on Saturday night and is out of the Hornets’ rotation) chimed in on his buddy KP’s return to the Garden.
Terry Rozier thought he was going to be a Knick, which, as Jeremy and I discussed extensively on the podcast, is a little frightening.
Chris Iseman was on point in his wrap up of Saturday’s game, highlighting both the good and the bad.
Mitchell Robinson missed practice with a sprained ankle yesterday, but is probable for tonight.
Lastly, here’s my game story from Saturday, ICYMI.
Knicks Kicks of the Night
by Tiffany Salmon (@tiffstarr815)
On This Date: Knicks finish game on 19-0 run to beat the Milwaukee Bucks
by Vivek Dadhania (@vdadhania)
In one of the most memorable comebacks in NBA history, the New York Knicks scored the final 19 points of the game to beat the Milwaukee Bucks 87-86 at Madison Square Garden. The team was down by as much as 20 points and clawed back into the game in the middle of the 4th quarter. After a few key baskets by Earl Monroe and Dave DeBusschere and a few clutch defensive stops, the team was only down by 1 point with 47 seconds left in the game.
That’s it! See everyone tomorrow!