Knicks Magic Numbers

A look at five key numbers that will determine New York's success this postseason. Plus, the Knicks found out their first round opponent.

Good morning…

News & Notes

🏀 The Knicks have their opponent.

In a contest that was more rock fight than basketball game, the Sixers beat the Heat 105-104 to secure the seventh seed and a first round matchup with the Knicks.

For Philly, the biggest takeaway was how Joel Embiid looked, which was nothing like the player who was en route to his second consecutive MVP before a knee injury that required surgery. Embiid suffered another knee injury in the Sixers’ penultimate game against Orlando, but returned to play afterwards before sitting out the season finale for precautionary reasons. Whether it was this new injury or aftereffects of the old one, what we saw last night was not the Process that struck fear into the rest of the league for the first few months of the season.

Will he improve? And if so, how rapidly? Or might he worsen over the course of a long series without time to rest? These are just some of the questions that could determine the series, and we’ll get into them (and much more) in tomorrow’s series preview.

Knicks Magic Numbers

When we reach the end of an 82-game season, I’m always curious to see which game-to-game statistics were most predictive of wins and losses, especially since its not always what you think.

For example, when you think of this year’s Knicks, I’d argue that elite rebounding, both in terms of grabbing their own misses and keeping opponents off the offensive glass, is among the first things that come to mind. After all, no team in the league grabbed a higher percentage of available rebounds than New York.

And yet, the Knicks were just 6-12 when they grabbed 16 or more offensive rebounds, while they were just 8-13 when they limited opposing teams to seven or fewer offensive boards. Sometimes, success isn’t determined by what you think it will be.

With that as the backdrop, let’s look at five magic numbers that have defined success (or failure) for New York this season.

16

As in, 16 threes.

New York is 17-3 in the 20 games they’ve hit at least that many from downtown. They’re also 17-3 when they hit at least 42 percent from long range.

In a league where teams increasingly live and die by the three, you might guess that this sort of statistical imbalance would be true of most teams, but that actually isn’t the case, or at least not to this extreme. Philly, for example, is just 8-6 when they hit 16 or more triples. Miami is 15-6 when they get to 15. Cleveland is 13-5 when they hit at least 17. Orlando is 10-6 with 14 or more. Indy is 18-6 when notching 16.

As you might guess, the results are similarly tilted when New York goes cold, but it gets less severe the higher up we get. The Knicks are 3-8 when hitting nine or fewer threes, 6-12 when they top out at 10, 8-15 when they get to 11, and 13-19 when they hit a dozen.

As for last year’s postseason, while there wasn’t much correlation in the Cavs series (because neither team could shoot worth a damn), New York beat Miami in their two best shooting games (16 threes on 40 percent shooting, 13 threes on 38.2 percent shooting) but lost the four games where they failed to make over 10 threes, hitting just 24.8 percent of their 137 total attempts in those games.

Some good news: the Knicks have become a much more consistent 3-point shooting team over the course of the season. Eight of the 11 games when they failed to hit double digit threes came before the OG Anunoby trade, whereas they’ve hit at least 10 triples in 48 of the 51 games since. That’s not a shock considering the increased shot diet for Donte DiVincenzo and the emergence of Deuce McBride.

Best of all, they’re coming into the playoffs on a heater, hitting the third highest percentage of their threes of any team in the league over the last six games.