Let the Real Games Begin

The Knicks close out the regular season with a pair of losses and look forward to the games that will define them.

Good morning! No preamble today…too much to get to…

🗣 News & Notes ✍️

🏀 Let the postseason commence! The Knicks and Cavs will tip off on Saturday at 6 pm in Cleveland. No other games have been announced as of yet.

Will Julius Randle be available? There’s no official update on his condition, but he was at the Garden yesterday not wearing a walking boot - a great sign.

🏀 By tanking away two games this weekend, including Friday’s in blatant enough fashion for the league to announce they were opening an investigation into the matter, the Mavericks will go into the lottery with the 10th best odds. Translation: there is a roughly 80 percent chance they keep the pick and a 20 percent chance it conveys to New York this year. If it doesn’t convey, the top-10 protections will roll over to next year and 2026 if necessary, after which it will convert to two second rounders if it has not yet conveyed.

In other news, there are rumors that Luka may want out after next season and Kyrie Irving skipped his exit meeting. Things are great in Big D.

🏀 The Knicks signed former Thunder and Spurs big man Isaiah Roby yesterday on a deal that essentially gave him $400,000 for a day’s work and gave the Knicks his non-guaranteed rights for the 2023-2024 season (h/t Fred Katz). He is not eligible to appear in the playoffs.

Weekend Recap

Friday night, New York went into New Orleans to face a Pelicans team fighting to advance out of the play-in and secure a playoff spot. Even thought the game meant nothing to New York, it was tight throughout, with the Pelicans nearly pulling away in the third quarter before a Knicks rally gave the road team a one-point lead with five minutes remaining. The Pels made a bit more shots down the stretch though and emerged with the 113-105 victory.

Sunday was a far more free-flowing affair (read: defense optional). The Knicks took double digit leads in each of the first three quarters but saw the Pacers ride hot 3-point shooting to a 49-20 run over a 12-minute span in the third and fourth quarters. New York made a late push but couldn’t bring it home. Pacers win, 141-136.

Stars of the Weekend

⭐️ Obi Toppin: Gets the nod over two players who had real cases. First, Mitchell Robinson, who sat out Friday for a rest day but grabbed 20 boards, including a team-record tying 14 offensive rebounds, against Indiana. He also had seven blocked shots, and looks ready to make a big impact against the Cavs.

The other candidate was RJ Barrett, who had one of his best passing games of the season on Friday with six assists and several more great decisions with the ball in his hands. He was also exquisite inside the arc and finished with 28 points, but was 0-for-9 from downtown. Yesterday was less impressive overall, but on the whole, a fairly encouraging weekend after two games off.

The winner is Toppin though, who had the better overall statistical game yesterday (34, 7 & 5) but showed some nice moves with the ball all weekend long. More thoughts on him, and his potential impact in the upcoming series, coming later this week.

⭐️ ⭐️ Quentin Grimes: All you need to know about how Grimes finished up his sophomore campaign (and how much of a weapon he should be against the Cavaliers) can be gleaned by looking at the NBA leaders in 3-point attempts over the final eight games of the regular season:

As my momma always says, it’s about the company you keep.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Immanuel Quickley: Since the All-Star break, there are three players in the NBA averaging at least 20 points and four assists while shooting at least 40 percent from deep on at least five 3-point attempts per game (minimum 10 games). The Knicks employ two of them, in Jalen Brunson and Immanuel Quickley. Steph Curry is the third.

IQ finished the season with 24 in New Orleans, where he was the best player on the court for much of the night, and had another 30-piece against Indiana. I’d call him an X-factor against the Cavs but that belittles the level he’s elevated himself to. If IQ is on the court, we can be pretty sure we’re getting top notch production at both ends.

Let the Real Games Begin

Babe Ruth. Pretty good ball player. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

And when you hear the many legends of the Babe, among the first of those is that early on, he launched more home runs by himself than the output of entire teams. Pretty soon, everyone was swinging for the fences, and baseball was changed forever.

Fast forward about a hundred years, and someone else came along and pulled off the same Ruthian feat, except in a different sport and without eating quite as many hot dogs.

In 2013-14 - the first year that the NBA began tracking pull-up 3-pointers - Steph Curry nailed 158 pull-up threes, more than all but five teams in the NBA. Four teams had less than half of his total output. Pull-up threes are a far greater threat than catch & shoot 3-pointers, because instead of needing a teammate to set you up for the open look, a great pull-up shooter can do all the damage by himself. Starting about a decade ago, Curry began inflicting the sort of damage that Dr. James Naismith couldn’t have possibly fathomed.

As the years went by, we began to see players test the limits of how many long distance pull-ups was too many, with Curry being the first to surpass 200. Four years ago, James Harden set a new record which still stands at 342. Since then, we seem to have reached a comfortable middle-ground in which half the teams in the NBA have someone averaging at least 1.5 made pull-up threes per game but no single player that tops 3.0.

(By the way, nine years after he broke basketball, Curry is still tops in the league with 2.8 made pull-up threes per game, and he’s by far the most efficient of any high volume guy. Steph Curry: the Babe Ruth of basketball!)

Why is this relevant to the first round series between the Knicks and the Cavs, two teams that play over 1000 miles from Curry’s home arena?

Because like it has during so many playoff matchups in the last decade, pull-up 3-point shooting is the first domino in the chain of events that will almost certainly decide this series. Yes, there will be X-factors, but the ability of those X-factors to make a difference in the first place will largely be dictated by the defense that gets played at the top, and how much the threat of “bomb’s away!” will bend each defense at its knees.

The preeminent threat is none other than Donovan Mitchell.

As a rookie, Mitchell attempted 304 pull-up 3-pointers, over a hundred more than the next closest player in his class. He didn’t convert those looks at a terribly high rate - just 29.3 percent, lowest among the league’s nine most voluminous pull-up shooters - but it was still quite an accomplishment for a player billed as a defense-first guard.

Since then, Mitchell has gradually increased both his volume and accuracy on these shots, culminating in a performance this season which could have him among the top five finishers for MVP. He joined Tyrese Haliburton and Chef Curry himself as the only players to average multiple made pull-up threes per game at a hit rate topping 39 percent. Since his rookie year, only Harden, Damian Lillard, Curry and Luka Doncic have more made pull-up threes than Mitchell:

Not coincidentally, the four names above Mitchell here have comprised 21 of the 36 All-NBA 1st & 2nd Team guard spots over the last nine years. This season, Donovan will add his name to that list, along with at least Doncic and maybe one of Curry or Dame.

Part of the reason Mitchell has reached his highest heights yet as an NBA players is because he continues to strengthen the weak spots in his game, starting with nailing all those pull-up triples at such a proficient rate. Because he’s such a threat, defenders can’t even think about going under screens, which then opens up driving lanes that Donovan can exploit:

And exploit them he does.

On the season, Mitchell is hitting 68 percent of his shots around the rim and 51 percent of his shots from floater range. Those conversion rates rank in the 79th and 85th percentiles at his position, according to Cleaning the Glass.

On all drives to the hoop, Mitchell is converting 59.3 percent of his shots. Going into this weekend’s games, that percentage was tied with Giannis Antetokounmpo for second highest among 36 players that drive at least a dozen times per game. Only Luka Doncic is more accurate.

Because he’s so damn good on drives, Mitchell usually shoots on these forays into the paint. If there’s a chink in the armor here, it’s that he generates an assist on just 7.5 percent of his drives, which is among the lowest numbers of the league’s frequent penetrators. At the same time, Mitchell continues to evolve as a passer even if his assist numbers have gone down playing next to Darius Garland.

When he’s doubled, Mitchell is able to parlay the extra attention into open looks for teammates, which again brings us back to the threat of his pull-up. Watch here, for example, as the Knicks decide to put two on the ball as Mitchell puts it into gear along the sideline:

We can’t underestimate all that goes into Mitchell getting a wide open look for Cedi Osman here. After Donovan already tagged them for 23 first quarter points - including several pull-up threes - the Knicks decided that they weren’t going to let him beat them by himself anymore. As a result, Brunson comes over to double as the shot clock starts to wind down.

Seeing this, Immanuel Quickley and Isaiah Hartenstein are both ready to offer help. Sure enough, when Mitchell jumps to pass, they both jump towards his most obvious target: Dean Wade at the top of the arc.

Except that’s not where Mitchell goes with the rock. Instead, he’s able to rifle a pass to Osman in the corner, who calmly drains it. The degree of difficulty on this pass is not insignificant, to say nothing of the fact that Mitchell saw it in the first place.

And then there’s other times when a double team doesn’t even get the ball out of Mitchell’s hands:

This is one of several examples from Mitchell’s 42-point outing in which the Knicks simply played poor point-of-attack defense. If you’re going to double a guy, he cannot, under any circumstances, treat you like a pair of subway doors that just opened wide. Similarly, on the above assist to Osman, even a late clock situation requires you to stay locked in and not give the Cavs an easy out when the defense has done its job for the majority of the 24-second shot clock.

With that being said, it’s not like New York’s perimeter defense is the only one in the league that Donovan has made look silly.

This split comes against perennial All-Defense candidate Fred VanVleet and too-good-to-trade-for-KD Scottie Barnes. The only difference is that instead of finishing the play himself, Mitchell kicks it to a wide open shooter in the corner.

And if you somehow succeed in getting the ball out of Mitchell’s hands, as Josh Hart was able to do in the second half of their last matchup, the Cavs have another All-Star in the backcourt waiting to wreck havoc.

In Garland, Cleveland has a player who may not be Donovan’s equal as an efficient shot creator, but he’s easily the superior passer of the two. Considering opposing defenses can no longer slot their best perimeter defender on him, Darius is able to maneuver his way around and either do damage from floater range (where he’s nearly as deadly as Mitchell at 49 percent) or find open shooters:

Mitchell isn’t even in the game on this play, so I’m not sure why Barrett is guarding Garland when IQ and Hart are both on the floor, but that’s a matchup he’d better get used to. The Knicks are likely going to slot Jalen Brunson on Isaac Okoro (or whoever starts at small forward), which means RJ is going to have the task of hanging with the slithery guard.

Which brings us to perhaps the biggest issue for New York’s defense in this series. As we’ve seen many teams (including the Cavs) do lately, they’re going to bring lesser defenders into the action. The Knicks will surely have a game plan for how they want to handle this when its Brunson and Toppin (for as long as Randle is out), and my guess is that they’ll try like hell not to switch it, but rather briefly show Mitchell two bodies before Brunson or Obi can recover to their original man. This brings all sorts of challenges and will require the rest of the defense to be connected on a string - something that hasn’t always been the case this season.

As for Barrett (and Randle once he returns), I bet they switch it and challenge RJ / Julius to handle the assignment. Their ability to credibly do so is a smaller battleground worth watching.

The issue is that New York’s defense can only plug so many leaks at once. When Brunson, Randle and Barrett have been on the court together this season, New York has given up 122.4 points per 100 possessions - in the 6th percentile of all five-man groupings league-wide according to Cleaning the Glass. Replace Randle with Obi and it’s a still poor 119.4 per 100 (and that should be taken with a grain of salt, as many of those 375 possessions have come against opposing backups).

If I’m aware of these ghastly numbers, you can bet Tom Thibodeau is as well, which is why the biggest question for him will be how long he feels he can survive minutes without a second premium perimeter defender on the court, let alone a third. Randle’s injury only adds to this conundrum, as now the Knicks have a more realistic option to put all three of Quickley, Grimes and Hart on the court at once (and even four, if McBride continues to spell Brunson for short stretches, although I wonder how much Thibs will trust those units to be able to generate offense). There’s more than a bit of irony here; while most of the focus has been on New York’s more free flowing offense without Randle, his absence may have a bigger impact on what they’re able to do in this series on the other end even more.

At the end of the day though, the Knicks are going to need to give significant minutes to Jalen Brunson, and likely RJ Barrett and Obi Toppin as well, at least for as long as Randle is missing. Those guys have to at least make life uncomfortable for the Cavs’ guards at the point of attack (and if you think I’m being too hard on Barrett here, check out this must watch RJ thread from Prez at the Strickland). Even more so, Hart, Quick, Grimes, and - if he gets a chance - Deuce need to be on their game when the lights get bright. How many times can they deny an initial switch? Do they have it in them to play up on Mitchell while not getting blown by? Can they stay out of foul trouble?

The answers to these questions are likely to decide the series.

One more nugget worth monitoring: Isaac Okoro, as Cleveland fans were quick to remind us, didn’t play in the most recent win. Okoro is the Cavs’ best perimeter defender and will make life difficult for Jalen Brunson even when New York brings screeners into the action to try and get a switch.

Okoro has a reputation of being a poor shooter but is shooting 37 percent on non-garbage time corner threes this season. Even more impressive, since a ghastly start to the season (0-for-12 from deep in his first dozen games and just 29 percent in the 19 games that followed), Okoro has hit 43 percent of all deep balls since December 19.

Here’s the catch though: that conversion rate has come on just 2.6 3-point attempts per game. Lamar Stevens, who got the Brunson assignment when Okoro was out, is the Cavs’ next best wing defender, but he’s hitting just 25 percent on corner threes, also on very low volume. Cleveland has better shooters, but they’re poorer defenders, which creates a dicy give-and-take. The Knicks just showed they’re more than capable of beating Cleveland in a track meet, and that was without Julius Randle.

My bet: Okoro and Stevens get a chance to shine, and New York sells out when they’re on the court, helping off to an absurd degree to make sure that Mitchell and Garland aren’t the ones beating them.

If they can use that strategy to force the ball out of Mitchell’s and Garland’s hands at least some of the time, maybe it will work enough to slow down the league’s 7th ranked offense.

Last note: the Cavs are a dreadful team on long two’s, converting these shots at just a 38.7 percent clip - 29th in the league according to Cleaning the Glass. The Knicks will obviously welcome these shots, and the Cavs will surely continue to probe for closer looks, because as I noted, Cleveland’s guards are excellent from floater range, and as a team the Cavs are top notch at the rim, in part because of their twin towers. For that reason, I believe that New York’s centers could swing this series with their coverage of the pick and role and ability to protect the rim without failing. They are that important.

I think that about covers it for when the Cavs have the ball. As for New York’s offense vs Cleveland’s No. 1 ranked defense, we’ll handle that bear…later this week.

🏀

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