Preseason Predicaments
Preseason Predicaments
With the fake games about to begin, today I ask my top three preseason questions.
Good Morning, and HAPPY BASKETBALL IS BACK WEEK!
It seems like just yesterday that I was recapping Game 5, yet here we are four months later, and the boys in orange and blue are back. Seems like they never left.
As will be the case all season long, I’ll be recapping every Knicks game, complete with key stats, clips, quotes and stars of the game bright and early the next morning. If you’d like to get in on the fun and you’re not yet a full subscriber, you know what to do:
On to the weekend’s news…
🗣 News & Notes ✍️
🏀 Luca Vildoza is a free man.
The Knicks announced they waived the 26-year-old Argentinian import yesterday, thanks in large part to a bum ankle that has kept him from practicing with the team in camp. Marc Berman also reported that Vildoza had fluid in the back of his foot following summer league, so it sounds like there may have been a few issues here.
The move was a bit surprising, only because it came earlier than necessary. As Bobby Marks pointed out, New York had until October 21 to cut ties with Luca before his $3.32 million salary would have become guaranteed for this season. Perhaps they’re doing him a solid by getting this done early so he has a chance to tag on somewhere else. We’ll find out soon enough, I suppose.
As far as the importance of the transaction, this move should have minimal impact on the court. For all the fanfare surrounding the signing in May, New York’s offseason quickly made the need for an extra ball handler less vital than we figured it might be at the end of last season. Even if he was fully healthy, Vildoza was going to have a difficult time cracking a point guard rotation headed up by Kemba Walker and Derrick Rose, to say nothing of several other options that I’ll get to in today’s column below.
Off the court, as my colleague Jeremy Cohen pointed out, the Knicks lose a very tradable salary. One assumes that they felt the need for wing depth trumped the possibility they might need Vildoza’s contract to use in a trade. Keep in mind that they’re still over the cap even though they waived Vildoza, so if they were to sign someone fresh off the street tomorrow, that player would be limited to receiving the vet minimum.
To that end, Thibs noted that Knick summer leaguer Wayne Seldon has been impressing in camp. The battle for roster spot No. 15 would seem to be between him and Dwayne Bacon, both of whom are on non-guaranteed deals.
🏀 Speaking of the end of the bench, Kevin Knox spoke to the media yesterday for the first time since February. He confirmed he contracted COVID over the summer, causing him to lose some weight that took him some time to put back on. He said all the right things, but it would be a shocker at this point if Knox was the one to end the Charlie Ward curse.
🏀 Less of a shocker: a more recent Knick draft pick is having himself a nice few days in Europe:
Rokas Jokubaitis ended up falling to 34, but there’s a reason he was mocked in the mid 20’s by a lot of folks before the draft. New York may have themselves a decent trade chip on their hands after all.
🏀 Mark your calendars! The Knicks open their preseason schedule tomorrow night against the Pacers at 7:30 in MSG.
Thanks to yesterday’s events, the game will now be opposite a Yankees vs Red Sox Wild Card death match. If, perchance, you choose to watch the baseball game instead of fake basketball, I’ll of course have a full recap for you on Wednesday morning.
🏀 The Ben Simmons saga continues, as the Sixers decided to withhold the $8.25 million payment that was due on Friday. The craziest show in town keeps getting crazier.
🏀 And finally, basketball was played yesterday! The Nets throttled the Lakers, but save for 11 minutes from Anthony Davis, no one of note played. Something tells me Tuesday’s Knicks Pacers game will feature a few more headline names.
Preseason Predicaments
Almost two years ago to the day, I giddily sat down to watch the 2019-20 New York Knickerbockers open their preseason slate against the Washington Wizards.
The offseason had not gone the way any of us had hoped for, but there was still excitement and anticipation in the air. The team had just tied it’s lowest win total in franchise history, and at the very least, they would be better. Before we’d even made it to the end of a first quarter that saw the Knicks jump out to a 27-16 lead, following a nice Julius Randle move in the lane, I tweeted something to the effect of “It’s so nice not to have to root for a terrible basketball team anymore.
”Perhaps I got a bit ahead of myself.
What followed was what I consider to be one of the two or three most depressing seasons of Knicks basketball of my lifetime. They were better than the 17-win disaster that preceded, if only because they couldn’t be much worse (and because Mike Miller somehow resurrected a sunken ship. His job in an impossible situation remains impressive in retrospect).
The moral of the story is not to pay much attention to anything you see, hear or feel before the real games begin.
Case in point: last preseason. Obi Toppin played just 11 fewer minutes than Julius Randle over the course of four games. Dennis Smith Jr played 18 minutes a night in the first three outings after being rested in Game 4. Meanwhile, Immanuel Quickley hardly played until Game 3 and Reggie Bullock came off the bench in the first two games in favor of Alec Burks.
At the same time, it’s also clear from last year that Thibs tips his hand as to what he’s fairly certain on and what he’s still on the fence about. There seemed to be a real competition between Bullock and Burks for that starting spot, as there was between Nerlens Noel and Mitchell Robinson, each of whom started two games. Randle and Barrett, on the other hand, started all four games.
What we see on the court also matters, to an extent. While it may have been a tad premature to anoint Immanuel Quickley as the point guard of the future, it was abundantly clear after his final outing that the Knicks had found something special. We also knew after four games that neither Elfrid Payton nor Dennis Smith Jr was the answer, at least not to any question worth asking.
With all this in mind, here are the top three things I’m looking for in the next 12 days
.3. Who gets a chance to run point?
The biggest questions of New York’s season are easily how much and how often Kemba Walker plays, and to a lesser extent, how he looks when he’s out there. The latter is less interesting to me because, as I wrote about extensively recently, Kemba was quite good when he was on the floor last season. It’s just about keeping him on the court.
The chemistry that Walker develops with Randle will take time, but their high pick and roll should become an instant staple of New York’s offense. Similarly, we know that Derrick Rose is going to see his 20-25 minutes a night as long as Tom Thibodeau still has a pulse. So 1 and 1b on the depth chart are set in stone.
Just as certain as we are that Walker and Rose will fill 48 minutes in Thibs’ ideal rotation, we can be sure that neither player will play all 82 games. As such, it’ll be interesting to see where else Thibodeau turns to fill his point guard minutes during the preseason.
The guess here (and something else that bears watching) is that Rose’s load over the next two weeks will be an incredibly light one. If there is anyone who doesn’t need many reps to ready himself for a season under Thibs - Rose’s ninth - it’s the former MVP. Kemba probably plays a bit more, but his time is also worth monitoring. If Walker gets regular season minutes, perhaps it’s an indication that his introduction into New York’s offense is still a work in progress. We’ll wait and see.
And then there is the possibility that Thibs may try out Rose and Walker together, although like we saw with Randle and Obi last postseason, that doesn’t necessarily mean the experiment will make it past the games that don’t count.
After those two, does Thibodeau turn to Immanuel Quickley as his third string point guard? Or will it be Alec Burks, who filled in at point admirably on several occasions last season? Does RJ or Fournier get a shot to run the show in some sort of jumbo configuration? Or did what we saw in summer league have a lasting impact on the coaching staff, and will Deuce McBride get his shot? If Luca Vildoza wasn’t in a walking boot, you’d have been able to add his name to the mix as well.
In short, Thibodeau has several options. He may have his mind already made up, but either way, the minutes distribution at this spot bears watching.
2. Is the new look offense gelling?
As I noted above, individual chemistry between specific players will not happen overnight. Even so, we’ve seen new look NBA offenses gel almost instantly in the past. The question here is whether New York can be one of them.
The good news: the last time Thibs faced such a challenge, things went very well. When he coached Minnesota, the Wolves swapped out 3/5 of their starting five after Thibodeau’s first season and went from the 10th ranked offense at 110.0 points per 100 possessions to the 4th ranked unit at 112.5 points per 100.
Fast forward four years, and while New York may not be getting Jimmy Butler, their upgrades may be just as significant. Ever since his second season as a pro, Kemba Walker’s teams have always scored at a significantly higher clip
when he’s on the floor…
…as have Evan Fourner’s, with one exception a few years ago:
That doesn’t mean there won’t be challenges. To varying extents, Walker, Fournier, Barrett and Randle are all players who either are or have been used to having the ball in their hands a lot. Getting ball-dominant players to adjust their games isn’t as easy as preaching unselfishness or urging them to pass up a good shot for a great one. If anything, too much unselfishness can take players out of their comfort zone and they start avoiding what comes most natural. Scorers need to score.
The key here is that all four of New York’s non-center starters should be equally as dangerous off the ball as they are on it. Randle and RJ obviously have much shorter track records as elite floor-spacers, but assuming last year’s success continues this season, New York should have a starting five that keeps opposing defenses on their toes.
Will they be able to find a happy medium? Perhaps even more important than their collective ability to shoot is this quartet’s willingness and ability to make plays for others and the corresponding hoops IQ to help them decide when to pass and when to shoot.
If things look clunky over the course of the preseason, we shouldn’t take it as a sign that they’ll remain that way moving forward. At the same time, if the starters look like they’ve already been playing together for years, every Knick fan has the right to be ridiculously over the top in their excitement.
1. What New Tricks are in RJ’s Bag?
After yet another ridiculous list
that doesn’t think RJ Barrett is worth the price of his uniform, there is perhaps no player on New York’s roster with more eyes on him than the third-year swingman from Duke.As I’ve touched on in the past, there is a reason he continues to garner disrespect. Through two years, Barrett hasn’t checked enough of the boxes that often get associated with a future All-Star wing. He hasn’t taken many off-the-dribble shots from behind the arc. Absent fast breaks, he doesn’t explode to the rim on finishes. He goes through stretches of quarters or games where he puts up some ugly attempts near the hoop. The combined picture has sullied the consensus opinion.
But focusing on the negatives seems to be blinding everyone to some very tangible positives that portend big things for Barrett in the coming years. Last season, among players under 21 years old, only the last two No. 1 picks, Zion Williamson and Anthony Edwards, and Kevin Porter Jr playing extended garbage time in Houston had a higher relative usage rate when you account for position:
Aside from not looking the part in the eyes of some, Barrett also gets dinged for his below average overall efficiency, but as the plethora of blue-shaded numbers in the “points per shot attempt” column shows, this is par for the course with players this young.
More significant is the growth RJ showed after his rookie year number was darker than the deep blue sea: 95.9 PSA, good for the 12th percentile. The jump to 106.7 / 37th percentile also doesn’t account for Barrett’s dreadful first 11 games, when he had a 39.0 effective field goal percentage. From Game 12 until the end of the season, that number jumped to 52.2, which is about league average for wings.
But even if that number takes yet another leap, this is 2021, and a player’s worth in the eyes of the viewing public is only as high as what can be distilled into a seven-second Twitter clip. More importantly for our purposes, if Barrett can add an off-the-dribble component to his game on the perimeter and start to display more consistency and savvy with his finishes around the rim, New York’s offense will really have the chance to be something special.
Fair warning: if RJ does start experimenting with off-the-dribble 3’s in games, it’s going to be a work in progress, and his overall efficiency will likely suffer. In other words, more fodder for the doubters.
Pay it no mind. We’ll know early on in the preseason what exactly Barrett has been working on in his spare time. Regardless of how successful he is at first, I’m excited to see what the next step in his journey looks like.
Haters be damned.
🏀
That’s it for today! If you enjoy this newsletter and like the Mets, don’t forget to subscribe to JB’s Metropolitan. See everyone soon! #BlackLivesMatter
I looked for the actual tweet but failed to find it. I’ll happily shout out anyone who does.
I’d probably have had the battle for starting center somewhere in here had it not been for Mitch’s slow recovery from injury. Alas…
Stats courtesy of Cleaning the Glass.
This one was particularly frustrating for me, as I proudly wrote for the Step Back and contributed to a few 25 Under 25’s over the years. There’s good intention behind the list and it’s voted on by everyone who contributes to the site, so this is just an example of how universal opinion of Barrett is much lower than here in New York.
Luka, we hardly knew ya.