Superstar Impact

In a continuation of Monday's newsletter, today I look at how the Knicks compare with other teams in managing the minutes without their superstar.

Good morning! Can the Knicks get two wins in a row for the first time since February 1? Given tonight’s opponent, we better hope they can…

Game Night

TONIGHT: Knicks at Blazers, 10:00 pm, MSG Network

Injury Report: No Julius yet, but the latest report from Ian Begley has to be considered encouraging:

We continue to wait - wait, and hope.

For Portland, Malcolm Brogdon and Shaedon Sharpe remain out, while Jerami Grant is day-to-day.

Halftime Zoom: Hello, night owls. Here’s your link.

What to watch for: No letdowns, please.

At this point, there should be genuine excitement about how long the Brunson / Anunoby train can keep chugging along at breakneck speeds. In their 385 minutes together this season, the Knicks have outscored opponents by 242 points, or about 0.63 points per minute. By way of comparison, the Jokic / Murray combo - generally regarded as the most dangerous two-man combination in the league right now - is only besting teams by 0.31 points per minute, albeit over a sample size about three times as large.

Point is, these guys have shown serious potential in their limited time together. No reason it shouldn’t continue against a team with the fourth worst net rating in the NBA.

Standings Check

Very big off-night for the Knicks.

The defending world champs went into Miami and beat the Heat, while the Bulls had a thrilling overtime victory in Indiana, thanks in part to former Knick Obi Toppin.

With 3.1 seconds remaining and a three point lead, Indy intentionally fouled DeMar DeRozan, who had been unstoppable. After DeRozan hit the first, Pacers coach Rick Carlisle put Obi in the game for rebounding purposes, but instead of grabbing the board after DeMar’s intentional miss, Toppin inexplicably swatted the ball out of bounds with 2.1 seconds left on the clock.

That was more than enough time for DeRozan to hit a game-tying jumper, and then take over in overtime en route to a 132-129 victory. Haliburton had a chance to tie it at the buzzer but missed.

As a result, the Pacers fall two games back of the Knicks, with the Heat three games behind. On the downside, Cleveland beat New Orleans and further distanced themselves from New York in 2nd place, while Orlando dispatched the Nets at home.

Worth noting: Indy has only 15 games remaining with a fairly tough slate, and they’ve gone just 8-6 since acquiring Siakam. Even with the tie-breaker over the Knicks, if they go 10-5 (which would be pretty outstanding given their remaining schedule and how they’ve looked lately), New York would finish ahead of them by going 10-7¹.

As for Miami, the Knicks own that tiebreaker. Again, if New York could just go 10-7, the Heat would need to go 14-3 to finish ahead of them.

Presuming Philly (who New York also owns the tiebreaker over) continues to struggle without Joel Embiid, it’s looking like we may be headed for a 4/5 matchup with the Orlando Magic, especially considering they have the tiebreaker over Indiana.

Superstar Impact

Want to have some harmless fun? Head over to the NBA’s stats page after a game and look up the lineup ratings for the previous 48 minutes. The data is pretty close to meaningless given the tiny sample size, but I get a kick out of the absurdity of some of the numbers regardless.

For example, here’s the five most used five-man lineups from OG’s return game the other night:

I don’t know what’s funnier…the Brunson-DiVo-Hart-OG-center lineups outscoring Philly by an average of 67.5 points per 100 possessions over 23 minutes, or the McBride-Burks-Bogey-Hart-Achiuwa primary backup unit scoring 33.3 points per hundred possessions in their time together (which, notably, was just three minutes before Thibs pulled the plug. Not exactly a ringing endorsement!)

The absurdity of these numbers made me think about what I wrote for Monday’s newsletter regarding how New York’s offense has fallen off a cliff whenever Brunson is on the bench, going all the way back to last season. On that point, the always insightful Ben Kim-Gervey had an interesting thought / question in response:

Nice overview - lots to chew on here. One question that occurs to me though: How does our lackluster bench offense compare to other teams with singular high usage guards? Historically, I’d have to think, when you have a top offense or defense that revolves around individual players, there’s a big drop off when they sit. It leads to minutes/load issues like we have now, and forces coaches to balance the player’s need for rest with the team’s need for that player’s production. So is this the norm among teams in the modern era? To have a big drop on one side of the ball when the key starter(s) sit? And if so, how many minutes of bottom-10 offense can a top-10 offensive team take per game and retain their top 10 spot?

I love this question from Ben because it calls for necessary context to these wild Brunson on/off numbers. Yes, there’s a chasm between the offensive rating when he plays versus when he sits, but do other similar situations around the league feature the same chasm, and if so, is there an acceptable length / depth to said chasm before it become untenable? Let’s deep dive…