Telling Fact from Fiction
I take a deep dive into some early season stats and try to decipher what's real
A few weeks ago, after I Tweeted out a stat about a particular Knicks’ lineup, I got a skeptical text from a Knicks buddy of mine (you may remember Oz from one particular profanity-laden podcast over the summer).
He’s a baseball nut in the way that I am with hoops, and his point was pretty simple: it seems like we’re way too quick to gleam takeaways from lineup data in basketball, whereas in baseball, there’ an acknowledgment that small sample sizes for most things are essentially meaningless.
I inadvertently touched on this on a podcast with Dallas Amico last week, as we were talking about how RJ' Barrett’s early season success from deep (he’s currently at 37 percent) doesn’t make him more of a long-range threat than Wayne Ellington. Ellington is currently struggling, hitting just 29.3 percent of his threes, but he also has over 2500 career 3-point attempts to his name and is a career 37.8 percent marksman from distance.
All this being said, if you blend data with the eye test for context (h/t Scooter Toots), it is possible to learn some things, even after just a sixth of the season has been played, especially if you have additional data from previous years to support it as well.
On that note, I thought today we’d look at some interesting numbers from the Knicks’ first 14 games and try to pinpoint if they’re telling us something or nothing at all.
(Thanks to stats.nba.com and Cleaning the Glass for access to all of these. Also, as usual, PredictionStrike prices in parentheses after player names)
+ 6.1
That’s the net rating for New York’s current starting five, as they’re scoring 111.3 points per 100 possessions and giving up 105.2.
(FWIW, Cleaning the Glass, which filters out garbage time minutes, has this net rating at +1.5 - 110.2 OFF, 108.6 DEF)
As I said yesterday when I tweeted this out, it’s been a grand total of 93 minutes, which isn’t nothing…but it also isn’t yet something either. That said, it has been spread over seven games, and is actually the 15th most used five-man grouping in the entire league despite David Fizdale’s seemingly constant shuffling of rotations (which he seems to have hit the pause button on of late).
I actually think the defensive rating here is very, very real. Frank ($0.22/share), Mook ($3.22) and Taj ($1.84) are all strong defenders, RJ ($1.27) has more than held his own, and you could do worse than Julius ($3.63) as your weak link. Right now, opponents are hitting half of their corner three attempts against these five, which is not sustainable.
The 66.1 percent conversion rate at the rim, however, will likely continue without the presence of Mitchell Robinson ($3.70). The shot profile they’re giving up also isn’t ideal, as only 21.7 percent of opponent looks are coming from the midrange, which in quite horrendous. Luckily, they’ve been just active enough to compensate for all of this, and there’s no reason that shouldn’t continue.
The bigger question for me is the battle between the unstoppable force and the immovable object. Of course I’m talking about this lineup’s own abysmal effective field goal percentage (48.0, second lowest among the 25 most used groupings league-wide) and their positively stellar rebound rate (55.6, which is best among those same 25).
I don’t see either of these numbers changing much, although if I had to pick one, I’d go with the former. Randle may have finally unlocked something on Monday night, and I’ll be damned if I ever get off the “Frank’s shots will eventually start falling” train.
Either way, this five has more than earned the right to continue starting games.
39.1 percent
That’s the frequency by which opponents are shooting from downtown against New York. According to Cleaning the Glass, only the Heat allow teams to take a greater percentage of their shots from behind the arc.
The difference, of course, is that opponents are hitting just 30.1 percent of deep balls against Miami, which is the stingiest conversion rate in the NBA. In other news, the Heat are a well-oiled machine. The looks they’re giving up aren’t open ones, because those boys fly all over the court, and an opponent rarely has what you’d consider a good look.
New York, on the other hand, is right in the middle of the pack here, at 36.4 percent, which is 17th. On one hand, they’ve been destroyed this year by a lot of shooters who don’t exactly have sterling reputations (Coby White, c’mon down…you’re the next contestant on “Have a career high against the Knicks!”). On the other hand, when a guy knows he’s going to get a decent look, it tends to help his confidence.
Regardless, Fizdale’s crew is never going to get much higher than their currently 19th ranked defensive rating if they don’t start forcing a few of those 3-point shooters off the line and into the midrange, where opponents are only taking a quarter of their shots from - second lowest in the league.
+4.1
That’s how many more free throws the Knicks make per 100 possessions when RJ Barrett is in the game, which is in the 81st percentile league-wide (Julius Randle is second on the team at +3.4, which is the 76th percentile).
The Knicks free throw attempt rate is .322 with RJ on the court and .235 off of it. .322 is equivalent to Utah’s overall free throw rate, which is tops in the league. Of all the encouraging signs we’ve seen from RJ in his short career, this might be my favorite.
For all of our worries about certain parts of his game coming into the league, his positional advantage against almost anyone guarding him (he’s too big for twos and most threes, and too crafty for fours) should only get better.
+43.6
This is the Knicks net rating this season when Frank Ntilikina and Damyean Dotson share the court. It’s not supported by unsustainable shooting (53.4 eFG%), but does feature some unsustainable opponent shooting numbers (.316/.194/.750), which explains the 74.0 defensive rating the team has had during these minutes.
Oh yeah…about those minutes. These two have played a grand total of 47 of them together this year.
But wait wait wait wait wait…hoooooooold up. I wouldn’t be sticking this here if I didn’t have a good reason, and I do: last season, these two played 10 times as many minutes together - 477, to be exact - and during that time had a +1.2 net rating, which was the best figure among New York’s 50 most-used duos.
Just like this year, those lineups didn’t shoot it all that well (50.8 eFG%), and the defense was similarly outstanding but also sustainable (.444/.320/.753 opponent shooting splits).
Even the previous season, when Frank and Dot were both rookies, they outscored opponents by one point per 100 possessions in 278 minutes of time.
That means we now have over 800 minutes to go off of that these two just work well together. What does it mean? Well, if Fiz holds true to his promise to get RJ more time at the three as the season goes along, maybe Dot should be the one playing in between he and Ntilikina.
Help Us Help Others!!!
Our Thanksgiving Drive is going strong!
Thanks to your outstanding generosity, we blew past our initial goal of $1000 in under two days! We decided: why not try to feed 100 needy families this Thanksgiving, so we raised our target mark all the way up to $3500…and guess what? We’re already nearly $1000 away from meeting it!
If you’re like me, you’ve made a stat-related commitment and are waiting to donate until after the Knicks play Brooklyn on Sunday night. I’m giving $2 for every Frank Ntilikina point, and am hoping to triple what I already owe ($12) by the end of tonight (c’mon Frankie…you have 12 points in you.)
Thanks to all who have already given, and more updates to come!
News & Notes
Mike Vorkunov posted a really interesting piece for the Athletic yesterday about RJ Barrett’s minutes-load. I’ve already gone on record as being less concerned about this topic than most, but this was nonetheless a good, interesting read that featured some wonderful reporting. If you have access to the Athletic, definitely is worth your time.
Dakota Schmidt put together a thread on Igyy Brazdeikis’ 36-point debut for Westchester. You should be excited for this kid to get major PT after this team makes a trade or two.
@wcknicks The 6'7 forward shows off his shooting stroke on this play as he nails a corner 3 after receiving a pass from Lamar Peters.Dakoda will be on the pod next week to talk about what’s going on with the Knicks’ G-League affiliate, so definitely look forward to that.
The Knicks starting lineup will remain unchanged, it seems for the foreseeable future.
Chris Iseman had a nice piece on Julius Randle, who hopefully will keep this train moving.
Knicks Kicks of the Night
by Tiffany Salmon (@tiffstarr815)
On This Date: Knicks beat Warriors and Sprewell returns to face old team
by Vivek Dadhania (@vdadhania)
Two years after Latrell Sprewell infamously chocked his coach in practice, he returned to Oakland for the first time wearing a New York Knicks uniform. In Sprewell’s return, he posted 14 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists in 39 minutes in an 86-79 Knicks win.
That’s it for today…see everyone with a fresh Philly postgame report tomorrow morning!