The Impossible Task

The Knicks becoming a good offense? Nah, that was easy apparently. Sorting out the NBA's Top 75? Different story.

Good Morning, and congrats on being subscribed to a newsletter about the team with the second best preseason net rating in the NBA! Has the Canyon of Heroes been booked yet? No? Let’s start looking at dates.

But seriously…the Knicks are pretty good. What a world. We have a jam-packed newsletter today featuring a full recap on Saturday’s action and Part I of my week-long series unveiling my list of the 75 greatest players in NBA history, but first, if you’re not a full subscriber, there’s no better time to change that than right now:

Let’s do it.

Game Recap: Knicks 117, Pacers 99

⌚️ TL;DW: For the second game in a row, the Knicks came out looking fast and fluid offensively against a meh opponent, this time without their best player. Despite Julius Randle missing the game for personal reasons (we think his second child is on the way) and New York still without their top two centers, the Knicks put up nearly 100 points before the fourth and used a big third quarter run to put the game away.

3 Takeaways

⓵ Rose wasn’t kiddin’. When Derrick Rose proclaimed at media day that the Knicks would aim to shoot between 37 and 40 threes a night, he was apparently underselling things. Through two preseason games, the Knicks are averaging 44.5 3-point attempts, which is somehow only 6th in the NBA. As I detailed a few weeks ago, only good can come of this.

⓶ Derrick avoided a scare. Rose the predictor also sent our collective hearts up into our throats when he fell to the court after a slip in the fourth quarter, but after the game he said it was “nothing serious at all.”

After the game, more than a few comments in my Livestream focused on the wisdom of Thibs playing Rose as much as he did (19 minutes before the injury after 21 against Indiana). I get it. If the former MVP was seriously hurt on the play, it would put a dent into the optimism we’re all currently feeling.

That said, Rose spoke after the game about how little 5-on-5 the team plays in training camp¹, making these game situations that much more valuable to get him ready for the season. In other words, there are competing interests on both sides of this argument, and there isn’t one right answer to how preseason minutes should be approached.

⓷ Kevin Knox showed some life. After a forgettable garbage time appearance versus the Pacers, Kevin Knox got minutes as the backup four (the position he should have been playing since the day he entered the league…sigh…) and came through big time on the offensive side of the ball.

His overall outing was far from perfect (as we’ll get into in tomorrow’s newsletter), but considering he had to know this was an audition for his NBA life, hitting 4-of-6 from deep was a heck of an impressive feat. His last attempt in particular showed zero hesitation, which is a great sign for what the night did for his confidence:

I don’t see how he cracks the rotation without an injury to someone ahead of him, but positive showings like this can only help his cause, whether its here or somewhere else.

Key Moment

After they nearly ran away with the game a few times in the first half, the Knicks actually fell behind by one early in the third quarter after opening the half with four straight clanked threes.

That’s when the clamps came down. New York used an 18-2 run to blow the game open and take a 19-point lead into a relaxing fourth quarter. There were several highlights during the stretch, but none better than back to back buckets showing off a few key aspects this team will need if it wants to reach the next level:

RJ Barrett, Playmaker Extraordinaire has been more theoretical than actual through two seasons, but this nifty little play call - a double high screen that sprung RJ curling around with this left hand - is exactly the sort of thing we need to see more of if the Knicks want to get the most out of 2019’s third overall pick. More on that in a bit.

And the finish by Taj Gibson that spun Kentavious Caldwell-Pope into a Baltimore zip code, I mean…

*chef’s kiss*

The next time down the court, as if KCP hadn’t already started to feel homesick away from LeBron’s warm embrace, he was rudely reminded that Elfrid Payton doesn’t work here anymore:

A pull-up three from your point guard when the defender gives him five feet of space? What a concept! Kemba Walker’s middling stat line - 2-of-7 overall, 2-of-6 from deep - means far less to this team than simply having a floor general comfortable putting up six attempts from long range in just 21 minutes.

Sound Smart

Before Saturday night, the Knicks had never attempted more than 51 threes in a game and had never made more than 20 of those attempts. Against the Wizards, they did both, launching 52 bombs and landing 24.

It was preseason, so the previous records will still stand, but nonetheless, it’s pretty cool that the franchise topped so many high water marks in one night. The existing records, if you’re curious, courtesy of Basketball Reference:

• Most 3’s attempted: 51, at Atlanta, on January 29, 2017 in a 4 OT loss. Justin Holiday led the way with 13 attempts, making five.

• Most 3’s attempted in regulation: 47, on December 17, 2009 in a loss at Chicago in which the team still only scored 89 points. That’s…almost hard to do.

• Most 3’s made in regulation: 20, accomplished twice in two games against Memphis and Washington that occurred over two years apart in 2011 and 2013, and somehow ended in the exact same score of 120-99.

• Most 3’s made in OT: Also 20, in the best victory of the 17-win 2018-19 campaign, a 136-134 defeat of the contending Bucks. Emmanuel Mudiay had 28 & 7, and he, Noah Vonleh and Damyean Dotson combined to hit 12-of-13 from deep. You can’t make this stuff up.

Macri, how can you not be worried about…

The minutes for the vets? The sand is a wonderful place to take some good, long deep breaths, my friends. I’m sure everything will be just fine.

Macri, you can’t seriously still be hype over…

Jericho Sims? Yup, still drinking the Kool Aide!

Sims’ rim-rattling dunk got all the attention, but there was another play that caught my eye more:

I don’t mean to kick a man when he’s sidelined, but Mitchell Robinson has never flashed a baby hook like this in three years with the team. At the same time, the proper play here was to Evan Fournier in the corner, and Sims’ complete lack of playmaking ability (he had 49 dimes in four years at Texas) is part of why he fell in the draft). We also don’t need to get into how he’s nowhere near Robinson’s stratosphere as a defender².

Still, for the 58th pick in the draft, seeing this level of skill is pretty encouraging.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ Obi Toppin: I was wondering ahead of the game, “does this audition mean more for Obi Toppin or Kevin Knox?”

I’m still not sure I know the answer. What I do know is that Obi didn’t look out of place in the starting lineup one bit. Toppin’s counting stats - 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting, 2-of-6 from deep, with eight boards to go with two blocks and a steal - were less important than how he carried himself throughout the evening. There was no sign of the tentative player who looked scared to touch the ball at times last season. We also got some of the spellbinding hops that should be more prevalent this year:

I’m saving the most impressive Toppin clips for a deeper dive tomorrow, but all in all, he did a more than respectable job filling in for New York’s MVP.

⭐️ ⭐️ Derrick Rose: Ho hum, 15 points on seven shots, a perfect 3-for-3 from deep, eight dimes and four boards in 19 minutes. It’s clear by now that Derrick Rose’s career arc is a roller coaster ride; what’s less clear is whether he’s still on another upswing.

Why can’t he be even better this season than last? His 3-ball has consistently improved in recent years, and his shotmaking flare doesn’t show any signs of diminishing:

He also knows the game plan as well as anyone; seven of Rose’s eight assists on Saturday came on converted threes. His other one? A bunny for Jericho Sims.

I introduce you to Derrick Rose, Analytics King.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ RJ Barrett: It’s not often our top star will finish a game hitting only 25 percent of his shots from inside the arc and commit five turnovers, but Barrett deserves the designation after yet another night where he showed growth in multiple areas.

Thanks to a 4-of-8 showing from deep, RJ got to 18 point on 12 shots despite hitting just one 2-pointer. His five turnovers were also offset by four dimes, including the pretty dish to Taj above.

You know what though? I don’t even mind the turnovers. In fact, I kind of like them. This team isn’t going to hit its ceiling until RJ Barrett can toggle between a floor-spacing wing and a point-forward whenever he needs to do so, and even though he ended up getting stripped here…

…I like the mentality, the angle, and how much better he’s getting at the sorts of moves that will draw contact in due time (he got to the line six times on Saturday as it was).

Like his playmaking and shot creation, the other side of the court is still a work in progress, but he’s also already shown significant growth there as well:

This ended up resulting in a personal foul on Walker, but RJ more than held his own in frustrating Beal’s attempt to eat. Not bad for a 21-year-old on an All-Star.

Final Thought

If you’re finding it hard not to get overly excited about this team after two games that don’t count against mediocre-to-bad teams, you’re not alone. They look good.

That said, I think we may have learned about all we’re going to learn about this squad in the preseason, especially with Detroit and Washington remaining on the schedule. Boston on opening night, on the other hand, can’t get here soon enough. We’ll see just how real this is one week from tomorrow.

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The Impossible Task

I don’t know how any one person is supposed to rank the top 75 players in NBA history, but it seems like everyone else is trying, so I figure, why the hell not.

Well, that’s not a completely accurate representation. Even if no one else had the gaul to attempt it before the league unveiled the real thing later this month, I’d still probably give it a shot. Why? Because the only thing I love more than impossible tasks is NBA history.

That being said, this is not the job for any one man or woman. As best as I can tell, the only proper way to come up with the right 75 names is to get a bunch of people in a room from every walk of life in the the NBA - execs, media, players, coaches, analytics folk, refs, you name it - and hammer out the list after several rounds of debate and discussion. But it can’t just be any group of people. You have to pick the minds of folks who saw these guys live.

That’s not easy. George Mikan made his NBA debut in 1948. That means if you were 7 when Mikan first laced up his high-tops, you’d be 80 years old today.

Mikan is a “no discussion needed” entrant onto the list, but there are other players who have been retired for well over 50 years that are less automatic. How can decisions possibly be made about those players without at least a few sets of eyes who saw them in the context of the league at the time they played?

Case in point: Bill Sharman. You’ve probably never heard of Bill Sharman, and that’s because when he began his final NBA season, John F. Kennedy was still the junior senator for Massachusetts. But if we’re going by All-NBA selections, he was a top-10 NBA player more times than Steph Curry, Allen Iverson and Jason Kidd. He also has as many 20-point Finals games as Wilt Chamberlain and Hakeem Olajuwon, and averaged nearly 19 points over 74 playoff games, helping the Celtics to five titles in the process.

But what does all that even mean when comparing such achievements to similar ones a quarter or a half century later? Sharman played during a time when there were fewer than 100 players in the NBA for a large portion of his career. Does that mean we take his seven All-NBA appearances and toss them out the window because the competition for those spots was less intense? Or was his talent so undeniable that it would’ve happened in a 30-team league all the same? And do we discount his Finals record because of who it came against, or how much easier it was to get there? If so, by how much?

Sharman is just one example, but there are a host of others that come with caveats unique to them and them only. For one 15-month stretch, Bill Walton mastered the game of basketball perhaps better than any other human ever has…and then his career was essentially over, at least as a top player. Locally, Bernard King is the center of a similar discussion, only with a longer peak and better comeback, but without ever reaching Walton’s heights.

On the flip side, Chris Bosh has made more All-Star teams than all but 23 players in league history, but never once was in a serious conversation for best player at his position, let alone best player in the league. Ray Allen played 18 seasons, is 24th in points scored and was part of four Finals teams and two champions, but received MVP votes just twice in his career, in 2001 ad 2005, when he tied for 9th and 11th place, respectively.

Trying to compare all these resumes is ultimately futile without some sort of rubric, and in the end, it can and should come down (at least in part) to “you know an all-time great when you see one.” Except almost no one has seen all of these guys. What we’re left with is a good faith exercise in deciding what you value and what you don’t, and how well you can parse sets of data. Good times.

As for what I valued, here’s the closest thing I could come up with to criteria, roughly in the order I considered it:

1a. Peak Height

1b. Longevity of Peak

I can’t really separate these. Who can say what matters more: being a top-three player for three seasons, or being a top-10 player for eight? But I know this: there is a big difference between making an All-NBA 1st or 2nd Team and making an All-Star team. Saying you were a top-25 guy for close to a decade but never getting into that upper echelon doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the Hall of Fame, but when we’re picking nits as small as these, it does.

2. Playoff Success

Playoff success is harder to achieve than regular season success. It just is, especially in this sport, so I considered it more.

3. Story of the Game

There are certain players who can’t be left off if you’re trying to tell an accurate story of the history of this league. I fully realize that including this criteria opens the possibility of rewarding narratives that were convenient at the time and may not mean a hill of beans when it comes to measuring the player’s actual greatness, but that’s a risk I’m taking.

Something I’m not doing: tossing out players just because they played in a far gone era with far fewer teams and a style of play that would be unrecognizable today. We have no earthly clue how Bob Pettit or Bill Russell would fare in today’s league, let alone George Mikan, the NBA’s first star, but they are all no-doubt-about-it Top 75’ers. While I don’t think we should completely ignore how much better the league has gotten, and how much more difficult it has become to stand out in more recent years and decades, we also can’t ignore past accomplishments because of when they occurred.

Finally, before I unveil the first part of my list, I want to acknowledge something Phil Jackson’s right hand man, Clarence Gaines, would often remind me of during our Twitter interactions: be careful about deciding a player’s worth based on recognition voted on by the media (just because it’s only one perspective).

All-NBA has always been a media award, and I used All-NBA Teams (along with MVP voting, which was done by the players until the 1980-81 season) more than anything in deciding who made my list. I understand this is fraught. But I’ve only been watching this sport for 30 years, so I had to use something as a baseline. This was as good as anything.

On that note, here’s Part 1 of my top 75 - not in any exact order, but roughly in terms of where I have guys. I’m sure I’d move certain guys up or down five of 10 spots if I really thought about it, but in any case, here are my…

No Doubt About It, No Questions Asked All-Time Greats (42)

(aka, guys I didn’t need to look up a single stat or career accomplishment for before including them)

Michael Jordan

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

LeBron James

Bill Russell

Wilt Chamberlain

Magic Johnson

Larry Bird

Tim Duncan

Shaquille O’Neal

Kevin Durant

Kobe Bryant

Oscar Robertson

Steph Curry

Hakeem Olajuwon

Moses Malone

Jerry West

Elgin Baylor

John Havlicek

Julius Erving

Kevin Garnett

Dirk Nowitzki

Karl Malone

Charles Barkley

Bob Pettit

Elvin Hayes

Bob Cousy

Isaiah Thomas

Rick Barry

Clyde Frazier

Patrick Ewing

Scottie Pippen

David Robinson

Willis Reed

James Harden

Allen Iverson

John Stockton

Chris Paul

Dwyane Wade

George Gervin

Kawhi Leonard

Giannis Antetokounmpo

George Mikan

Check back for Part II tomorrow: Guys I Insulted by Not Putting Them in Group 1

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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

1. h/t to Twitter user @rolotomassi777 for tagging me on the audio!

2. Although his 13 boards in 26minutes wasn’t too shabby.