Who We Thought They Were
The Knicks had a revealing weekend, but it wasn't all bad
In this newsletter:
Five days ago in this space, I asked some questions.
They came after the Knicks soundly demolished Atlanta to get to 3-3 under new coach Mike Miller. For a split second, in the place deep within our souls that only comes out after a few too many eggnog lattes, we were all wondering the same thing: “wait a minute…can this team actually be — gulp — decent?”
Well, we got our answer. No, the Knicks aren’t decent. They’re still bad. Quite bad, actually.
Yes, there are degrees of bad, and they’ve graduated up from the level of “let go of the rope and then hang yourself with it” bad that they were at times under Fiz (especially at the end) to “we made Mike Budenholzer re-insert his starters in the fourth quarter”-level bad.
(if anyone enjoys making Knicks fake banner memes, I think you could do worse than this)
Regardless, the definition of a bad team is one who a good team walks into the building against and knows that if they play their game and they don’t fuck around, there will be no game. Against Miami and Milwaukee, the results were never in doubt by midway through the first quarter. They came, they saw, they conquered.
As such, we can now answer at least a few of the questions I posited after that Atlanta win:
10. Are the Knicks - now 3-3 under new head coach Mike Miller, with a nearly dead even net rating - better than we thought? They are the team most of us thought we were getting before this season started: good against terrible teams, bad against good teams, and more or less competitive against mediocre teams. Their net rating stands at -4.9 under Miller, good for 20th in the NBA over the last eight games. Both numbers are about what you would have expected before the year started.
9. Does it matter if they are (better than we thought)? Yes, because given that they aren’t as good as they briefly seemed, the powers that be in the front office should be smart enough to know how trade season - and the rest of this year - must go. Key word: should.
8. Is New York still benefiting from the dead cat bounce of a new coach, or is this more the product of a player’s only meeting that coincided with the change? Check back in a few months.
7. Was David Fizdale really that bad (or conversely, is Mike Miller really this good)? Kinda, yeah (and no, he’s just competant)
Let’s start with Fizdale’s rotations and lineup decisions were maddening at times. Under Miller, even in the last two games, every move he’s made has been understandable, even if you don’t agree with it. They’re also scoring 7.1 more points per 100 possessions in the last 8 games than they had over the previous 22. If you take out the Atlanta game, that number is still over three. Offensive possessions no longer feel like self-immolation, both for players and fans.
On defense, the scheme Fizdale dried to employ - give up threes but nothing at the rim - continues to be executed far better thanks to New York now using the simpler and more traditional drop pick and roll coverage. I noted on Friday how New York had been third in the league in giving up only 28.7 percent of shots in the restricted area.
Against Miami and Milwaukee, that number actually went down, to 27.1 percent. The difference is that the Bucks and Heat are the two best teams in the league in effective field goal percentage and shot 44 percent on 81 3-pointers combined.
One encouraging sign: The location expected effective field goal percentage the Heat and Bucks were “supposed” to shoot was 52.8 percent according to Cleaning the Glass. They actually shot 62.7. Some regression to the mean - especially from Milwaukee early on Saturday night, when they were hitting literally everything - would have resulted in closer games.
In the end, this is night and day from under Fiz. The young players need reps in a system that they can improve in over time. The lessons learned this weekend - staying on the hip of your man going over a screen, not digging too deep in the paint when you have a man in the corner, playng the whole possession on the balls of your feet, being hypervigilant in transition - are valuable if painful ones. That’s a far cry from the Fizdale scheme that left guys more confused than anything else.
6. If Elfrid Payton had been healthy all season, would Fiz still have a job (and is it a happy coincidence that Elf wasn’t, and Fiz doesn’t?) Does it really matter at this point?
5. How does this alter the trade deadline? Hopefully the biggest result of this weekend is that someone is whispering in Dolan’s ear that he should summarily refuse to approve any trade which attempts to make the Knicks better this season.
That’s not to say they shouldn’t make trades that will make life easier for the young players on this roster. If there’s a way for them to somehow obtain a young player who also happens to space the floor - I’ll again reference the heist of Landry Shamut in the Tobias Harris trade - they should do it. Perhaps whatever team ends up with Marcus Morris has a young shooter on the roster that they can throw in the deal.
Anything would help at this point, although no shooter is going to make much of a difference as long as the current roster log jam exists. Trading Morris, who has been one of the best 3-point shooters in the league this season, won’t solve anything.
On that note, I beg you, Steve Mills and Scott Perry: please, explore the market for Julius Randle. New York is 3.1 points per 100 possessions better when Randle is on the court, but as long as he’s here, he’s impeding the progress of RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson, two players who need as much shooting on the court as possible to be successful.
The Knicks already lack any semblance of floor spacing from their point guards. That’s 48 minutes a night. If you go by the theory that Randle, RJ and Mitch all need close to 30 minutes a night themsleves, the math simply doesn’t add up. Two of RJ, Mitch and Randle are always be on the floor with a ball-handler who isn’t a threat from deep.
Check out the offenseive ratings for those combos through 30 games, which is more than enough of a sample size to draw some real conclusions from:
Randle & RJ: 102.5 in 776 minutes (106.1 in 214 minutes under Miller)
Mitch & RJ: 100.6 in 314 minutes (104.4 in 105 minutes under Miller)
Randle & Mitch: 98.3 in 277 minutes (105.5 in 92 minutes under Miller)
The best of all these numbers, Randle & RJ under Miller, would still rank 25th in the NBA, below the Charlotte Hornets.
This isn’t Randle’s fault. He needs to operate in space, which New York’s roster construction simply doesn’t allow. As long as he’s here and no New York point guard is a threat from deep, this offense will remain a clogged toilet.
It’s time to grab the plunger. Get rid of Randle now, and then draft a ball handler who defenses have to respect from the outside (or if you can’t, sign Fred VanVleet to a nine figure deal. I’m 79.5 percent serious.) Stick Knox - who finally found his shot Saturday night, Praise Jebus - and a re-signed Dotson in the starting lineup, and boom: functional offense.
You can pay me my $12 million in botcoin or beer coupons, thanks.
4. If the goal coming into this season was to be a respectable organization, both on and off the court, did that goal evaporate just because of the grotesque failure on each front through the first 22 games, or does it remain? The goal remains, but it now transfers more to what they do off the court than on it. Making decisions with the long term health of the organization in mind now mean taking your medicine, admitting that this summer’s weird science experiment didn’t work, and making inconvenient decisions.
This isn’t to say that the goal of winning more this season was always fraught. Winning has value, because in an ideal world, building organizational competence shouldn’t be done with a KD/Kyrie swing for the fences. Competence begets more competence. But there’s a slippery slope here, and in a situation like the Knicks are in, it doesn’t take much for the scales to tip in the opposite direction. We’re now fully aware of what the ceiling of this roster is, and as discussed above, wholesale changes are needed before further steps towards a raised ceiling can be taken.
3. How different would the narrative of the season (and surrounding the organization at large) be if they had played this brand of basketball since opening night? I still say it would be very, very different.
2. Do we all need to reconsider our collective denigration of the front office that assembled this roster? No. Making Randle the centerpiece of their off-season was the first and most important domino to fall, and also the most destructive. That alone gets them a failing grade.
(I continue to wonder how much Randle’s representation by CAA had to do with the signing, and how much did that go above the pay grades of Mills and Perry. Your guess is as good as mine. Regardless, Mills & Perry either made a poor decision or didn’t have the wherewithall to stand up to the powers that be to talk them out of making a poor decision. Neither should equate to continued decision-making power past this year. Sorry guys…I love ya, but it is what it is.)
1. Would continued strong play actually be the worst thing for the franchise, as it would keep the men who assembled this team employed, perhaps at the expense of someone better suited for the job?
Well, it looks like we don’t have to worry about that any more.
Wizards Preview / Player Spotlight
The Knicks may actually help us all celebrate Santa’s arrival with a win, as they play the Washington Wizards, who will be without their top five leading scorers after Bradley Beal when they come to New York tonight. Bavis Bertans, Rui Hachimura, Thomas Bryant and Moe Wagner are all out with injuries, and Isaiah Thomas is serving the first of a two-game suspension.
In addition to a much needed “W,” this is a nice opportunity to make a few bucks with a smart PredictionStrike investment or two. And you better believe your snakeskin shoes and iridescent pink and purple tie that we’re blowing up the one and only Ish Smith with this opportunity.
Smith is coming off an 0-for-7 shooting night vs Philly and as a result, his stock price is down 27 percent, to $0.45 a share. He’s only projected to get nine points and four dimes in 23 minutes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he nearly doubled all of those numbers.
If you want to take one more flyer, you could do worse than Smith’s backup tonight, Admiral Schofield. He played 26 minutes last game and that was with Thomas still around. He had a similarly terrible evening to Smith against the Sixers, going 0-for-3, and his stock price is sitting at just $0.30 a share.
The Wizards will need someone to try and score. Might as well take advantage (and if you haven’t already done so, click here and enter code KFS when signing up for $10 added to your initial investment of $10 or more.)
New Podcast: Trading Julius Randle
What, you thought I would suggest that they needed to move the big guy and not back it up with a half-dozen workable fake trades? Jeremy Cohen and I went through all 30 teams and figured out the best possible landing spots for Randle on today’s pod, along with recapping the weekend that was for the Knicks:
News & Notes
compiled by Michael Schatz (@mschatz99)
Two really great pieces dropped yesterday regarding Mike Miller:
Nice Chris Iseman piece here about RJ Barrett’s rookie season thus far.
SI’s David Vertsberger took a look at some of the passes the Knicks aren’t making, and why it’s hurting them.
The New York Post’s Zach Braziller predicts that Elfrid Payton will keep the starting point guard job, and also talks up Kevin Knox.
On This Date: Latrell Sprewell returns to MSG to taunt James Dolan and Micheal Ray Richardson records a franchise record with 9 steals in a game
by Vivek Dadhania (@vdadhania)
Latrell Sprewell returned to Madison Square Garden as a member of the Minnesota Timberwolves and got the last laugh in a 98-92 victory against the Knicks. Spree scored 31 points and combined for 84 points with Kevin Garnett & Sam Cassell in the victory.
That’s it for today…see everyone tomorrow!