jon abbey:
they lost by 4 points, not 40, it wouldn’t have taken much to flip the outcome. missing 19 shots in a basketball game may make it really hard for your team to win the game, but a guy like Kidd or Fields hurts you incrementally on virtually every offensive possession all game.

Jon, the fact that the lost by only 4 makes it even more likely that the guy who actually missed 19 shots is more to blame then a guy who may or may not be incrementally harming every offensive possession. NBA teams average roughly a point per possession, I think. Carmelo used something like 25 possessions on offense last night and managed to score 12 points. So that’s roughly 13 points he cost the Knicks in a game they lost by 4. You think Jason Kidd costs the Knicks 13 points a night because he hasn’t shot well in 6 weeks? That’s preposterous.

jon abbey:
Jason Kidd’s inability to hit a shot and unwillingness to try impacts the offense adversely on every single possession he is on the floor over the last month or so, much like Fields for the last 2+ seasons. you can keep trying to convince me all you want (if that’s what you’re doing), but I’m never going to agree, sorry. I will always favor errors of commission over errors of omission in the NBA.

Jon, I’m trying to convince you that missing 19 shots in a basketball game makes it really hard for your team to win the game.

jon abbey:
see, I think never taking shots because there’s no chance in hell you’ll hit them is even more detrimental, especially over the long haul. you see Melo missing shot after shot (as did we all), I see a starting lineup where Kidd is about as likely to hit a shot as I am, Shumpert is a huge question mark (although he looked a bit better yesterday, first time), Chandler is a threat only on the rare occasions he can get open for a dunk (and he has been pretty shitty catching the ball recently), and Ray Felton.

If you have a player who can’t score at all, yes, that player is not going to be very valuable on offense. But he’s going to be even less valuable if he shoots a lot. If you read what I said on the next thread, I wasn’t upset at Melo for taking so many shots-at least until it was clear that for whatever reason he couldn’t buy a shot last night. It wasn’t really a bad Melo game. He missed a lot of shots at the rim, some open 3′s, etc. But for last night’s particular game the reason that we lost is that Melo missed so many shots. It’s not like Jason Kidd’s inability to hit a 3 was keeping melo from getting good shots. Melo got good shots and didn’t hit them.

Looking solely at last night’s game, Landry Fields did better than Melo. Landry had a decent game. Didn’t miss a bunch of shots, got a ton of rebounds in 24 minutes and seemed to play solid defense. Melo absolutely sucked on offense and cost the Knicks the game. The process wasn’t bad, but the result was.

jon abbey:
again, not that simple. if Melo isn’t playing or is playing and never shooting, then it’s quite possible that some of the made shots by other guys don’t happen, because of the increased attention that the defense would give them.

Sure. But he also missed 19 shots. Missing 19 shots is really detrimental to your team’s chance of winning. Carmelo took more shots than the rest of the starting lineup combined. He’d have to have an incredibly beneficial effect on their ability to make shots to overcome the negative effects on the team of going 5-24.

jon abbey:
it’s not that simple, how many times do we have to have the same discussion? this isn’t baseball, shot attempts don’t occur in a vacuum and no one on the Knicks could buy a basket last night.

No Jon, it is that fucking simple. Carmelo missed 19 shots. That’s really, really bad. If you distributed those shots to the other Knicks, it is extremely unlikely that they would have missed all 19. This isn’t a night where Carmelo was mildly inefficient-it’s a night where he was terrible. Felton scored 16 points on 9 shots. JR scored 26 on 17. Novak was 3-4. Tyson scored two fewer points than Carmelo on 18 fewer field goal attempts. It is factually inaccurate to say nobody on the Knicks could buy a basket last night. Carmelo was extraordinarily terrible and Stat was mediocre.