Author: max fisher-cohen

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second installment of a four part examination of what has gone wrong since the Knicks’ 18-5 start—a stretch in which they were beating teams by an average of over seven points a game—and whether or not the Knicks can return [in varying degrees] to their early-season form. You can read part one here and part two here.)

Let’s be happy. Remember that time, a little over two years ago, when it looked like Stoudemire would lead the Knicks to their best season in a decade?

Okay, now let’s be depressed. Think of  Stoudemire’s 2011-12 season. Think of a fire extinguisher.

Happy again: What about the post game that Stoudemire added?

And sad once more: Remember that time Stoudemire had two knee surgeries in one season? Oh wait. That’s now.

It’s hard to keep track of how I’m supposed to feel about Amar’e as his time here has included about a decade’s worth of drama. If it turns out that these are the death throes of his career, however, then this article is pointless. Barring a medical retirement. we will be saddled with his contract until 2015, end of story. No sense crying over spilled milk even if that milk cost you $100 million dollars, right? Well, $100 million may deserve a little pouting.

Before pouting though, let’s operate under the assumption that when Stoudemire returns, he will play as he did in the time before this most recent surgery and that he will be able to sustain that play for 25-30 minutes a night across most of an NBA season. Optimistic maybe, but within the realm of possibility.

We’re aiming to build a team that can come close to sustaining the dominance of its top lineup, so let’s start with the same chart we used as a jumping off point in the article on Shumpert:

One of the most interesting things to me about this chart is that, while we attributed much of his decline last year to the lack of a penetrating guard, Stoudemire doesn’t appear dependent on Felton. Weird, huh? Instead, it turns out that Stoudemire plays better with Kidd, the guy who takes almost 80% of his shots from behind the three point line.

Trivia time!

Q: Who has assisted on the most Stoudemire field goals this season?

You answered: Raymond Felton

<harsh buzzing sound>

Wanna try again? No, you don’t because unless you’re a particularly astute observer, you will be wrong. It’s not Carmelo Anthony. It’s not Kidd or Pablo. The correct answer is J.R. Smith, who has assisted on 26 Stoudemire field goals this season.

The question was a little disingenuous as Felton hurt his hand just as Stoudemire returned to the floor, missing 10 of the 29 games Stoudemire has played this season. When you adjust for the minutes they’ve been on the floor together, Felton surges ahead, but not by much, and regardless, Smith’s connection with Stoudemire is still brand spanking new. J.R. Smith assisted on a TOTAL of five Stoudemire baskets last year.

Why does this matter? Smith has taken up the slack as a dribble-drive passer when Felton is not on the floor or when the first pick and roll fails, and that has been crucial to Stoudemire’s success. You might think thanks to his improved post game that Stoudemire is being used less often in pick and roll. That’s incorrect. Likely thanks to Smith’s newfound chemistry with STAT, Stoudemire has seen a 5% increase in his usage as a roll man while maintaining his always-stellar pick and roll efficiency.

As far as Stoudemire’s post play goes, on the surface, it appears that it is more of a replacement than an upgrade. No longer able to use his quickness to race past defenders and still shooting almost 10% lower from midrange than in his best season, Stoudemire has used his new post game to get lots of shots near the rim while maintaining a usage percentage and shooting efficiency near those of his best years.

This explains a couple of mysteries in regard to Stoudemire’s play this season:

First, it explains the Kidd connection. Kidd’s timing and court vision allow him to set Stoudemire up deep in the post. Kidd may not directly assist many of Stoudemire’s baskets, but you can bet that he earns a number of hockey assists off Stoudemire’s post play.

Second, it explains why, unlike last year when the two were awful together, Stoudemire’s offense suffers the most when he’s not playing with Tyson Chandler. The primary challenge for pick and roll play is completing a pass into the roll man, and with Chandler off the ball, there is far less space in the middle for that pass to be completed. This was likely the explanation for STAT and Chandler’s struggles last year. However, far more important to getting a player good post position are good screens, something at which Chandler excels.

The best way then to describe Stoudemire’s adaptation is that he has made himself a whole lot more like Anthony, a player who can score without an athletic guard. This sounds pretty good given that this team is built to play off of Mr. Melo. But we don’t necessarily need two Anthonys, especially if they don’t come BOGO. Mr. Melo will be on the floor for 36 minutes a game at least, even more if Mr. Potato Head doesn’t get a hold of himself.

Overall, how you feel about STAT depends on what you’re looking at. If you focus on the Knicks’ other bench players, Stoudemire appears a breath of fresh air in his ability to replace Felton, Anthony and Smith in our best lineup without damaging (and sometimes increasing) its production.

But you also have every right to pout: Amar’e Stoudemire makes about $3.5 million less than J.R. Smith, Jason Kidd, Tyson Chandler and Raymond Felton do combined, and yet even after reworking his offensive game, the team performs worse if he replaces any of them. The only time he does help the team significantly is when our other max contract is on the bench. Maybe last year the issue was with Tyson and Amar’e, but like a game of musical chairs, this year its Amar’e/Anthony that are the odd duo out.

Unlike last year, however, when it was the offense that collapsed with Stoudemire and Chandler together, this year with Melo and STAT it’s the defense. Opponents have a TS% of 59% including 40% from three when Anthony and Stoudemire are together. The Synergy numbers add more support to the notion that Melo and Stoudemire are the culprits: Anthony allows his man to score 1.03 PPP, 240th in the league, and Amar’e plays like D’Antoni is still coaching him (jab fully intended) when he has to close out, allowing an even worse 1.08 PPP on spot ups. When one of them replaces a guard in our lineup, he has to guard a perimeter player, and perimeter players do a lot more spotting up.

And don’t even bother with the idea of Stoudemire at center. With our guards lacking the ability to contain penetrators and Stoudemire’s persistent defensive lapses, our defense goes right to the pooper there too. For one example, you can scroll to the chart at the top and look at our defense when STAT replaces Chandler. Want another? The most common Stoudemire-at-center lineup includes Anthony, Novak, Prigioni and Smith. That lineup has a DRtg of 126.2, a number only a dung beetle could love.

To close, I know this statement is completely unoriginal, but it’s hard for me to argue with: The major inhibitor to Stoudemire and Anthony being anything more than competent together, especially now that the Knicks aren’t reliant on the crutch of Anthony as a pick and roll ball handler (another likely cause of their decent play together last year), is the similarities of their weaknesses and strengths. Stoudemire can replace the production of some of the Knicks’ role players, and that’s something the Knicks sorely need, but his potential to be anything approaching a max player in the concept of the post-Anthony-trade Knicks, even after two years, is still very hard to decipher. How management could go two years without accepting this reality is simply dumbfounding, especially given the liability of Stoudemire’s surgically repaired knees, but it is what it is, and maybe it’s enough, if some other things fall their way, for New York to make themselves a dark horse title contender before that 2015 deadline.

Next time: What Can New York Do to Maximize Its Title Chances?

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second installment of a four part examination of what has gone wrong since the Knicks’ 18-5 start—a stretch in which they were beating teams by an average of over seven points a game—and whether or not the Knicks can return [in varying degrees] to their early-season form. You can find part one here.)

Despite the universal love that the fan base has for our 2nd year combo guard, I come to bury Iman, not to praise him. How much Iman Shumpert can and hopefully will improve as he continues to recover from last year’s horrific knee injury and hopefully, to grow as a player, remains an open question (and one for another day). Alas, as of this writing, he is far and away the biggest reason for the Knicks’ struggles.

If you look closely at the other four lineups posted in part one of this series, you may have been surprised by the fact that replacing Smith with Shumpert in our best lineup resulted in a net rating drop of nearly 30 points. Let’s take a closer look at what happens when Shumpert is substituted for anyone else in the grouping of Felton, Kidd, Smith, Anthony and Chandler (again looking at games from January 17th-March 3rd). In this chart, for the sake of clarity,  defensive rating is represented inversely so as to make it comparable to ORtg. In other words, a higher DRtg change in this chart indicates that the defense improved.

Shumpert is wrecking every lineup when he’s combined with our best players. Even if we limit our examination to recent games—let’s say March 3rd and beyond—Shumpert is still averaging a +/- per 48 of -15.4 and a net rating of -14.3. The next worst rotation player who has been healthy these last three weeks? That would be Jason Kidd, coming in with a net rating of 1.1 and a +/- of -1.8 per 48. The interesting thing is, Shumpert’s shooting was way up during that span: He shot 43.8% from the field and 45.5% from distance. Still, he remained the vinegar to this team’s oil.

If we go back to my automotive analogy, cars only work with the right parts. If the Knicks are a car—a team that runs well not because of the quality of its parts necessarily but more because of how those parts work together—then perhaps Shumpert is just the wrong part. He’s the truck nuts on a minivan or the loJack strapped to a 1988 Geo Metro. In other words, maybe Shumpert is being used incorrectly or improperly, or maybe there just isn’t a place for him in the style of the Knicks need to play in order to succeed.

So what exactly is happening when Shumpert enters the fray? Take a look at the substitution pattern that is kindest to Shumpert, the one where he replaces Kidd and joins our de facto starters on the floor. Remember, these units include Felton, Smith, Anthony and Chandler. The only difference is that in one, Kidd is the fifth man, while in the other, it’s Shumpert.

*Opponents’ points in the paint per 48 minutes

**Team Average (as well as other stats) are drawn only from that same span of games: 1/17-3/3.

The two data points that jump out, at least on the offensive end, are FTA rate and the 3FGM %AST; both indicate how critical wings that, once they receive a pass, are able to immediately find the flaw in a defense and/or connect with a teammate who can exploit it are to New York’s offensive agenda. Kidd isn’t drawing more fouls than Shumpert nor is he making more open threes. In fact, his shooting during this period was atrocious—23% from the three point line and 32% overall. What he is allowing the Knicks to do is use the space that defenses give when they double Anthony or collapse on a pick and roll, resulting in rhythm threes and advantageous drives from Anthony and Smith.

In short, Shumpert seems to be making bad decisions with the basketball and this year’s Knick model, built to play a more cerebral, half court style, needs guards that make great ones.

Right now, Shumpert just doesn’t have that ability (not many players do), but most talented guards who don’t have great vision (like J.R. Smith) make up for it with the ability to create plays for themselves. Here, Shumpert struggles just as badly. Once he steps inside the three point line, his offense collapses. From midrange, he shoots 33%; he’s at 15% in the paint, and a shockingly bad 36.7% in the restricted area. Those numbers have improved recently, but rather than thanks to improving health, I have another theory as to why—a theory that will be easier to understand after I make the following uncomfortable comparison.

There are some striking similarities between Shump and a post-Melo trade Landry Fields before the latter developed a bit of an off the dribble game/excess tinkering totally discombobulated his jump shot.  At a USG rate of 16.6%, Shumpert outpaces Fields’ rookie rate of 13.5% but he is mostly wasting those extra possessions and would be far more effective at this juncture of his career if he restricted his looks to the open spot ups that once were Fields’ bread and butter. Take a look:

(The Fields numbers are before/after instead of on/off because the absence of Felton after the trade would likely confound Fields’ numbers with Anthony on the bench.)

	FGM %UAST	%PTS off TOs	TS%	@Rim FG%	AST%	net rating
Shumpert w/o Anthony	27.3%	25.8%	51.6%	46.2%	12%	-3.2
Shumpert w/ Anthony	35.9%	15.0%	44.4%	35.1%	20.6%	-9.9
10/11 Fields pre-Anthony	28.8%	21.2%	61.5%	70.1%	8.5%	3.1
10/11 Fields post-Anthony	30.8%	17.7%	56.4%	63.6%	9%	-1.4

Fields was often criticized after the trade for his inability to do anything other than shoot open threes. The cuts off ball movement and timely rebounding dropped dramatically as the offense pivoted to accommodate Melo’s skill set. While Shumpert appears to have a better handle, better passing skills than that iteration of Landry and (when healthy) is the superior athlete, the difference between the two is more one of will than skill. Shumpert is more willing to attempt to make plays/force the issue when necessary as illustrated by the jump he experiences in AST% with Anthony. But, when he puts his head down and bulls rim-ward on such ill-advised playmaking forays, Shumpert struggles a lot. By comparison, when given the opportunity, Fieds would usually kick the ball back to another player. Unfortunately, these clock-killing decisions likely had nearly as bad an impact on the Knicks’ offense as Shumpert’s low percentage drives.

The improvements for each at the rim without Anthony are easy to explain: these are more often than not assisted shots, shots where each catches the ball with very little to do to get a quality shot, or they are points off the break, as illustrated by the points off turnover increases.

When a player can neither see the floor well nor create off the dribble against set defenses, that player tends to struggle in an Anthony-led offense, one based on intelligence, patience, and execution more than the single-attack oriented, perimeter and pick and roll oriented offenses that the Knicks tilt towards while Anthony rests. These latter offenses more often create opportunities off the first pass, allowing players like Fields and Shumpert to simply catch passes and then shoot.

If you aren’t convinced (or are just looking for a reason to get more depressed) consider this fact: The Knicks’ current starting lineup shoots only 25% from three. Substitute in Smith, (again, just looking at games after Shumpert returned) and the Knicks’ three point percentage jumps to 42% despite the fact that, in that some period, none of the players in that lineup are shooting better than 36%. It’s relatively simple. Smith’s presence creates open shots and Shumpert’s doesn’t.

Without Señor Carmelo Isolacíon Anthony on the floor, the Knicks offense becomes less systematic (less like a machine, such as a car), and more free flowing, and that sort of offense is one Shumpert can much more ably contribute to.

Shumpert is not a point guard. We became all-too aware of this fun fact early last season. This year, the ridiculous -90.1 plunge to the team’s net rating when he replaces Felton only reinforces that notion. That said, he can be a valuable player if he’s used correctly. The question is, is it worth it to the Knicks to cater to the needs of one player (Shumpert) or would they be sacrificing more than they gained? We’ll save that question for a future installment, however.

Then, of course, there’s the defense—the thing we all love about Shumpert. Well, it’s not showing up in the stats. As our graph indicates, there’s only one lineup in which Shumpert helps the defense and that lineup (the four guard lineup with Shumpert replacing Anthony) and this unit has only played six minutes together all season. It seems that while Shumpert may still be a good man defender, his team defense still isn’t up to snuff, especially when he’s toiling among fellow Knickerbockers that lack athleticism/speed and, as such, is deeply reliant on smart rotations to maintain defensive integrity. Look at the Bockers’ opponents’ three point percentage when Shump’s on the floor versus when Kidd is present. Yes, the Shumpert lineup is better than the overall Knick average, but that number is dramatically inflated by Stoudemire’s presence (or lack thereof). That 12% drop when Shumpert plays makes it tough to argue that he is rotating and closing out with any degree of success.

This clearly isn’t Shumpert’s year.  If the Knicks have any hope of making it their year (which one could easily argue they shouldn’t), they need to dramatically reevaluate how they’re using their sole young player.

Up next: Amar’e Stoudemire…

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first installment of a four part examination of what happened after the Knicks’ 18-5 start, during which they were beating opponents by an average of over seven points a game, and whether or not the Knicks can return (in varying degrees) to their early-season form.)

If you’re a casual NBA fan looking for a slightly more original way of getting Knick fans worked up these days, something more pertinent to this iteration of the Knicks than James Dolan, Jeremy Lin, or the Carmelo Anthony trade, you have a couple options. The first is to make some sort of joke about their age. For example, you might make reference to some early 21st century All-Star Game. The second way is to make reference to the Knicks’ 18-5 start or perhaps more effectively, their 22-21 record since that start.

The reason this question is inciteful (yes, with a C, as in likely to incite a riot) is because of how much rides on the answer. If the last three months are more representative of the Knicks than the first six weeks, then, due to the team’s cap situation, fans will have to accept that their team will almost undoubtedly be mediocre until the 2015/16 season at earliest. If, on the other hand, the Knicks are in some sort of mid-season stasis, healing up for a postseason burst, then there is hope, and there’s nothing more important to fans than the a belief that their team has a chance.

Well, let’s open this can of worms. Cover your ears. Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife.

Take a look at the Knicks’ five most used lineups during their healthiest period of the season, from when Iman Shumpert returned on January 17th through March 3rd, when Anthony got hurt:

Lineup	MP	OffRtg	DefRtg	NetRtg
Felton, Kidd, Shumpert, Anthony , Chandler	128	93.1	99.6	-6.5
Felton, Smith, Anthony, Stoudemire, Chandler	102	112	111.8	0.2
Felton, Kidd, Smith, Anthony, Chandler	87	112	88.7	23.3
Felton, Shumpert,  Smith,  Anthony, Chandler	41	101.7	97.6	4.1
Prigioni, Smith, Novak, Anthony, Stoudemire	30	89	127.7	-38.7

See that highlighted lineup? It’s the very same one that made New York dominant early on, and it’s just as effective now as it was then. Its net rating in the first six weeks of the season was 23.8, almost exactly the same as it was in this recent, far less win-filled span. That net rating is comparable to those of the best lineups for pretty much any team but the Heat.

Now, to assist you in your flight off of Cloud Nine, consider the net rating of all the other lineups. If lineup #3 is Atlas, then those other four lineups are quartiles of Planet Earth. In other words, as this article will go to great lengths to illustrate, our bench (and I’m considering J.R. Smith and Kidd de facto starters) is now a joke.

Across this entire season, the second best lineup the Knicks have that’s in the top five of minutes played together has a net rating that is more than 20 points worse than their best lineup. There is only one other team that is even close to having such a dynamic: the Wizards, who have a net rating of 24.0 with Beal, Hilario, Okafor, Wall and Webster.  Their next best lineup, with Temple replacing Beal, has a net rating of -0.1. Similar to New York, injuries have often prevented that lineup from playing, and also similar, both teams draw their improvement from replacing a terrible perimeter shooter with a very good one, but more importantly, both teams’ issues are that none of their other players can replace their top five with any level of competence.

The Knicks are like a finicky old Jaguar, the kind where if you don’t prime the accelerator twice, it won’t start, where if you don’t transition the clutch at the perfect rate, you stall, but if you do everything just right, the ride is a dream. Think about the 10/11 Mavs. If J.R. Smith is Jason Terry, then its a flaming hot J.J. Barea that New York most dearly misses.

While we have never had a great sixth best player (with the exception of Stoudemire, who has sometimes been great — more on that in a later section), early on when Ronnie Brewer was on fire, we had some other solid groups. Our initial starting lineup — Felton/Kidd/Brewer/Anthony/Chandler — clocked in through December 15th with more minutes together than any other lineup and had a very nice net rating of 10.8. After that though, that lineup utterly imploded, its offensive rating plummeting to 68.1 and its defensive rating jumping to 116.

The thing is, Brewer was making threes at nearly double the rate he had in previous seasons. Not only that, but that entire lineup was fool’s gold. We have all heard about how hot the Knicks were from distance early in the season, but the hot shooting was particularly outlandish given the players the Knicks were starting.

Combined, through December 15th the Knicks’ early-season starting lineup shot a truly absurd 44% from three. Only four players in the entire league shoot better than that right now.

Part of this was surely due to the incredulity with which opponents must have approached the lineup’s shooting. Not a single player in that lineup had been even average from distance the previous season. “Is this some alternate universe where logic doesn’t work the same as in the world from which we came?”  the collective consciousness of Knick opponents must have been wondering. “Let’s see. Let’s let Ronnie Brewer take few more of those broken looking jumpers.”

Time revealed that, rather than a dimensional shift, it was only a coincidence. A lot of guys going through hot streaks at the same time. As soon as Brewer’s shooting fell off, opponents were able to ignore him in their rotations, allowing for more effective double teams on Anthony and better closeouts on the players who could actually shoot. With no one besides Anthony in that lineup capable of punishing a hard closeout (unlike, say, J.R. Smith), the Knicks’ offense fell apart. Brewer was quickly benched and then a couple months later was quietly escorted to the Dust Bowl.

Is this irreparable? We’ll get there, but first we have to look more closely at the two most problematic pieces for New York.

A factoid to lead you into the next installment: Of the seven lineups to have played winning basketball in our healthy period (at least those with meaningful minutes together), J.R. Smith is represented in all of them and Iman Shumpert comes in last among Knick rotation players, appearing in only one.

I have written before about how the NBA holds an unfair amount of power in comparison to the Players’ Association. Strict tampering rules, the collective bargaining agreement, and the NBA’s monopoly as the premiere professional basketball league give the NBA a technical advantage, and the brevity of the average players’ career along with many players’ immaturity in handling their finances gives the league a financial one.

However, there is one person, with the help of perhaps the most powerful agency in the NBA, who appears to be fighting back, at least for a handful of the league’s superstars. Henry Abbott, founder of TrueHoop, has written extensively about William Wesley, AKA Worldwide Wes. According to power agent David Falk, Wesley is “one of the two or three most powerful people in the sport.” That comes from an article written five years ago, back before in-depth reports (i.e. reports that had teeth) about Wesley mysteriously petered out. One can only assume that he has risen in the ranks since drawing players such as Carmelo Anthony (and La La Vasquez), Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Chris Paul to his friends at Creative Artists Agency.

Some view Wesley as an underhanded negotiator, a guy who for years had no official relationship with players, agents or teams, allowing him to escape NCAA and NBA tampering restrictions and do “favors” for NCAA programs, teams, and agents by developing private “friendships” with burgeoning stars and guiding them to his cohorts. Others, such as Henry Abbott, the one journalist who has actually had an on the record interview with Wesley, believe him to be pure in intention. According to Abbott, Wesley knows that one of the players’ big shortfalls in terms of their earnings is their youth and immaturity, and so Wesley treats them like family, helping them accept the challenge of developing their potential while using his connections to build a team around them that can help them succeed both on and off the court. Family, though, has certain darker connotations. The Tattaglia family, for example.

The Miami Heat, a team with six players represented by CAA, seems to confirm both of these angles. On the one hand, the 2012 playoffs featured a Lebron James who for the first time seemed to escape the self-consciousness and egotism that plagued his early career and play to his maximum potential. Perhaps James has Wesley and the team Wes put around James to thank for this newfound mentality.

Likewise, one could point towards the shady way the team was assembled, with James, Wade and Bosh flirting with other teams for months leading up to and into the free agency period of 2010. Some might call their debutante-esque behavior part of CAA’s power play. The Bulls, Clippers, Heat, Wolves, Nets, Knicks, Thunder, Kings and Wizards all, either by coincidence or through years of planning, arranged to all be at least within arm’s length of the cap space necessary to offer a maximum contract. Rather than harmless flirtation, some might describe Bosh, Wade and James’ dalliances instead as a hostage situation with CAA holding the gun. What wouldn’t a team do for Lebron James? And with rumors swirling that two or three of CAA’s free agent-to-be stars hoped to join up, the temptation had to be huge for teams to coddle CAA in any way they could.

Now that we’ve all lived through “The Decision” and its aftermath, Melodrama, and whatever puns you want to make about Chris Paul’s trade/free agency sagas, what is important to know about CAA and its influence on the League?

1) Four of their five top-paid clients have been traded in the last three years. The only un-traded player is Dwyane Wade, and we all know why he didn’t go anywhere.

2) They have only been involved in representing athletes for six years, making the fact that they are the fourth largest representer of NBA players rather remarkable.

3) They started out as and remain primarily in the business of representing entertainers. These entertainers include people like Drew Barrymore and Robert Downey Jr. along with many ESPN personalities such as Chris Broussard, Michael Wilbon and Jim Rome. They also represent Madison Square Garden.  While other agencies represent media figures in addition to athletes, none come close to CAA in their specific concentration of on and off court power players in the NBA.

These are the details that arouse conspiracy theorists.

But in the end this all may not be worth calling a conspiracy. Reality might be the better term as CAA doesn’t need to make demands of the press in order to encourage the kind of stories they desire. The real transactions in sports are built around access. Imagine how much more traffic KnickerBlogger would get if we KnickerBloggers had Carmelo Anthony’s private cell number, or were connected with Amar’e Stoudemire on Skype. Access = information = traffic = money. Ever wonder why Stephen A. Smith, whose career was on the downswing, knew about Lebron, Bosh and Wade’s plans more than a week before any other journalist? Perhaps it’s because he’s made nice with CAA. And he has reaped the benefits with exclusive interviews with the biggest NBA stars. Such a formula, again, is not groundbreaking, but CAA wields more chips than we’ve seen anyone else hold in the NBA and so, as with any corporate interactions, they hold more influence.

Likewise, if you accept the reality that agencies are going to influence the league in a way proportionate to their power, and you know that according to the New York Post, less than one month ago, Jeremy Lin refused to sign with CAA, you start to understand why journalists would look for ways to trash Lin (playing into CAA’s desires, looking to earn more access), and why word might somehow sneak into Dolan’s office that CAA preferred to see Lin go.

There is no hard evidence, but a few things make the Knicks’ behavior in free agency appear shady. The first is their refusal to tender anything more than Lin’s $1.24 million qualifying offer, excusing such a choice with a (reasonable at the time) claim that they would match any offer. The second is their seemingly immediate decision to pursue other guards. Felton seemed confident he was joining New York as early as July 4th and Kidd officially signed one day later. Why pay two point guards $20 million when you’re “sure” you’ll sign a third for $25 million?

The answer seems to be that the Knicks never intended to sign Lin, choosing instead to play to the interests of Creative Artists Agency.

Now comes the part where your interests will decide where you stand. CAA has a brief but impressive track record of aiding in the assembly of championship level teams for their superstars. The reason why doesn’t even have to be selfless. Their goal is to build an international brand for their players, the type of recognition-level that will leave those stars with sponsorship income like Jordan, whose name still sells $200 sneakers nine years after he retired and fourteen after his last championship. On the one hand, this seems like a “most people win” situation. The fans get to watch juggernaut teams battle for titles, and the players and league both benefit from the increased coverage of the league. Lastly, with the guidance of Wesley, the players get guidance without an agenda, which might help them grow into mature adults (instead of narcissists like Dwight Howard).

In the big picture, that seems like a fair deal, but then there’s the smaller picture: the game itself. What is it about games that makes us hold them so close to us, to scream at televisions, to write 2,000 word articles? My feeling has always been that it’s about the rules. There is the cliché, “It’s complicated.” That “it”? It stands for life. Life is rife with complicated decisions, choices whose implications are a mystery to us when we make them and often remain so long afterwards. A game, however, is simple. Your goal is to use the rules as a guide to win. In basketball, that means scoring more points, and scoring more points is always good. That fact that rules simplify the difference good and bad, in my opinion, is a critical piece of what makes people hold games so close to themselves.

The problem is, CAA isn’t playing by the rules. It’s making things complicated. Now, you may be thinking “but free agency is different from the game.” Well, for many fans, such as myself and the millions of fantasy sport players out there, and the millions of fans who plug trades into ESPN’s trade machine when they are feeling hopeless about their team, the process of building a team is as much a game as the game itself. It’s a huge part of the thrill, the thing that keeps fans’ chins up when they are stuck rooting for teams like last year’s Bobcats… or the Knicks from 2002-2010.

What happens if CAA continues to grow more powerful – and likely will as the more they earn for their players, the more players will be drawn to them – is that player movement becomes a sham. The entire process of building a team gets moved from a matter of working the cap and drafting wisely – playing by the rules – to a series of underhanded deals that only a tiny handful of people are privy to.

This all leaves me feeling very conflicted. On the one hand, it feels right for an organization with real muscle to be working on behalf of the players, but on the other, I feel disenchanted. I wish that this power struggle could have been resolved at the negotiating table, that the team-building element of the game is something more than a fantasy.

What leaves me most conflicted, however, is the thought that CAA and Wesley have played the Knicks. After all, every time someone succeeds in making a power play, someone else gets played. Yes, the Cavs and Raptors were the obvious losers in 2010, but what rewards, exactly, have the Knicks reaped by acquiring Anthony, playing nice with Eddy Curry and keeping ties with Isiah Thomas (whose major draft flub was selecting Balkman and Collins, both CAA clients)? With the team Walsh constructed, we were headed for a first round exit, and these last two years have looked the same. Perhaps this year will be better, but will it be thanks to CAA? The only deal I can think of that could be considered a clear winner is J.R. Smith’s frugal contract – not exactly a mind boggling benefit considering the sacrifices.

No, in my opinion, the jig should have been up for CAA and its relationship with New York as soon as Lebron James and company went to Miami. CAA played its biggest chips right there, and as soon as that happened, the Knicks should have given up on the CAA dream. Walsh, in fact, seemed intent on doing this, signing Stoudemire (not a CAA client), waiving Curry, and playing hardball in negotiations for Carmelo Anthony. If CAA’s desires for Anthony (or, indeed, Anthony’s own desires) was to be on a contender, why wouldn’t he join the Knicks as a free agent, just as the Heat’s stars did? James and Bosh’s coyness about their future seemed tailored to keep their teams from trading them, allowing them to jump to Miami without bankrupting them of assets. Why wouldn’t Anthony play things the same way?

I certainly can’t answer these questions, but they cast doubt on Abbott’s lovey-dovey storyline. Maybe we’ve learned a little something though: that it’s conceivable that Dolan really did do all this for money, that those sponsorship deals CAA negotiates for him are worth more to MSG than Lin. Then again, perhaps we’ve come full circle and all this hullabaloo is really just a result of a stupid and arrogant owner who cannot conceive of the fact that anyone would dare take advantage of him.

Without access, however, none of us will ever know for sure.

Aesop taught us when we were very small that the slow and steady tortoise can beat the hare. Have the Knicks been slow and steady in their improvement, or did they, like the hare, wait around, give only partial effort for half the season, assuming that all the other NBA teams were wearing half-shells?

Many point to the firing of D’Antoni as the moment when the Knicks woke up and began to run for their lives. However, if you take a look at the chart below, you can see that this year’s team should be called the Turtle-Knicks, for they have slowly and steadily improved throughout the year. Each game, their adjusted margin of victory has improved by 0.24 points, and that trend has been pretty steady throughout the season.

What the chart shows is the Knicks’ margin of victory in each game, adjusted for both difficulty of opponent and whether the game was home or away (strange observation: the Knicks outscore opponents by a ridiculous 8.7 fewer points when on the road). Bizarrely, in spite of the series of injuries this team has suffered through, those injuries (color coded onto the chart) seem to have far less of an impact than we might expect.

What else can we take from this? It seems that the firing of D’Antoni did scare some of the Knicks to life, as the Knicks had five straight games where they performed above the trendline, which indicates how we could have expected the Knicks to perform each game.

Likewise, Linsanity was real. Even after adjustments, six of the seven games the Knicks won during their seven game streak were above the trendline.  That six game streak was the longest streak of over-the-trendline games the Knicks have had this season. Their worst streak? The four games before the close loss to Chicago, after which D’Antoni resigned.

Some other information I gleaned from the data:

1)   The Knicks before D’Antoni resigned improved by an average of 0.13 points/game. However, if you exclude the games after Linsanity, when Anthony admitted to dogging it, they improved by an average of 0.3 points/game.

2)   The Woodson Knicks are trending downward by 0.6 points/game. However, if you exclude the Portland blowout, they are only trending downward by 0.2 points/game.

3)   The most stable period for the Knicks was during Linsanity as well. You’ll note that the chart knives up and down far less violently during that win-streak.

4)   Stoudemire and Anthony were a part of most of all the losing streaks. Both of the longer win streaks occurred with either Anthony or Stoudemire missing some games.

With so much roster instability, it’s hard to predict how this information will affect our playoff performance. You could argue that our consistency in spite of injuries shows the Knicks’ great depth. You could also argue that it is indicative of the frailty of the marriage between Stoudemire and Anthony. Either way, it’s nice to see that the players likely did not nap through half the season, and instead were slowly working their way into shape, learning the defense, and learning how to play together.