jon abbey:
game thread! SHEED SHEED!

Ask and ye shall receive.
http://knickerblogger.net/2012-13-game-thread-knicks-mavs/

The Honorable Cock Jowles: No. Let’s just contextualize it so it fits your narrative, and move on.

Do you believe personnel evaluators should only look at the prior year’s WP/48 normalized for future age when making personnel decisions?

Or do you think that for the 30% of players that fall outside one standard deviation of where they should be or where they were previously projected to be, is it a personnel evaluators job to try to understnad the confluence of factors that led to their projection being wrong?

And what about anticipating the 30% of players who will fall at least one standard deviation outside of their preseason projection that’s based on past performance?

Are those also always random, or are there ways to anticpate those changes?

It’s scary to go down that rabbit hole, the whole idea that basketball is a complex team game where players have roles and there are interaction effects oh my, but maybe you should trust when Morey says that basketball cannot be understand by a single number.

Juany8: By the way, pretty hilarious that the specific post Z-man linked to about Lin also had a big argument about how Harden would fare as the main player on a team. Considering I’m pretty sure he’s actually gotten better since last year (young players tend to improve and all) I hate to see what would have happened if Harden had been a main option all year. He gets enough turnovers as it is…

yep.

ruruland: What do you make of the fact that he had a +.600 TS to finish the final 20 or so games of the season including playoffs, and that that stretch coincided with the purported health and psychological improvements stemming from the time off he took with his brother’s death that also led to significant weight loss (back to his normal playing weight?)

What do we make of the fact that his resurgence also coincided with at least competent pick and roll play?

How do you view the facts that Amar’e’s finishing and efficiency in virtually all play scenarios stayed roughly the same from his Phoenix days, expect for spot-up shooting, which went way down?

Does it make sense that a player with rapidly declining physical abilities should not suffer declines at the rim or paint, but in jump-shooting?

How do you view these factors that drove down Amar’e’s efficiency?

Do you believe it’s unlikley that Ama’re inability to get any shots up last off-season could have perhaps affected his jump shot, and should the three months of two-a-days, along with possible skill improvements, at least give Amar’e a good chance of returning to a semblance of the highly-efficient guy he was with the Suns and prior to the Billups trade, especially when we factor lower usage???

Or do we just look at his TS% two year trend, disregard usage and everything else I just mentioned, go with the uncontextualized age decline boilerplate analysis, and move on?

No. Let’s just contextualize it so it fits your narrative, and move on.

ruruland: But Amar’e is always going to rebound better than the small player he’s replacing in a more conventional lineup.

He will not defend as well as Brewer of course, but there is strong reason to believe he’ll be much improved defensively.

I think he starts, and with Melo he’ll play when both passing guards are in the lineup. he’ll be the feature piece when Smith is in the game in place of Kidd, who gives the Knicks a high pnr threat and a side pnr threat. I think it will be an Amar’e-cntric attack for 10-15 a game, which is just the offensive versatility this team needs and currently lacks.

I fully agree about running an Amar’e centric offense for 10-15 minutes, but that’s not the argument.

Actually Amar’e is high on my list of players who’s rebounding numbers overstates his rebounding impact (Javale McGee is number 1 in this category and Tim Duncan is number last, which is a good thing. First of all, because of all the issues with game strategy about whether or not it’s smart to go for offensive rebounds, I’m only focusing on defensive rebounds. By that measure, Melo has actually been just as good as Amar’e has been, both get around 6 a game at PF, and Brewer is a good defender. My problem, however, is that Amar’e is incredibly bad and lazy about boxing out, and so he often surrenders easy offensive rebounds. Basically, someone like Tim Duncan or Chandler will box out and try to tip the ball so that their team gets the rebound more often, even when they can’t get to it. Amar’e gets less rebounds than those guys, AND he gives up rebounds the other team wouldn’t get if he simply boxed out. He might put up a roughly respectable number of rebounds, but he hurts the team overall on that end. McGee is the worst player in the league about this, he puts up awesome numbers but his teams are terrible at rebounding with him playing

Juany8: I literally don’t care what Amar’e gives this team on offense, if he can’t defend, rebound, and pass consistently he doesn’t belong on the team’s core lineups. I do think Amar’e can have some pretty significant value to this team on the second unit, where recently the offense has devolved into JR isolations most of the game. This isn’t JR’s fault, there’s no one else out there that can draw a second defender in any meaningful way, so Amar’e would be a big boost over hoping Sheed can dominate people in the post. This team’s best lineup will be Kidd Felton/Shump, JR, Melo, and Chandler, Amar’e could play at his career best offensively and it wouldn’t help as much as having 4 capable passers/ballhandlers and 3 point threats. You don’t need two bigs to run the pick and roll with unless one can hit long jumpers efficiently, and does anyone really want Amar’e trying to guard Shane Battier like Ibaka did last Finals?

But Amar’e is always going to rebound better than the small player he’s replacing in a more conventional lineup.

He will not defend as well as Brewer of course, but there is strong reason to believe he’ll be much improved defensively.

I think he starts, and with Melo he’ll play when both passing guards are in the lineup. he’ll be the feature piece when Smith is in the game in place of Kidd, who gives the Knicks a high pnr threat and a side pnr threat. I think it will be an Amar’e-cntric attack for 10-15 a game, which is just the offensive versatility this team needs and currently lacks.