[NYDN] Knicks, who wanted a ‘fresh vision,’ even failing at a rebuild (Monday, February 05, 2018 12:23:21 PM)
The rebuild, or “the fresh vision” outlined by president Steve Mills, is stumbling toward an unsightly wasted first year.
[NYDN] Willy Hernangomez’s reps ask Knicks for trade (Monday, February 05, 2018 7:54:15 AM)
From the beginning, the Knicks had to know this couldn’t work in today’s NBA.
[SNY Knicks] GEICO SportsNite: Hardaway apologizes to the media (Tuesday, February 06, 2018 12:02:10 AM)
[SNY Knicks] It’s time for the Knicks to fire Jeff Hornacek (Monday, February 05, 2018 5:30:10 PM)
If coaches were judged off the first 30 games of the season, Jeff Hornacek would be in solid shape.
[SNY Knicks] Knicks should sell at trade deadline in effort to build for future (Monday, February 05, 2018 3:20:10 PM)
With the NBA trade deadline looming at 3 p.m. ET on Thursday, the Knicks should be sellers, not buyers.
[SNY Knicks] Knicks should make room for Hernangomez — not trade him (Monday, February 05, 2018 12:03:28 PM)
Knicks C Willy Hernangomez’ representatives have asked the team’s front office to trade him before the Feb. 8 trade deadline
[SNY Knicks] Free throw debacle killed Knicks’ momentum late in loss to Hawks (Monday, February 05, 2018 1:25:22 PM)
The Knicks are still to blame for their 99-96 loss to the Hawks on Sunday, but one confusing play certainly gave the Hawks an advantage in the fourth quarter.
[SNY Knicks] Ntilikina sat out of practice Monday with sore knee (Monday, February 05, 2018 11:35:00 AM)
Knicks rookie guard Frank Ntilikina told ESPN’s Ian Begley he’ll be “all right” after missing the second half of Sunday’s 99-96 loss to the Atlanta Hawks due to a knee issue.
[SNY Knicks] Ron Baker to undergo shoulder surgery, out for rest of season (Monday, February 05, 2018 10:40:48 AM)
Knicks PG Ron Baker is officially out for the rest of the season as he will undergo arthroscopic shoulder stabilization
(Monday, February 05, 2018 7:15:39 PM)
Willy Hernangomez is looking for a bigger role, and his representatives have told the Knicks that they want them to explore a trade that puts Hernangomez in a situation where he can play more and continue to develop, league sources confirmed.
(Monday, February 05, 2018 7:39:46 PM)
Tim Hardaway Jr. said he wished the Knicks had a game on Monday so he could wash away the bitter taste of the last two games.
(Monday, February 05, 2018 6:57:35 PM)
The crazy thing about Tim Hardaway Jr. is, if someone had told you on the afternoon of July 8 last summer that he would be trapped in the kind of nightmarish funk he’s been embroiled in the last three games — 5-for-33 shooting from the field, (including what may be the dumbest single shot in…
(Monday, February 05, 2018 5:47:36 PM)
Frank Ntilikina’s sore knee, which cost him the second half of Sunday’s loss to the Hawks, could keep him out of Tuesday’s game with the Bucks at the Garden. But coach Jeff Hornacek remains happy with the rookie’s development. He wouldn’t rule out the first-round pick from France becoming the starter at some point this…
(Monday, February 05, 2018 2:53:08 PM)
Knicks executives toured the Bucks’ new gold-standard practice site in downtown Milwaukee last Thursday. With the organization looking to remodel its Tarrytown digs, the tour’s host was former Knicks executive and current Bucks president Peter Feigin. “It’s gotten to be a few years old, so now they’re looking to renovate it,’’ Feigin told The Post….
(Monday, February 05, 2018 8:38:43 AM)
A day later, Tim Hardaway Jr. was willing to accept the blame. He faced the music 24 hours after his late-game miscue contributed to a dreadful loss to the Hawks and and pointed the finger at himself, for his shooting woes and Sunday’s costly mental mistake. “These last two games are definitely on me,” Hardaway…
(Monday, February 05, 2018 6:57:18 AM)
The splinters may have finally gotten to Willy Hernangomez. The young center had gone from an organizational building block to a bench warmer, and now he could soon be saying goodbye. Amid a Monday report that his representatives have requested the Knicks trade the 23-year-old Spaniard, sources told The Post there have been discussions between…
[NYTimes] Humbled in the N.B.A.’s Shadows, Tim Hardaway Jr. Returns to the Spotlight (Monday, February 05, 2018 7:58:20 AM)
Knicks fans balked at his four-year, $71 million deal, but Tim Hardaway Jr. has proved his worth the second time around in New York.
[NYTimes] Hawks 99, Knicks 96: Hawks Rally Late to Whittle Away at Knicks’ Lead (Monday, February 05, 2018 6:12:05 AM)
Kent Bazemore hit a 3-pointer with 6.7 seconds left to give Atlanta a 99-96 win over the Knicks, who had led by 6 with 2:16 remaining.
106 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.02.06)”
Good response by Horny, “Of course (Hernangomez) wishes he could play and wishes we could get him more minutes but I think he understands how we got to this point. It’s very diffuclt to play three guys especially in a league that doesn’t play a lot of centers anymore.”
I think that there’s little chance they actually trade Willy. They could surprise me, but I don’t believe they’ll actually do it.
I think there is very little chance they will trade anybody before the deadline. Everyone wants the same things the Knicks want and salaries for most players who could be traded to us are too high to make them desirable
At this point I’d be happy to just exit the trade deadline without making any damaging deals.
I couldn’t care less that Willy wants out or wants more playing time. He’s under contract for 2+ more years, and if he had played well enough in training camp to beat out KOQ then he’d be playing. There is no way in the world I would trade him for anything short of a 1st round pick (not happening) or another young wing player who has years left on his rookie deal (also seems unlikely).
That said – if we can get any sort of a 2nd round pick (1st half of the 2nd round, not protected) even in next year’s draft, I would trade KOQ just to open up time for Willy. Willy is prob not as good as KOQ which helps the tank, and also helps us evaluate him better.
One thing though – this front office under Perry is really good at preventing leaks — if I remember correctly we heard almost nothing about the Melo-OKC trade until it actually went down. There literally are zero trade rumors out there other than this Willy “I don’t wanna be here” thing.
It came out that Melo had expanded his list to include OKC a day before the trade. I don’t know if they’re not leaking or if there just isn’t anything to leak.
What sucks is that there’s not even much talk from other teams about KOQ. That is really annoying because there’s likely not even anything to be gained by keeping him in the hopes of signing and trading him in the offseason to a team over the cap. He’s such a useful player that it really sucks that they really are better off just getting some sort of pick for him over letting him walk for nothing (especially since the freed cap room from him is effectively meaningless since it is so small).
Cleveland could take KOQ right into their Kyrie trade exception and send us the Miami 2020 2nd round pick. That’s better than nothing, and it’s quite possible that that 2020 Miami pick could be pretty good. We could even take back a salary to make the tax $ for Gilbert more reasonable.
We need to get something for KOQ. At most he’s going to be a 20 min/game player who is 15% better than a much cheaper and younger alternative in Willy. It’s just not a good use of resources to re-sign him this offseason barring an unexpected opt-out from Kanter or Noah trade. We literally have 5 centers if you count KP in a league where most teams can’t give minutes to more than 2. Even re-signing him at a small discount is a bad use of resources unless you think you can trade him for something later.
The Knicks could theoretically send the Cavs Lee, KOQ, Beasley, and Jack for Shumpert+Frye+Cleveland’s first but it just seems like first rounders are finally starting to be valued extremely highly by all non-Pelicans/Pistons teams.
That’s four rotation players all of whom would arguably be better than someone receiving somewhat regular minutes for the Cavs now. The idea reminds me of how much better the Cavs looked in 2014-2015 when they replaced Dion Waiters and the various corpses of Mike Miller and Shawn Marion with the then-league average play of Shumpert and JR.
It’s the kind of trade that seems like a no-brainer if the Cavs give any fucks whatsoever about this current season, but they probably don’t and that’s probably smart.
What is pissing me off is that worse players than Kyle O’Quinn are gonna get traded and we will be left with nothing but the same roster of old guys who aren’t good enough. Courtney Lee and Kyle O’Quinn need to be Cleveland Cavaliers but that won’t happen. I’m pissed.
15 percent? How did you come up with that number?
Seriously it’s probably more li 50 to 75 percent better.
It is a shame that the league really doesn’t seem to respect KOQ.
IMO, you have to consider more than just the position a players plays. You also have to consider potential match ups.
If we trade O’Quinn, that frees minutes for Willy. The potential downside is they have similar strengths and weaknesses. So on the nights Kanter is getting his clock cleaned because of the matchup, if we put Willy in, he’ll probably get his clock cleaned also. On a night like that, perhaps someone like Noah or O’Quinn would be more effective.
Ideally, not only do we want to remove the logjam at C, we want to give ourselves a bit of diversity. If O’Quinn is out and the rotation is Kanter/Willy, I suspect we are going to have some frustrating nights on defense unless we keep Noah and use him in some spots where we were using O’Quinn more now.
I’ve said it a million times but I’ll say it a million and 1. The best solution is to try to move Kanter. Willy is a much better value than Kanter and O’Quinn is likely to remain a decent value after this year even if we resign him. Eventually, KP takes over at C, Willy is the backup, and we move on from O’Quinn.
Of course I am playing fantasy sports here because it’s unlikely to happen my way.
@11, if the other teams don’t respect KOQ. Doesn’t that bode well for the Knicks to bring him back on a tea friendly deal next year? As for the Kanter/Willy comparison, I agree that they are the same type of player but the fact that Willy is younger is why he is the one who has value. The rest of the league doesn’t value Kanter as a starting center which probably means he can also be had on a team friendly deal. Personally, I like Kanter because he has that edge that you need on a team. He is like the enforcer on the team and is playing a similar role that Chandler played when he was here. If Kanter goes, where does the toughness on this team come from?
Even if O’Quinn was willing to come back on a team friendly deal, what good does that do for them when they’re stuck with Kanter and shouldn’t want to deal Willy? Just keep Willy glued to the bench until Kanter’s contract expires? How does that make any sense?
And yes, they obviously should want to get rid of Kanter, but no one is willing to take him (at least not unless the Knicks throw in an asset or take back a longer contract, neither of which are good ideas for the Knicks), so they’re pretty much stuck with him.
Kanter putting up 15/15 and 20/20 games this close to the deadline has to help…right?
I think the ol’ “Box score filler who you don’t want on the court in the playoffs” take of Kanter has spread through the league. People don’t mind having a guy like that on their team. They just don’t want to pay him $18 million next year without you giving them something else.
It makes no sense. It’s unlikely we can trade Kanter. That’s why I called it “fantasy” sports. 🙁
I’m just pointing out that freeing Willy by moving O’Quinn does not definitely solve the C problem. It probably creates a new/different problem at C for next year that we’ll have to address. Maybe at least at that point we’ll have a better idea of what we have with Willy, but my guess is still that the long term solution at C is moving on from Kanter. So maybe that happens next year.
@17
I’m not privy to the models that NBA teams use to evaluate players, but everyone knows Kanter is not as good as his boxscore stats and the boxscore models say he is.
Nah, KOQ is going to be moved. It’s only going to happen at the last second for the highest second round pick we get offered. I don’t think anybody else gonna get moved, not even the highly on demand Courtney Lee.
But I honestly don’t care that much. I’m starting to get pissed at Hornacek for not playing the young guys. Or maybe at the front office for not telling Hornacek to do so.
It’s going to be fun to lose KOQ and Kanter (darlings of those awful stats that are awful for not correlating with RAPM) and win 20 games next year.
Part of me feels like we are being just a little too hard on KP and we forget that this is year 1 of him being top dog, and he’s still young and developing physically. But it’s his fault though- for being so unbelievably talented and good when he’s on lol. Honestly, it’s a helluva catch 22 for the team. When KP is good..he’s blindingly bright. It’s exhilarating to think of what he can become. But at the same time, he’s still developing and he had Melo to shield him from alot, so this season must be a shock to his system. It took a few years for Dirk too. Not everyone’s as NBA ready as LeBron, AD, Shaq, etc. But cotdamn I wish his development would hurry up and catch up with our expectations! LOL
Yeah, I bet Kanter will be easier to move next season, as well. Not easy to move, but at least easier.
@21
Hey, they’re awful for other reasons too. And KOQ rates well on every metric. We’re not going to miss Kanter.
If this is another trade deadline where nothing happens I’m going to be very annoyed. This team should so obviously be selling our older players for literally anything we can get.
Maybe we should just keep Noah, hope we can move him as an expiring when his contract is up, and use him as a backup from time to time along with Willy on a match up specific basis. He’ll still be 3rd fiddle, but if he’s playing 15-20 minutes in some games he may be OK with not seeing time in others. It’s still another long term headache, but it may beat just buying him out or having a terrible defensive rotation at C with Kanter/Willy.
When Dirk was 22, he was rocking a .224 WS/48. I think KP brings enough on defense that I’m still happy with him, but we’re probably past the point of “look how long Dirk took to develop!”
I think they could theoretically move him as an expiring, as well, but only if they do play him in the next couple of years and I don’t know that they even have room to do so if they keep Kanter and Willy.
Somebody that was privy to those models gave Kanter a $70,000,000 contract. (And he was already on the roster, so Presti knew his limitations at the time).
Centers that don’t shoot 3 pointers aren’t the players teams want to throw money at in 2018, so maybe that’s the current model. In which case, what can you do except be thankful he’s not Carmelo Anthony…
True, BC. I kinda lost the fact that Dirk was just different for a moment. KP can be better, but not if he doesn’t realize how easy the game should be for him
O’Quinn scores well on RPM.
It’s Kanter that arguably has been empty calories on the court for years according to RPM.
I share your skepticism about on/off and adjusted on/off, but not when they say the same thing for multiple years across different teams and different lineups and I can visually see defensive flaws that teams are targeting. At a certain point, you have to throw up your hands and admit, it’s not reality that’s wrong. It’s the values being assigned in the boxscore that are wrong and missing things in this case.
He was younger at the time (and less exposed) and I’m pretty sure I recall a lot of people screaming it was a huge overpay. They all make mistakes. If you ask me, Presti has made quite a few recently.
Right. Just like it’s hilarious that these two players who probably could be had for almost nothing are not drawing any interest, even from stat-savvy teams in the playoff hunt with injuries.
The league has passed WP by, Jowles, it’s so painfully obvious.
The smart move for us is to extend Kanter. There is no way he can command 18 million a year and we could probably get him for 12, which I think would be a pretty good deal for a 26 year old who freaking loves playing for The Knicks and does nothing but board and score all game every game.
Also, stats have nothing to do with salaries. Its about the market. Kanter was lucky the year he happened to be a free agent. It is not a player’s market now like it was a few years back.
How can we trade for Tyus Jones, one of the 10 best players in the NBA?
The Knicks should do very little the next few years. We need to be patient. I’d look to resign Kanter at a cheaper rate and maybe bring back McBuckets and Beasley for 3 years at a good rate. Give KP his extension. Let KQ walk if we can’t trade him by Thursday and play Willy/Noah more next year. Keep Lee and Lance too.
The smartest thing we could do would be to continue to develop our core and add to it with draft picks. And just let time pass. If we do this, in about a year and a half we could be sitting pretty with expiring contracts all coming off at the same time. People here talk about rebuild but do not really have the patience for it.
extending Kanter would not be something i would want.
Remember that KP’s best long-term position is going to be center.
Kanter/KP lineups have been pretty bad. I’d MUCH rather re-sign KOQ (and I don’t even want to do that) than extend Kanter. KOQ will be much cheaper and he actually plays both ends of the floor.
I guess it comes down to whether you believe KP’s best long-term position is center. If you do, think how many good, well run teams are paying more than an MLE-level salary to their backup center. That number is probably zero, and if it isn’t, those teams are regretting it.
Re: Kanter – that $18MM expiring next year might be worth something at the trade deadline.
Why exactly should we resign Kanter when we:
1) Have already two centers + KP for next season
2) Have a guy who’s similar and costs 1/15 of Kanter
3) Need to get more athletic and good on the defensive end?
Man, I hate the New York tabloid press’s constant shit-talking on the Knicks. What a fucking dishonest, shitty, and disingenuous take on the Knicks on that Bondy piece. Listen, I should take this guys as seriously as an US Weekly “Stars they’re just like us” piece, but so many people read them, that just like Fox News, they create reality in a sense for a huge segment of the fanbase, and thus drive culture, philosophy, and maybe team action.
Get this riff:
Really? Frank is a rookie playing the PG position, and Hardaway has outperformed my expectations so far (not up to his contract, but still).
No, it’s a telling sign of where signing Jack and Sessions left us.
You gave it a whole five months, huh?
He goes on to talk about Willy “plotting his exit” and “banishing” Noah. It’s all just such obtuse reporting, and it’s all around, from Isola to Berman, etc. Saying that we’ve committed to a rebuild assumes that (a) we’re committed yet have guys like Jack, Sessions, Lee, Lance, O’Quinn on our opening roster, and (b) that the youth is underperforming, which is not really true if you had the right expectations.
They know they get the clicks with negativelolknicks stories, but there’s gotta be some integrity to it all. And I should know better than to get pissed from it.
Fuck it. Trade KP for shooters and build around Beasley. We also need dunkers, man. Enough of this triangle crap.
that’s the ny sportswriters shtick… it’s been this way since as long as i can remember….. going through the 90s and reading those same articles now … you would think we had just as horrible a team then….
in a market where there’s a competition on eyeballs… going negative and offensive gets ppl’s attention… this is just how media works in general… the only way you change it is if everyone starts rewarding actual good reporting and analysis….
i’ve long since turned off the ny sports media…. it is negative value to a sports fans life….
@39
I love it!
Actually, I don’t. But it would be fun!
The whole point of a rebuild is to slowly build up a good young core, not simply extend whoever you have on your team now when your team sucks.
We should resign Kanter because if we can get him for 12 million a year or maybe even 10 to 11, versus 18 that he’s paid now, he will be a good bargain. We should resign him (for the price mentioned) because he is only 25. We should resign him because he likes being here and his teammates like him. We should resign him because KQ will be gone after this season. We should resign him because those two other centers either can’t play heavy minutes because they are too old (Noah) or are just as bad on defense (maybe worse) than Kanter but not as good on offense and unproven.
Our goal is to eventually move on from Noah, right?
I’m thinking long term. Kanter in 3 years will be 28, still very much in his prime. And by then Noah will be gone. Even if Willy is still with us then and KP is playing more center…I really do not see KP being a full time center ever. And I think Willy’s ceiling is back up big. People on here are hyping him because of a decent second half last year (in games we mostly lost).
I’d do an O’Quinn/Jack for Shabazz/Tyus trade. Both are still under 25 and starting Shabazz at the 3 would really help with the tank. They’re both cheap and both expire at the right time.
But, I mean, we have a incredibly cheap contract that runs through 2019-2020 that does 75% of the things that Kanter does. If we extend Kanter, we won’t be able to trade him easily anyway, because the league puts minimum value of players like him. If anything, we’d need to sign somebody else who’s more like a Dewayne Dedmon type, long, willing defender who shoots threes and might wander around on the perimeter a bit.
Extending Kanter because he wants to stay here looks a bit like extending Lance Thomas.
It’s been kinda sad to watch Bondy slide down the pole toward the Isolaville trough (at least Isola is sometimes funny), but no sadder than watching Alan Hahn stumble aimlessly toward the paycheck window of MSG sycophant alley.
I noticed we’ve slid into the bottom 10 in the standings. And two teams below us (Brooklyn and LA) have no motivation to lose bc they don’t have their picks.
Tonight is definitely a possible trap win. We might bounce back after a horrendous loss with a good effort.
That RPM rating has been screaming at me for weeks. It’s probably sample size related or a specific lineup that has worked especially well. But when you see one that bad, it lowers your confidence in the others. I tend to look at multiple years and try to find some kind of verification via other methods. He was OK last year and may have improved, but I’m not buying that rating.
@48
You shouldn’t take one outlier rating as representing an issue for a metric. It’s only after a pattern of outlier ratings like you see with WP that you should start getting really skeptical. Tyus Jones has been really good and should be starting over Teague. Is he a top 10 player in the league? No, but he’s producing at a rate better than the box score stats suggest despite not in fact being better than Nikola Jokic.
I think he’s one of those players that does all the little things that don’t show up in the box score. And he’s an excellent, excellent defender.
@49
I hear you, but if he’s not a +4.73 what is he?
Is he a +1, +2, +3?
I’d take him in a heartbeat on our team, but I’d have no idea what to expect other than he’d be a lot better than Jack. 🙂
@50
PIPM has him at about +1.24, which obviously doesn’t mean the same thing as +1.24 on RPM, but they’re roughly similar metrics. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle between those two metrics, but I don’t really have anything backing that up besides subjective eye test stuff (being a UNC alum, I’m also predisposed to hate Tyus Jones because he played for Duke, so there’s at least one cognitive bias working against him) That has him squarely around #90 overall on the PIPM spreadsheet. For reference, our very own Jarrett Jack has a PIPM of -.85, good for #247 overall on PIPM.
Tyus Jones is also only 21, which I keep forgetting. I’d love to see him in a Knicks uniform.
Here’s the spreadsheet for reference:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l6PWeds4w99_z1aQ5sxrwwjyTST_-esvRbQxAQHbsyE/edit#gid=0
I love how this site says stuff like “does 75 percent what Kanter does” as if that number is at all accurate or based on anything but your own fantasy projection. So Willy is only 15 percent worse than OQuinn and does 75 percent of what Kanter does. DAMN! Horns must be such an idiot to never play him then! It couldn’t possibly be because Willy actually sucks and is getting crushed by those guys in practice? And by the way, Kanter is only 3 years older than Willy!
I get that we want young and cheap players to maximize our cap but I really feel like this site sometimes windy overvalues players who are young and cheap and “full of potential” vs. a proven older vet.
Hey, it’s a good thing Phil gave Courtney Lee a 4 year contract! Yay for continuity and nay for trade value!
Except Kanter is actually good at things related to basketball and Lance Thomas is not. Even Lance’s defense is overrated. We can argue about what advanced metrics say about Kanter but the fact is he grabs a TON of rebounds and can score at ease inside the paint. Those are valuable skills.
Noah is not in the long term plans. Willy may or may not be but might only be a back up center at best and right now is worse than Kanter on offense and defense. He doesn’t do 75 percent of what Kanter does. He does maybe 20 percent.
A bird in a hand folks. Kanter has been good for us. I do not want to extend him for the same price he’s at now but if he’s at say 12 million a year and we aren’t paying for Noah in two years and our center rotation is Kanter, Willy and KP…wouldn’t that be a pretty good big man rotation especially if they all improve some in their weak areas? KP will still play the 4 probably half the time anyways.
Can someone please explain why I’m supposed to care how well a statistic correlates with RAPM? I’m looking for more information than “because RAPM is widely considered the most accurate.”
@51
Thanks a lot.
Are you https://twitter.com/jacobegoldstein?lang=en
In 1300+ rookie minutes last year Willy put up 16 points and 13.6 rebounds/36 with a .566 TS%. His defense didn’t look pretty by the eye test but I actually haven’t seen any numbers indicating he was that bad. There’s no way to torture those numbers to argue his development shouldn’t have been a huge priority for us this year. I know doing free PR for a team that’s been shitty for almost 20 years now is a full-time job but sometimes you just have to take a step back and be objective.
Also we shouldn’t give Kanter an extension for being a nice guy.
I think the reason we haven’t traded Kanter is because we want him. I don’t he’s being offered around the league. Just a guess, but nothing about the knicks indicates to me they would trade a starting center who is having an outstanding season. A smart team looking to cash in on assets would, but that’s not the Knicks.
He made a lot of sense for the Pelicans, for instance. I just don’t think we were interested.
Drummond
Towns
Jordan
Butler
Harden
Adams
Capela
Giannis
Davis
James
Kanter
Westbrook
Horford
Lillard
Anderson
Curry,
Lowry
Jokic
Paul
Howard
Oladipo
We’re skeptical of a statistic because of, uh, what? Kanter being a monster offensive player? Kyle Anderson being included among the list of WP stars? Everyone else on that list is a good player, but that doesn’t even matter. The “smell test” is not a valid criticism of a statistical model. I don’t trust your nose and there’s no evidence to suggest that I should.
If you want to say that the positional adjustment is dumb, or that it fails to capture the nuance of defensive ability, or that it (lol) doesn’t correlate with another statistic and is therefore rendered unusable, fine. But you’re smarter than “it says Mejri (among other “no-name” players) is really productive over 600 MP therefore it is bad.”
I recognize you said that one outlier isn’t damning, but you’re perceiving a pattern where there may not be one.
@56
No, that’s not me, but he’s a good contributor on NC–twitter really is the best place for basketball analytics, surprisingly.
I wish I was good enough at math to construct my own statistical models. A career as an NBA statistician is one I’d seriously consider, were I competent enough. I’m actually just a graduate student in philosophy, which I love too, so no regrets.
Look, I agree Willy should be getting more burn. But I don’t think keeping Kanter really will prevent that from happening. In my ideal world (well an ideal world where the reality of still having Noah is a fact)…we keep Kanter and he starts. We play Willy as the main back up (like KQ is now) and we throw in some Noah when we really need some defense. So it would be Kanter, Willy, Noah in that order and we hopefully draft a cheap center or PF who is also a rebounder, defender, bruiser who can take Noah’s role once Noah is finally gone.
I just don’t think we should be getting rid of talented 25 year old big men who can score and rebound among the best in the league. And yes, his defense is bad but honestly so is Willy’s and if we can keep improving our perimeter defense it may not be an issue.
I just think we should focus on what we do not have at all right now. A starting caliber wing and a PG.
People want to blow it up and get rid of Kanter but damn man he’s a good player and deserves to be here long term. I just do not get the hate. Id much rather build where we actually know we are super weak than get rid of a great big man and have to find another one.
the reason to care is because it’s all we have when it comes to summary stats. Forget the details about ridge regression. at core what are we trying to do? we are trying to figure out whether we have empirical data that causes basketball success. RAPM is just basketball success, point differential, and it of course is highly correlated to wins. these regressions are imperfect. they are imperfect bc they are less than 1, but also bc they are infected with biases that can’t be fully extracted.
but that is true for every metric. if you hate RAPM regressions then you have to absolutely despise WP. because the “evidence” that WP is useful and not a giant sokal hoax is ALSO based on a multivariate regression. The only problem is that regression is incredibly unrelated to the actual ad hoc (made up) coefficients underlying WP and could nearly equally be used to support a argument that points explain all you need to know about nba productivity.
RPM and the litter of recent follow ons are miles and miles from the final words. There will never be a final word in one statistic just like AlphaGo will never be able to give a single value of a particular spot on the board. But they are at least honest efforts and anyone who hates them should hate WP even more.
I suppose the goal is to find the metric that does the best job of evaluating players. Since they all produce some results that don’t pass the smell test and coaches, players, GMs, astute observers etc.. agree, it probably makes sense to look at more than one and learn about how they work.
I think when guys are out injured, switch teams, in/out of certain lineups etc.. you learn things by observing the impact it has on the team. That helps verify or refute what the various metrics are saying about that player and how players fit together.
There’s no reason you should care whether another metric correlates with RAPM, but RAPM may pick up on things about a certain player that you know are not being picked up in the boxscore.
– Offensive rebounds and putbacks are big part of what we do around here.
– Until Willy gets minutes, no one really knows how good or bad he is. Last season he looked very very good. This season he looks very very bad.
Hornicek did what was best for immediate success.
For the long term benefit of the team’s cap space, they should have tried going with Noah and Willy.
I found it interesting that Kanter said recently that he hoped that the Knicks made a push for the playoffs. Obviously, players are supposed to say that and all players want to win, but I wonder if Kanter wants to play in the playoffs enough that if the Knicks benched him, would he perhaps opt out? Probably not, but that’d be helpful.
@59
I’m not saying it’s a bad statistic because it doesn’t pass the smell test, but each little data point that we have regarding the statistic speaks against its usefulness, for example: that it yields some really highly counterintuitive conclusions regarding how it ranks player productivity (which it does do, contrary to Aten’s claims) at a higher rate than other advanced stats (BPM, WS, and RPM seem to converge more than diverge in their rankings); that it doesn’t fit well to +/- data (which is pretty much the only way we have to objectively compare the advanced stats metrics, afaik, someone who knows more about stats like ptmilo please let us know if this is right or not), that it has those frankly bizarre positional adjustments, that it totally punts on defense, that it doesn’t actually predict out of sample (though it does have a consistency to its metrics year to year, but that’s different than predictive power), etc. All of those things, taken together make me question it significantly. And at this point, I do the same thing with WS, though I think WS is better than WP, all things considered. Aten annoyed me, so I overstated my case last night, Mileage may vary, but it seems as if the evidence for its usefulness as a metric is scant, given its questionable calculations (e.g. positional adjustment) combined with yielding more outliers than WS, BPM, or RPM (an intuitive criterion, but one that I think is relevant for any model to consider in its construction), and its comparatively awkward fit on a data sample (the 14 year RAPM sample.)
Continue last post,
When I was gambling on a lot of basketball games few years back, I had a spreadsheet with all the injuries in the NBA, my projected betting line had the player been in the game, my estimated value of that player, the actual betting line, and then the result relative to that betting line.
If I thought Derrick Rose was worth about +3 points to the Bulls (back at his best) and the lines were moving 5 points when he was out, that might get my interest aroused. But that wasn’t enough. I wanted to see that my thoughts were being verified with profitable wagering opportunities. If I couldn’t find profitable insights, I might as well just ask Vegas what it thinks about a player and not waste time. But there are some players that are overrated and underrated.
Enes Kanter > Lebron, lol what a dum system
Otto Porter, Tyus Jones & Robert Covington > Lebron, well that’s just an outlier.
This PIPM stat is crap. It says (lol) Salaj Mejri is the 23rd best player in the NBA and better than Lebron James.
Lebrons not a particularly good example here, since he hasn’t been up to his usual par by the lights of any metric. Obviously the best player in the world when he tries, but he’s seriously coasting right now. His defense has been pretty bad this season. Harden, Curry, or Paul would be better examples. But I get that you’re just making fun of me.
Like I said in 49, the fact that a metric has a few outliers is not the same thing as having a lot of outliers based on extremely questionable productivity calculations, which WP has in critical mass. The point is that every model is going to have outliers and we generally ought to tolerate that, but WP has more, to a higher degree, and on the basis of equations and positional adjustments that don’t make any fucking sense. But I’ll give up the point, because even if WP has the same amount of outliers as all the other stats, it’s still not a good one, for all the other reasons listed.
Salah Mejri is averaging less than 4 points a game and you nerds think he’s better than Lebron James smh?
I think pointing out perceived outliers as “evidence” of any metric’s failures is a dumb can of worms to open. Every metric has some rankings that would make every basketball fan do a double take.
WP’s ultimate failure IMO is standing by a heavy positional adjustment in an era in which coaches decreasingly give a shit what position the guys on the floor are technically playing. That, and it still seems to think rebounds are linear.
I’m not sure if Willy is 75% of Kanter, or 38.6% or whatever. But, he needs to play. And, there’s no hurry to extend Kanter, even if he’d agree to a much lower salary.
I hope that OQ is dealt by Thursday for whatever can be gotten. Then, play Willy 20 mpg the rest of the year, and let’s then compare and contrast him with Kanter. To just sit a guy all year who was all-rookie and looked really solid last year, improved, is young, and on a killer value contract is real silly.
Then, next year (since Kanter is highly likely to opt in), you can do the same thing. THEN by the trade deadline make a big decision on the C position, b/c maybe KP gets a bit stronger and can play more at the 5, too. As an expiring, Kanter might be easier to move at that time, and you’d still have Willy for one more year for peanuts.
Rebounds seem overvalued to me in general. It’s not like I don’t appreciate rebounds. The most common thing you will hear me scream at the TV is “get the damn rebound”.
However, to me, every time a team scores or is stopped, several players contribute to it whether it’s an inbound pass, handling the ball, one of several other passes, a screen, the shot, an offensive rebound etc… On defense there is on ball defense, switching, help, blocks/shot alteration, taking offensive fouls, rebounds etc…. Rebounds can continue or end a possession, but a LOT of what happens before or after that is of significant cumulative value that doesn’t get appreciated enough or at all. Sometimes even when 1 guy gets the rebound, there are 1 or 2 others in position to get it anyway.
I can’t say I know what a rebound is worth. It’s probably different on every possession and in different lineups, but I think in general they are given too much weight and that’s why at the extreme Wins Produced produces some real head scratchers.
I didn’t see that one coming.
@ 74.
Great plan. And there’s Noah too, that we’re stuck with, that can get figured into the formula.
With the logjam at center, there are so many different combinations and directions the knicks could have tried. Considering the knicks record, not to find minutes for Willy and Noah to see what they can do and keep them happy, and trading no one, is beyond idiotic.
WP overvalues rebounding to the point where the following players rank in the top 20 in WP48:
Andre Drummond, Clint Capela, Deandre Jordan, Hassan Whiteside, Enes Kanter, Salah Mejri, Steven Adams, Larry Nance, Alex Len, Jonas Valanciunas, Ed Davis, Brandan Wright, Karl-Anthony Towns, Jordan Bell, Anthony Davis.
Most of those guys are fine players, but that’s 15 out of the top 20 players who are bigs who are good rebounders. You go down to the next ten, the 21-30 range, and it’s another 8 centers, Giannis and Thabo Sefolosha.
I just pretty much ignore it as a metric for the most part.
I think we’re in a good spot if we can drop to #9. That means one of:
Jaren Jackson
either Bridges
Wendell Carter
Knox
maybe even Bamba?
Sadly, I think if we go best player available, that means either Carter or Jackson (Bamba shouldn’t be on the board). But the Bridges are both tempting and fill more of a need. Knox is actually the best “fit” but seems like a real bust risk.
I’d be happy with Carter since he does a little bit of everything, except shoot threes, but that means more KP at center and a continued glut there. Miles Bridges would be really interesting too.
@ 75 and 78 That’s always been my gripe about advanced metrics.
There are ten guys on the floor acting on a multi-dimensional plane, acting independently and inter-dependently, making it impossible to precisely calculate the value of any specific broad category.
And then, to rely on single number derived from a combination of those categories to determine a players value is extremely misleading.
And to take it a step further, you have guys who’ve never experienced playing basketball setting up the algorithms.
And that applies to the eye-test, as well.
I’m a believer in advanced metrics, because I have a background as a baseball stat nerd. I was reading Bill James books back in the mid-80’s. The field has come a really long way since then. The work that James did was a foundation to build on, and today’s models are infinitely more sophisticated. The invention of ball-tracking technology has pushed the world of baseball stats into the stratosphere.
The models in the NBA aren’t quite there yet, at least the ones like WS and WP. Those are primitive metrics. And of course, basketball is a very different game than baseball, harder to quantify. I think it’s likely impossible with basketball to create an all-encompassing metric like WAR in baseball without using some form of eye test mixed in, some form of breaking down tape of each possession and assigning a grade to each player the way they do it at Pro Football Focus for the NFL.
In basketball, there’s just too much going on. There’s an infinite number of variables that change every time down the floor.
That being said, advanced metrics certainly have value, but nothing like in baseball.
The other problem is usage.
I don’t have a clear cut answer to that problem either because I think it varies, but if your model says that Tyson Chandler is contributing a lot to the offense because he scores 8-10 very efficient points each night it’s not given enough weight to the fact that his limited offensive game and low usage means other players are taking some extra difficult shots that come up from time to time. The flip side if also true. If one guy is carrying a huge load, he’s making it a little easier on a couple of more limited teammates.
In this particular moment in the NBA there is just no way that 23 of the top 30 most productive players in the league are centers or traditional power forwards. It’s like WP’s whole central thesis is just completely wrong. At the very least they need to tweak the positional adjustment thing to better reflect reality, because their “top players” list is especially embarrassing this season.
Hornacek said something interesting early in the season. He said they look at each defensive play and grade whether each player was in the right position given how the play developed. I guess they are looking at the switches, help, and general defense.
Scoring 10 points in very few possessions makes it much easier for your team to outscore their opponent.
@72 @79 @80 @81 Thank you, you saved my day
@82 I came from the same Bill James background and totally agreed with you.
For all the things that @80 and others detail, basketball is completely different than baseball and as of now you can’t do without eye test. In basketball stats are a good tool that need to be used wisely.
BTW reality tends to fuck things up, sometimes in funny ways (so CLE could beat GS in 2016 and DAL beat MIA in 2011) sometimes…
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/technology/the-data-said-clinton-would-win-why-you-shouldnt-have-believed-it.html
A player without the ball can do a subtle action that no one knows or can detect, other than the player himself.
i.e. Someone can take a small step to re-position his defender just out of reach to help defend your teammate going to the hoop. Where in a boxscore are you going to see that?
And then there’s the guy that steps in the other direction so the lane is closed and he’ll call for the ball to iso. I think we’ve just seen 3 1/2 years of that.
It partly explains the phenomena of extremely talented guys rarely, or never, getting to the playoffs.
@89 +1
one of the things that drives me the most crazy about this team – since this time last year when rose made it painfully clear that he was washed up, (and a terrible teammate) we’ve had the opportunity to pick up a point guard – an nba level starting point guard…
I remember this time last year through the end of the season there was about a half dozen options for picking up a point guard – and, we signed timmy, ron and traded for kanter and dougie…
in the last year our roster has changed significantly – and yet – we still don’t have nba level starting point guard…
which makes it tough to accurately evaluate the other players and the coaching staff for the team…
there is no reasonable explanation for starting the year with two very questionable backup point guards and a rookie…
sadly, i have little hope we’ll start next season with a competent point guard…
i don’t know how knick management thought that would be a successful way forward…
I agree.
But to keep it simple, let’s say on average each player uses 15 possessions. The possessions that Chandler is not using because he would be very poor at then, like off the dribble and mid range etc… get allocated to the other players on the court with him. Some of those tough shots have maybe a 40% chance of success. Those extra tough shots will tend to lower the value of the other players because Chandler doesn’t take his fair share (he might be 30% on those). His “limitations” should count against him but they are getting distributed to others. So while I would say Chandler added value on offense, he didn’t add as much as Wins Produced gave him.
@92
Doesn’t that kind of boil down to, players like Chandler/Kanter don’t take bad shots so somebody else has to? And that Carmelo/Postings get like totally unfairly penalized you guys for being that somebody else? Is this really what we’re going with here?
1) WP almost certainly overrated rebounding, but rebounding is a critical part of basketball success and it still only rewards players relative to their peers. If there were a great number of players who could rebound like Drummond and Jordan, we wouldn’t see so many bigs at the top of the list. Same goes for low-volume, high-efficiency shooters.
2) Remind me how Capela’s low volume has adversely affected Harden’s and Paul’s efficiency. Also remind me how Carmelo is having the worst shooting season of his career playing next to two gravity-creating “superstars” and a monster paint-clogger down low.
That “tough-shot creator” argument is a total fabrication.
3) For the billionth time, a player with a high WP48 (or any other statistic) in limited minutes is not necessarily the best or most skilled player. It means the player has performed well in the chances he has been given. I have a higher rating on lichess.org than chess.com, but that’s because my sample size is much lower on lichess. I’m not a better player on lichess, but I have played better in those games. You cannot automatically disqualify a player for low per-game numbers. The points still count whether you play 4 or 40. I wouldn’t necessarily give a low-minutes player a long contract to be a starter, but the production still counts.
Chandler was given a chance every possesion, as the Knicks tried to run a P&R between Felton and him at the start of every possesion, and still only averaged 10 shots a game. At some point you have to stop using FG as a measure of scoring chances, and start measuring it some other way.
Speaking of PnR, watch how KP avoids contact almost every time he sets a pick.
He’s scared. Maybe because he doesn’t like contact. Or, he’s not strong enough to plant himself and hurt the defender, or maybe guys take extra elbows and shoulders to him.
I love that KP is on the knicks. He’s got great skills, but he’s not tough. I don’t see him ever becoming much stronger and physically aggressive, which will limit his upside.
Back in his heyday Chandler averaged about 4 fewer FGAs per 40 minutes than an average center. So we’re talking about like 3-6 shots a night for the offense. I don’t see how that forces other players into taking terrible shots that hamper their efficiency.
1. It’s rewarding players relative to their peers, but since it overrates rebounds relative to other skills, the rebounders are too high on the list relative to players whose value is derived from other areas.
2. You are giving us the “exception cases”.
When you have a 3 terrific scorers, you don’t need a 4th or 5th. What you need is someone that brings something to the table that the scorers do not bring.
A guy like Andre Roberson doesn’t bring a lot, but he’s an elite defender. On a team with Melo, George, and Westbrook he’s more valuable than on a team with KP, Lee, Frank etc… His lack of scoring would become a drag on the Knicks that could be larger than his value on defense. But on OKC, Westbrook & George have no trouble creating decent shots so his defense is VERY valuable.
On a team like Houston, Capela brings what they need. Harden is elite, Paul can score 25-30 points almost any night he wants no matter who is guarding him, and they have floor spacers and other shot creators. His lack of usage is again mitigated by the construction of a great team.
The same would be true of Golden State.
But on the typical team without elite scorers, they are often struggling to get good efficient shots. If 1 or 2 players is a drag, it will have a bigger impact.
Exactly.
Chandler had fewer chances because it’s really hard to create the very limited kinds of shots he could excel at. Teams are focused on not giving up too many lobs. They want you shooting long 2s. If Chandler was shooting long 2s against a defender, he’d hit 25% of them. So on the possessions that the defense was successful at stopping the P&R, “sometimes” someone else got stuck taking a mid range at 40%. It’s no one’s fault the defense won the possession, but the shooter at 40% has his rating go down and Chandler who is never “that guy” does not get punished at all.
Here’s another way to explain it.
Let’s say I put a gun to peak Melo’s head and told him, either you keep your TS% at or above 60% or I will kill you and your entire family.
Could he do it?
100% yes.
He’d never shoot unless he had a layup, break away dunk, got fouled etc..
The problem is the team would be worse because to keep his TS% at 60% he’d start passing the ball to Chandler from 16 feet and that would be an even worse shot than some of the trash Melo put up on his own. Then WP would say Melo was good on low usage and it was all Chandler fault.
This not a defense of Melo, but he was more valuable than WP said.
kp .. when he was a rookie.. and trying to shake the soft label… played a lot tougher than he has now….
right now… kp is soft… plain and simple….
Whatever the efficiency is on those 3-6 shots they should be charged against Chandler. The impact would be different depending on whether he was playing with Curry, Durant, and Thompson or KP, Lee and Hardaway, but he’s getting away without having his fair share of the tough shots hit his personal bottom line and those 3-6 would tend to be the tougher than any random set.
I feel like it’s 2008 again with WP. People fired up about it, although not as fired up as many were about Eddy Curry.
People may not like WP, it’s not worth litigating for the thousandth time, but the Wages of Wins was a pretty timely book. It pushed our understanding of sports forward on a number of fronts and you rarely hear complaints about most of the stuff in there. A lot of it has seeped into conventional wisdom. It’s true some of it didn’t age that well but who cares, that’s how it is with almost any book of its nature. It got people thinking, that’s for sure.
Also, he was completely right about Carmelo Anthony and for that I will ride with Dave for eva.
If Chandler played D as poorly as Kanter, he still would have had a lofty WP. Yet Chandler with his O and w/o his D is at best a fringe NBA player.
This is all true, and makes it exponentially more frustrating that Berri and co. haven’t made any adjustments. The Fangraphs guys are constantly making adjustments to WAR, for example, as new information (pitch framing, etc.) comes out. The WP crew came up with something great for the time period but seem content with it not having any staying power
Just like Wins Produced detractors cherry-pick outliers to show that it doesn’t pass the “smell test.”
PG:
Westbrook
Lillard
Curry
Lowry
Paul
SG:
Harden
Lillard (dumb positional)
Oladipo
DeRozan
Evans (who is having a monster year)
SF:
Butler
Anderson
Oladipo
DeRozan
Ingles
PF:
Giannis (again, dumb positional adjustments and apparently automated segmentation)
Davis
LeFuckYou
Durant
Gibson
C:
Drummond
Towns
Jordan
Adams
Capela
You could pick a player at random from any of those positions and the team would be the best team in the East, hands down. Shall we throw out the whole stat for calling Joe “.620 TS%” Ingles a productive player?
Unless you picked: Adams, Gibson, Ingles, Evans, Lowry
Anyway, would the same not be true for a top-5 positional list for all of the catch-all stats, including PER?