Knicks Morning News (2018.03.28)

Few AM thoughts –
1) For anyone who hasn’t already, it’s worth listening to Trey Burke’s interview with Michael Kay yesterday. Rootability is not the same as being a good player, but the dude has a ton of rootability. Now if he could just get to the line more….

2) re: Houston and their 3 point attempts – they certainly have an institutional devotion to 3 point attempts, and I certainly am not really a fan of Jeff Hornacek, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s much easier to generate 3 point attempts when you have James Harden running your offense than when you have Jarrett Jack running your offense. Even under Morey’s leadership, and even when they had really good PGs in Dragic and Lowry in the backcourt, their 3 point attempt rate was only 24%. Year 1 of James Harden (with same coach/GM) they went to 36%.

For the most part you need someone sucking in the defense to generate those high value corner 3’s etc. We don’t have Tyson Chandler diving to the rim anymore, and until Treysanity started, we didn’t have anyone that could break down the defense off the dribble. Now should we be able to shoot more 3’s? Yes. Should dudes not be standing around literally just inside the 3 point line? No they should not. But I’d say most of the 3 pointer issue is lack of PG skill. When Hornacek had Dragic and IT in PHX, they shot lots of 3’s.

My issue with Hornacek is not so much x’s and o’s in the moment as much as his weird rotations, his lack of long-term vision (ie. playing old dudes rather than young dudes when the season is over), as well as the fact that players really just don’t seem to like playing for him.

It’s hilarious to me how little I care about who coaches the Knicks next season besides that it not be Mark Jackson.

You just know it is gonna be Mark Jackson.

Ugh.

From Steve Kerr re: the Warriors’ defense (caveat that Kerr is a pretty modest dude and doesn’t mind giving credit to other people):

Steve Kerr, largely considered the architect of the Warriors’ success, refuses to take credit for Golden State’s defense. In his eyes, he had to unlock the Warriors offense to make a title contender out of them, but the defense was ready when he got there. All thanks to former head coach, Mark Jackson.

“I didn’t. I didn’t; Mark Jackson did. Honestly. When I was in TV, I was doing Warriors games for years; every year they were one of the worst defensive teams in the league. Mark came in and made a focus of being a tough defensive-minded team.

The trade for Andrew Bogut, to me, changed the identity of the team. The year before I got here, the Warriors were the fourth-ranked defensive team in the league — already top-five. We knew what we had. We didn’t change one thing defensively. We started switching more when Draymond [Green] took over that power forward role. But for the most part, our schemes — everything — stayed the same.

Again, I’m not advocating for Mark Jackson, just saying I don’t think it’d be a huge disaster.

wonder what the compensation would have to be with Doc. Clearly some draft pick of some sort.

I agree that West’s probably not attached to him, but you’d also be hard pressed to not force the other team to give you compensation for your super famous head coach. The issue is that they’d have to be looking for a first and the Knicks cannot afford to trade a first for a coach. So I dunno what they’d end up doing. The Clippers would have to get something back for him.

From the Horny thread yesterday:

when they were starting Porzingis, Lee and Hardaway, along with McDermott, Beasley and Thomas playing a lot of minutes off of the bench

All those guys took around their recent average 3pt attempts. I think it’s fair to complain that Horny wasnt trying to scheme more 3s out of the offense, but none of them except for Timmy has ever been anything close to a high volume 3 point shooter.

@BC – It even goes beyond the % of shots he got in mid-range, which altogether totaled 41%. A large percentage of those shots came off of designed ISOs or post ups with little to no disguise or action beforehand or motion off the ball once he got it. If you’re going to take an obscene amount of midrange Js at least leverage some of his unique mobility and shooting touch coming off of pindowns and curls. We saw more of that under Fisher than we did with Hornacek this year!

Also the way we use Kornet is almost exactly the type of motion sets we should have been running more often with KP. I know that he NEEDS to be a threat out of the post if he’s to become a high usage #1 type scoring option, but that doesn’t mean it should be the #1 way you try to use him offensively.

I’m all for continuity if it means no Mark Jackson coaching here next year.

Come on, Phoenix, please hire Jackson!

I could see Becky Hammon gaining some steam especially from Mills & Perry, conscious as they are of this organizations bad history with women and the meaning of having the first woman hc in the NBA. She’s super qualified and I hope she’s getting a look as coach.

Also hope that Ettore Messina is getting a look.

Mark Jackson had relative success under a very specific set of circumstances that he still wound up jackassing and underperforming his way out of eventually. He would crash and burn here in ridiculous fashion that made everyone involved look bad. Why is anyone entertaining this?

You know who I think I actually don’t want to see anymore? JVG. I love the guy, but this seems like a terrible situation for him and I think it would just tarnish his legacy here.

Agree wholeheartedly. It has been a whole decade since the guy was coaching full-time and the league has changed so, so much in that time. He’d definitely emphasize defense and his teams would be well prepared, but I would be concerned about him getting his teams to run a “modern” offense and at this point in his career whether he’d have the patience to develop young guys. I think it’s likely he’d do a solid job, but I’d rather take a chance on a younger guy with some more upside.

I like Fizdale a lot but it seemed like his tenure in Memphis collapsed due to an inability to communicate with a prickly European star. Obviously not being able to get along with Gasol doesn’t guarantee the same with Porzingis, but it’s at least a concern. I actually view him as similar to Jackson – they would both be second time coaches who did some really positive things in their first stints but also made some really bad mistakes that ultimately undermined that work. I think they’re both reasonable guys to interview and try to assess how much they learned from their mistakes.

I know nothing about Stackhouse but the Raptors player development engine has been absolutely top notch (dare I say Spurs-esque) the last few years so anybody coming out of their is definitely a reasonable candidate.

I like Fizdale a lot but it seemed like his tenure in Memphis collapsed due to an inability to communicate with a prickly European star. Obviously not being able to get along with Gasol doesn’t guarantee the same with Porzingis, but it’s at least a concern. I actually view him as similar to Jackson – they would both be second time coaches who did some really positive things in their first stints but also made some really bad mistakes that ultimately undermined that work. I think they’re both reasonable guys to interview and try to assess how much they learned from their mistakes.

I was actually just thinking of Fizdale’s issue with Gasol as a sort of Horny-esque move. Not to mention, it seemed like a major failure on the part of the Memphis organization to spend a bunch of money to re-sign Conley, with the promise that they’d re-shape their offense to accommodate him and then, just, what, they just forgot about Marc freakin’ Gasol? Just figured he’d be cool with being cut out of the offense? How dumb is that? It was positively Knicksian.

Brian,

I had said continuity, but on further reflection, I really meant to also emphasize stability. If Perry is serious about turning this franchise into Spurs west or Miami north, it needs to develop talent (playing and coaching) from within and honor its existing contracts. When was the last time either of those two franchises fired a coach?

Porzingis’ usage went up 25% but his three-pointers per game remained the same while he was also shooting 40 points higher from beyond the arc (but saw his TS% actually go down because of all the added long twos, which went from 19% of his shots to 26% of his shots). That’s not a good idea.

Yes, I agree. Kristaps only shoots assisted 3’s. I don’t know if that’s coaching or he can’t shoot 3’s he creates, but he doesn’t. If you have Jack, Hardaway, Lee, Kanter and Porzingis on the floor, who is creating 3 point attempts? Hardaway and Jack can sort of create for themselves, Jack is a good passer, but he cant’ really penetrate anymore, Lee isn’t a shot creator, and Kanter and Porzingis can’t pass. Where are the threes going to come from?

I remember how much hand-wringing there was on KB just before Hornacek was hired, and how shocked so many were that the search was not a sham process leading to the inevitable Rambis hire, and how most felt that it was a smart hire and a sign that Phil was softening on the triangle and on sticking to his own boys.

I’m not a Hornacek fan any more, mainly due to his D’Antoni-like rigidity with playing time and one-way doghouse with players like Willy, Kuz and Noah, but overall, I doubt if anyone would have done much better or have managed our personnel all that much differently. He did seem to have a “merit-based” approach to playing time. His offensive schemes were unimaginative and generally out of step with the 3-point heavy strategy that most successful teams employ. However, if we shot more 3’s I doubt our W-L record would have been much different.

I think we need a humble, hungry, outside-the-box college-type guy to come in and modernize out approach to today’s NBA standards, and to nurture young, impressionable guys to play hard-nosed, fast-paced, team-first ball (can we clone Brad Stevens?) Mark Jackson is just another version of Hornacek, and Doc Rivers is a better choice for a vets-heavy team. Forget David Blatt, he reminds me too much of Pitino…thinks he knows more than anyone else and will grate on today’s players.

But yeah, my least favorite option is Mark Jackson.

If Horns has one year left and so does Rivers (not advocating for him), couldn’t we “trade” Rivers for Horns? 🙂

I do not want Mark Jackson either but mainly bc of the off the court stuff and I think it would be another media circus. I actually think his record with GS by itself shows a guy who is able to work with a young team and as has been noted, he is given credit by his former players and by Kerr for laying the defensive foundation for that team, which is something I would love for us to have. But hard pass bc of his personality. I just don’t see it ending well.

Jerry Stackhouse is an intriguing idea. He was always a very smart player and he seems to be doing well as a coach in the D-League. He would probably be very well liked by the players too I imagine.

I remember how much hand-wringing there was on KB just before Hornacek was hired, and how shocked so many were that the search was not a sham process leading to the inevitable Rambis hire, and how most felt that it was a smart hire and a sign that Phil was softening on the triangle and on sticking to his own boys.

Not for nothing, but Phil’s mouthpiece later noted that Phil was planning on hiring Rambis, but the negative reaction to the possibility forced him to back off of it. So, yes, Phil deserves credit for not going through with hiring Rambis, he also deserves demerits for apparently intending to hire Rambis in the first place before he was forced to back off.

4 head coaches in 4 years would just be more of the same.

On a different topic, I’ve become impressed with how much responsibility Frank now takes on defence, both with his play as well as with directing other’s positioning. Kinda like a coach on the floor.

Not bad for a teenager. That and his recent improved play on offense demonstrates his long term potential as a strong 2-way player.

If Jeff Van Gundy wants this job I think we should give it to him. I have no idea what kind of offense he would run but he was Steve Kerr’s partner on ABC, goes to Sloan every year, and is a go-to for forward-thinking media types like Zach Lowe.

I want a coach that would die for his players and whose players would die for him. Has there ever been a player that talked trash about JVG? Everyone loved that guy. He understands that it begins and ends with the star player buying into what the coach is selling, and that that star player needs to lead by example at the very least. There would NEVER be a disconnect between JVG and KP like there was/is between Hornacek and KP. He would hold players accountable, and he has the standing to demand that accountability, unlike Hornacek/Fisher/Rambis/etc.

All you have to do is show players (if they haven’t seen it already) JVG holding onto Mourning’s ankle like rag doll, getting (accidentally) punched out by Marcus Camby…. all to protect his players. Then show him the Knicks’ record with him in charge and what has happened since he left. They’ll follow him and they’ll play hard for him.

I think it’s a shame we didn’t get Luke Walton. He’s done a pretty good job improving that young LA team so far. With the Golden State experience, he probably brings a lot to the table over and above what he learned as a player.

I think some of what’s going on with Hornacek in terms of style of play is the players and the rest is leftover from Phil. Phil still thinks there’s a tradeoff between efficiency and other factors when you shoot “certain” 3s vs. “certain” mid range shots (like rebounding). It would not shock me if Hornacek bought into some of it and with Rambis still there he’s probably still getting input in that direction.

I’m not sure who I want to be coach, but I think I’d prefer someone young and known to be stats oriented. I don’t want a slave to numbers, but I don’t want someone that dismisses them too readily either.

I say a prayer every night that Mark Jackson not end up our coach. I don’t want to have to stop following the Knicks for a year.

I am not even religious but it can’t hurt right?

I’d be extremely happy if we gave Van Gundy another run. We know he can actually coach.

I’m fine with another year of Horny, next year is a dead zone anyway. I just wish he could develop players as well as they do in Westchester.

I’m excited about Burke and having him play next to Frank. That’s a handful in the backcourt.

We really need some legit frontcourt players, though (besides Kyle, who might be gone.) If Kanter’s going to start, then we badly need a rim protector next to him. Someone that can pass too. Jaren Jackson or Wendell Carter would work. They clearly need a live body as SF too.

It would be great if they could trade, Lee, Hardaway, Kanter, etc., but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

The Warriors have gone from 5th to 16th in the NBA in terms of pace adjusted 3 point attempts this year and have only fallen from 1st to 2nd in offensive efficiency, which is pretty surprising to me (not that they don’t have a great offense, but that they’re taking so few 3 pointers)

I’ve become impressed with how much responsibility Frank now takes on defence, both with his play as well as with directing other’s positioning. Kinda like a coach on the floor.

Not bad for a teenager. That and his recent improved play on offense demonstrates his long term potential as a strong 2-way player.

sigh…

We should throw frank some minutes at small forward sometime. He’s a bit short and light for now, but he’s definitely got the wingspan for the position

The question is, does he have the athleticism to match up with stronger, faster players like, say, Troy Williams? I know he’ll get stronger over time, but is he really gonna defend guys like Jayson Tatum and Josh Jackson, who are the prototypical SFs of the future?

Frank doesn’t get a lot of steals or rebounds so he doesn’t look good according to some defensive stats. Anyone who watches him objectively knows he is an impact defender already.

I doubt Frank is strong enough now to guard some forwards, but if he’s athletic enough to guard point guards, and he is, he should be able to stay in front of bigger guys unless they overpower him.

In today’s NBA you can’t be as bad offensively as Frank is no matter how good he is defensively. He’s not just bad offensively, he’s atrocious. He has such a huge leap to make just to become average offensively, heck he’s still at negative win shares for the season even with his very good defense (which many advanced stats confirm he’s good defensively).

I just read a long article on Baseball America about Cashman and how the Yankees have built their farm system over the past few years. So many changes and adapting the way they scout and go about player developing. It’s incredible how my 2 favorite teams are both from NY and are the richest teams in their sport but one team (Yankees) are so smart with how they go about using their resources and how they run their organization and then you have the Knicks who are so bad at what they do.

I know it’s 2 completely different sports with completely different payrolls, roster sizes and minor league systems but it’s really mind-boggling how one team can be so good at what they do and the other team with basically the same financial advantages in their own respective sport be so clueless.

this a thousand times over – definitely lets you know it’s not simply a matter of resources or talent on the field/court…

The problem is: does management know we are rebuilding?

That has been the problem for 18 years. Let’s hope that it is no longer a problem. If they hire Mark Jackson or Doc Rivers, well, we’ll know it’s a problem still.

I actually don’t think hiring mark Jackson means management doesn’t know we’re rebuilding. His one coaching gig was a rebuild and he helped them get to respectable playoff status with a young team. Any coach who could turn our young team into a 50 win team would be ok in my book. The problem is the baggage that comes with him will create a media circus eventually and bring more unnecessary drama to this organization.

His one coaching gig was a rebuild and he helped them get to respectable playoff status with a young team.

Mark Jackson is not the reason that Steph Curry has the best shooting hand-eye coordination the league has ever seen. No amount or quality of coaching can make an NBA player a 42.5% shooter on contested off-the-dribble 3s, which is what Curry was back in 2015-16 on TWO HUNDRED shot attempts. If coaching could do that, there would be more Steph Currys. There is one Steph Curry, and his name is Steph Curry — and he got even better when Jackson was fired.

The problem with not hiring Jackson is that we may hire Doc Rivers instead. Not that I have anything significant against Doc as a coach, but he’s worse than Mills when it comes to GM talent. That’s all we need is a room with Mills, Doc, and Perry discussing some deal and Doc casting the deciding vote between Mills and Perry. Even worse, we may have to throw the Clippers a second rounder or more for the privilege of watching the basketball version of the Three Stooges.

We should probably bring in some some especially bright and successful college coach known for his statistical leanings to go along with all the young talent we’ll hopefully have next year. But that would require management to be smart enough to recognize such talent and know that that’s what we need. I’m betting it’s not going to happen. These guys are probably going to go for a “name”.

Here is the TS% for the 4 point guards drafted in the top 10 last year:

Ball .443
Fox .479
Frank .436
D Smith Jr. .473

All horrendous. So are they all busts? Who’s the best defender out of that group?

How many times does it need to be said, it’s just way to early to be passing definitive judgments on any rookies, particularly at the guard position.

I agree that the jury is out on whether he can play the 2 at a high level. However, I feel pretty comfortable making a definitive decision on his future as a starting PG because his glaring PG-centric weaknesses are extremely unlikely to improve (e.g. handle, burst, finishing, shot creation.) Of the rookie group above, Frank has the lowest asst%, lowest TReb% of anyone but Fox, about the same steal%, highest TOV% and the lowest USG%. As to the others, Ball is inconsistent but has had lots of NBA starter-level stat lines, there’s no doubt that he has a future in this league as a starting PG, the question is how good will he be; Smith Jr. is an uber-athletic but undersized chucker who can pass a bit and is a shitty defender, but again, no question as to what position he will be playing whether he evolves or not, he’ll either be a PG or out of the league. Fox has been terrible in every regard and I’d be worried if I were a Kings fan, but once again, he is a PG by trade and will either make it at that position or will be out of the league.

Lonzo is actually the best defender out of that group. Kid is the real deal, he’s gonna be the next J Kidd and it hurts.

@66

IMO, there’s no doubt that Jackson helped change that organization. Most of the players liked him and played really hard for him (including Curry), the results say it, and Kerr gave him a lot of credit. Of course the bigger part of it was drafting and signing the right players. And what good is it if you did a pretty good job with a young team if everyone in the organization and media hates you.

What we don’t know is whether the conflict in that organization was a really bad fit culturally or whether Jackson is just such a difficult person the same thing would happen anywhere.

I’m not buying anything in the press. There are too many sources with agendas. However, I am buying the fact that no one else hired him after the success he had there despite his clear desire to coach again. That’s reality. So inside the NBA there must be rumblings of him being difficult or people not wanting to deal with other factors.

His one coaching gig was a rebuild and he helped them get to respectable playoff status with a young team.

He wasn’t hired to rebuild that team. It only looks that way because the team went down 13 wins in his first season there before going up 24 wins in his second season there. That team was supposed to get better in his first season. Jackson was hired because he was the hottest coach on the market because of his announcing and that gig was the hottest gig on the market (not counting the Lakers, which was clearly going to Brown).

Simmons was drafted in 2016, after the 2015-2016 season. The 76ers were 10-72 that season. They were the worst team in the league by seven games. Even if Embiid had played a full season they may very well still have been the worst team in the league.

They were still “Processing” pretty hard around that time. Hollis Thompson (who dat?) led the team in minutes.

It is kind of killer knowing that if Porzingis wasn’t hurt, this team would definitely be fighting hard to draft 13th overall.

Absent injuries that reward teams that aren’t so bad with very good draft picks (which is not the intent of the system) or the extreme behavior we are seeing from the Bulls this year (which needs to be changed), it’s all kind of efficient. The worse you are, the better the pick you get, but the better the pick you get, the quicker you should get good and start getting worse picks. Some teams are just luckier with ping pong balls and others are luckier or more skilled at drafting. It’s the teams that trade away draft picks for older players or that make bad trades and free agent signings that never get anywhere. #Knicks

@81 That’s the main thing. Teams can tank and continually pick in the top 5 until they hit on a player, but once they do they usually quickly rise out of the high lottery. That’s why it’s hard to tank into two franchise changing talents. You either need to hit the jackpot in consecutive years like OKC, have an injury to your franchise changing talent like Philly or SAS, make lopsided trades and get high lottery picks, like Boston or Philly or hit on a franchise changer out of the high lottery like GS.

Usually, it’s hard to stay truly bad once you draft a star. That’s the Knicks problem, KP won us too many games, even with him missing half a season and us having the worst record in the NBA since his injury, to get a top 5 pick this year. He will do it again next year after he returns. It’s why Milwaukee and New Orleans can’t seem to draft a second star.