Knicks Morning News (2018.08.20)

That’s a worthy article. The only unfair thing is that unlike Marbury, Curry, Crawford, Carmelo et. al, Porzingis is not just a “scorer”. He brings some defensive skill to the table. I’m not saying “MAX him now!!!”, just that there is more to him than just “pointzzz” even if talkradio, or other websites don’t necessarily focus on that.

This is copy from yesterday of a post from Knick fan not in NJ at this time. It would be a shame for it to get passed by.

Ok, here I go again, trying to paste a readable table. For background, it turns that many advanced statistics have skewed distributions, so that an average player is actually not the same as a median player (one in the middle of the rankings at the 50th percentile). Nobody uses medians, but they are pretty easy to calculate with a spreadsheet, so I did the calculations for all the stats listed in Basketball Reference as “Advanced Stats”. The results are below. They use the data from all players in the NBA in the 2017-2018 season.

PER
Mean 12.7
75th Percentile 16.2
Median 12.7
25th Percentile 9.2

TS%
Mean 0.529
75th Percentile 0.582
Median 0.540
25th Percentile 0.494

3PAr
Mean 0.342
75th Percentile 0.487
Median 0.356
25th Percentile 0.161

FTr
Mean 0.249
75th Percentile 0.313
Median 0.221
25th Percentile 0.143

ORB%
Mean 4.7
75th Percentile 6.8
Median 3.2
25th Percentile 1.7

DRB%
Mean 14.9
75th Percentile 19.0
Median 13.9
25th Percentile 10.0

TRB%
Mean 9.8
75th Percentile 13.0
Median 8.6
25th Percentile 6.1

AST%
Mean 12.6
75th Percentile 16.8
Median 10.0
25th Percentile 6.7

STL%
Mean 1.6
75th Percentile 1.9
Median 1.4
25th Percentile 0.9

BLK%
Mean 1.6
75th Percentile 2.1
Median 1.1
25th Percentile 0.5

TOV%
Mean 12.9
75th Percentile 15.7
Median 12.2
25th Percentile 9.4

USG%
Mean 18.6
75th Percentile 22.3
Median 17.6
25th Percentile 14.7

OWS
Mean 1.0
75th Percentile 1.6
Median 0.4
25th Percentile 0

DWS
Mean 1.0
75th Percentile 1.5
Median 0.6
25th Percentile 0.1

WS
Mean 2.0
75th Percentile 3.1
Median 1.1
25th Percentile 0.1

WS/48
Mean 0.071
75th Percentile 0.120
Median 0.079
25th Percentile 0.028

OBPM
Mean -1.7
75th Percentile 0.2
Median -1.3
25th Percentile -3.3

DBPM
Mean -0.7
75th Percentile 0.7
Median -0.6
25th…

Man…just give Duke the national championship now. That team looks incredible with Barrett and Williamson

I don’t know if anyone takes worse headshots than Dave Berri. That squinty look is the deepest cringe. He might as well hold a baseball in front of his face like its a sports glamour shot.

My beef with Porzingis is that he has a serious stamina problem that is possibly a congential thing. If you weed out the games he played less than 20 minutes, Hornacek played him 34 mpg with a couple of games well over the 40 minute mark. After that bonanza in November, KP looked gassed (eye test) most of the time. If that’s the case, he may need to have a minutes/game restriction going forward, at least until he figures that out.

Here it comes, “Z-man, you’re interpreting the data to suit your narrative!”

Possibly. Maybe KP’s “tired” appearance after November was more about frustration with his shot not falling the way it was earlier. In any case, he may be on a minutes restriction anyway due to his ACL recovery. In any case, I think he can still be a max player on a hard cap of 28-32 mpg (play him four 8-minute shifts, no matter what. )

Trey Burke put up astonishing offensive numbers for a G-League call up. Considering that he was pretty much a superstar in the G-League, that’s 1700 minutes of all-star level offensive play. He was a defensive liability in both leagues, but his offense looked for real. His NBA numbers last season compare very favorably to Jeremy Lin’s Linsanity season:

http://bkref.com/tiny/ZzMO0

What really stands out about Burke is his other-worldly assist-to-turnover ratio. What stands out about Lin was his free throw rate (50%!!).

I know that Burke’s defense is a problem, but having him on the court with a couple of good rim protectors (KP and Mitch?) might help a lot with that. In addition, he’s got good strength and wingspan for a little guy, maybe he gets marginally better with more reps. But putting up a WS48 of .145 and a OBPM of 4.2 is nothing to sneeze at. I hope he gets a legit shot at starting and playing 30+ mpg.

I’m not sure what a link to an old Berri column matters, but it’s better than other things you’ve posted…

That said–and here is where I differ from Jowles and other WP purists–the Four Factors (and Berri) don’t adequately capture defensive impact. Rebounding matters a little less than they argue, and … intimidation? … matters a little more. The effect KP has on the other team is visible, if not yet measurable. Rim protection is part of it, but not the whole story. Just like RoLo’s impact on team rebounding.

I also think spacing is a thing, and a 40% 3-point shooter who’s 7’3″ is going to have a positive impact on his teams offense if used correctly, but I think that’s a lesser consideration (for the moment).

Berri changed how I see the game. It’s part of why I advocated for Fareid over Shump, WCS over Okafor (KP wasn’t on my radar), and knew that Melo wasn’t going to bring us rings. Or way back, why when I heard we traded with the Bulls I was hoping it was Chandler and not Curry.

But his inflexibility and inability to evolve, to improve on his basic insight, is disappointing, and a fundamental reason you should take any of his positions with a very large helping of salt. KP may very well be fool’s gold, but it will more likely be because of his lack of stamina and physical issues than inefficient scoring.

Well, as I’ve pointed out multiple times, WP is less correlated with BPM/VORP than PER. For example, both VORP and PER are in complete alignment in suggesting that Tyson Chandler was an above average but not great player during his best seasons, while WP has him as an all-time great.

I believe that WP not only overrates rebounding and low-usage/high efficiency scoring, but underrates defensive impact and the impact of a hi-volume/medium-efficiency scorer on defensive spacing and impact. Well, WP and BPM tell very divergent stories and can’t both be right. PER is dismissed out of hand because missed shots seem to have a positive impact on PER, but WP is accepted in spite of not passing the BPM smell test. Go figure.

He’s teh unicorn partner for a PG to run the pick and roll with.

Problem though is that KP sucks at the “pick” part of “pick and roll.” At best he does the Amar’e-style flash pick, but he lacks prime Amar’e’s otherworldly quickness.

Anybody have Synergy numbers for KP as a roll man? I’m kind of curious as to what those look like.

Burke’s finishing at the rim last season was way out of line with his career numbers. He’s young enough that it’s possible he figured some stuff out, but I don’t think we can count on him to be good as he was last season. It definitely possible that he really has put it together on offense to offset his terrible defense and can be a Kemba Walker type player, and that would be awesome.

Ha. Sorry about that.

+1 regarding Berri’s analysis. He’s responsible for a lot of strides in the dialogue surrounding analytics in general and has done tons of good work, but all of his analysis these days boils down to “my model says X player is bad so that player is bad” or some variation of that. It’s just not particularly interesting even when it’s true and obviously ignores every nuance that exists.

+1 regarding Berri’s analysis. He’s responsible for a lot of strides in the dialogue surrounding analytics in general and has done tons of good work, but all of his analysis these days boils down to “my model says X player is bad so that player is bad” or some variation of that. It’s just not particularly interesting even when it’s true and obviously ignores every nuance that exists.

Agreed, and his disciples at Box Score Geeks are no better, except Patrick Minton is thoroughly unlikable and Alvarez doesn’t know his ass from his elbow when it comes to the actual game on the court.

I will still argue that a team built around WP48, with an emphasis on finding undervalued players, will outperform a team put together by common sense/consensus, but I wouldn’t use any of the WP48 adherents as examples of strong basketball analysts.

I get frustrated when good writers like Zach Lowe beat the drum for players based on reputation and prestige (his love affair with Boogie, and once Melo, e.g.), but at least he’s fully capable of putting together insightful play-by-play analysis.

@25 he specifically did not say that Amare, Adams, and Capela all played with the best PGs in the league (Capela has 2 HOF pgs to run the play with!) Maybe we should include DeAndre Jordan (with Paul) or JaVale McGee (with Curry) in the conversation.

If you think that replacing the scrubs and has-beens on KP’s PnR duo list with Nash, or CP3, or Curry. or Harden, or Westbrook would not make a major difference in KP’s PnR efficiency, I don’t know what to say.

I knew the Amare signing was a terrible idea, given his knees, but I really did love him here – inept defense and all – before Melo came and the knees went.

Quite frankly, I’d be hard pressed to find anyone I consider a serious fan of basketball that knows less about the game than David Berri and his minions. They are obviously very smart guys with a lot of knowledge of statistic, but they started building their model when they had very little knowledge of the intricacies of basketball. As a result, they made a boatload of serious errors. When people started pointing out some of the most absurd results, instead of trying to understand the game better so they could improve the model, they dug in deeper and said the model was correct and everyone else was wrong. It’s a classic case of cognitive and conformation bias. Initially, I was a fan, but at a certain point I was so bombarded with reality I was able to get past the same biases that were preventing me from seeing it sooner.

STAT won rookie of the year for Phoenix before Nash showed up. He was a beast on offense. People forget cause of The Knicks but dude was legit one of the best offensive PF’s of all time during his prime. Nash obviously made him better but its kind of like asking if Stockton made Malone better of vice versa. They just had excellent chemistry together.

It doesn’t have to be an either/or thing. People can both make each other better (or worse for that matter).

When you make up these fake scenarios where you generalize something stupid as if it were the opinion of the people arguing against you, I’m sorry, but it’s just so dumb.

People are saying Porzingis is not deserving of a max contract because right now his production is not. How is this not simple?

If we had drafted Embiid or Simmons or Anthony Davis then yeah, everybody would say let’s max the guy ASAP. People don’t want to give max contracts to Knicks draft picks because the Knicks have drafted exactly one max worth guy in 40 years, Patrick Ewing.

Maybe I didn’t make my point well.

We aren’t going to draft guys like Embiid, Simmons, Davis or Ewing and watch them lead us to the promised land very often (assuming those guys even stay healthy). You can’t just keep tossing aside guys like KP, Knox, Frank etc.. because they might win you some games or you don’t want to pay them while you are still trying to land a healthy Embiid, James, Durant, Curry etc… I’ll die of old age by then. 🙂

You have to look at the age, skill set, and natural talents of your players and try to project whether the deal the market dictates is warranted even if their productivity is not there yet. If you are convinced a player is not worth it, by all means trade him. But imo you’d have to be nuts to trade KP unless someone came with a ridiculous offer than included a different very productive young player.

KP was projected to be a project when we drafted him because he was so skinny and weak. He’s a plus defender, high level 3 point shooter, good FT shooter, he’s long and athletic, and he can create his own shot. What we are really debating is basketball IQ (shot selection) and health. If he comes back, stays healthy and seems to have made some progress in shot selection due to better coaching and teammates you give him the max and move forward even if the stats aren’t there yet.

How could playing with Steve Nash not be a plus in terms of scoring efficiency?

The guy made thousands of passes for easy baskets that most PGs wouldn’t have made because they didn’t have the vision, basketball IQ and and skill to do so.

How could dishing the ball to one of the greatest finishers ever like a young Amare not be a plus to Nash on offense? Amare was a hyper athletic great finisher on the P&R.

That’s an extreme example.

Burke’s impact will not be as strong as Nash’s and I doubt KP’s finishing ability will ever be on a par with young Amare’s, but I could easily see them helping each other relative to their previous partners.

And I wonder if Jowles actually watches basketball games or if he just reads stats all day.

Wait, aren’t you the guy who eyetested Andrea Bargnani and told us how good he was going to be as a Knick? Should I dig through the archives?

@44

Well, putting it that way it’s obvious I agree that playing with Amare benefitted Nash more than playing with Nazr Muhammad, but there’s more to it.

Looking at their numbers, Amare had a big jump to superstardom in his 3rd year right as Nash arrived. How much of that is Nash or how much is it his development is questionable, but ok, let’s say it’s mostly Nash.

Nash, however, has a totally different path. He was playing like a superstar in Dallas already, then he moved to Phoenix and had pretty much a carbon copy of his 02-03 season with Dallas, except with a better ast% and ts% (and worse VORP, much worse BPM (1.7 against 3.3). So Nash didn’t really improve much or at all when he joined Amare. Then the next year, Amare gets injured and plays 3 games, and Nash’s numbers are again incredibly consistent, with the only notable difference that he went from 49.2 ast% to 44.4 (1.4 less per 36) but shot much better (.606 in his first year, .632 without Amare). His BPM, VORP, WS48, everything is better in the year Amare didn’t play. Of course there’s place for some personal development for Nash too, but the evidence suggests Amare didn’t influence his production at all, and that’s with him being replaced by 33 year old Kurt Thomas and James Jones in the starting lineup. Obviously Nash continue to blossom as a megastar and had an even better year later with Amare, but that’s kinda my point, that interactions matter less and personal improvement and production matters more.

That’s what I was questioning about your post. Of course in an extreme scenario where you replace Amare with Bargnani or something Nash would have suffered, but the evidence really shows that replacing Amare with mediocre, replacement value players mattered literally nothing for Nash.

So there’s anecdotal evidence for Nash “improving” Amare, which I atribute more to Amare’s personal development and maturity in his 3rd year, but you can’t say the same for Amare “improving” Nash as the numbers actually contradict that.

I think you make a good case overall, but were talking specifically about the PnR. It’s possible that Nash (who I think is an all-time great offensive PG) just adjusted his game and a) shot more himself and 2) got more out of guys like Diaw and Marion. I don’t know whether anyone replaced Amar’e’s elite production as a PnR roll man, and am too lazy to research it. But do I think that Nash would have made KP a better PnR player? Absolutely.

I would guess that PGs and other primary ball-handlers with elite scoring ability are generally less affected by teammates than other players. In some cases they might even be statistically better when their teammates are worse because they defer less and really put their elite scoring ability on display. Westbrook is an interesting case study. His MVP year happened when his supporting cast was the arguably the worst of his career.

@48 agreed.

In my view, the most critical element of sustained success of the high PnR is making the on-ball defender need to go over the screen. If he can stay under the screen, it allows the screener’s defender to hedge and recover, or to lay back a step on a switch and anticipate the pass. What made Nash so deadly with Amare is that he presented so many options that there was a high-percentage shot available no matter what the defense did. Put a couple of 3-pt shooters in the corners and it’s almost impossible to stop.

I’m not sure how Boogie is as a highPnR roll man, but it’s possible that he creates the perfect storm in the Dubs’ offense. Frightening.

When the Knocks are actually good I’ll shit on you so hard every single day and it will be glorious!!!

Wait, are you actually under the impression that Team Realist just wishcasts poor results for the Knicks, as opposed to looking at the roster, seeing a collection of bad players year after year, and projecting them?

That’s hilarious. I genuinely didn’t know you or anybody else thought that. I mean dude, we’re clearly all Knicks fans here. That’s why we post on knickerblogger.net my guy. We’d like the team to be good and if we think it is, we’ll be happy to say as much.

But refusing to call a spade a spade doesn’t make you more of a Knicks fan. It just makes you look unhinged and sets you up for more disappointment. It produces archives of you saying Andrea Bargnani’s secret potential will be unleashed on the Knicks and Derrick Rose will be good and isn’t a rapist. Maybe reevaluate your ideology here?

I know it’s an indulgent exercise (endowment effect alert!) but compare Burke’s 5th year stats to Nash’s.

-Burke shot more at a slightly higher overall FG%.
-Their 3pt rates were identical and Nash hit 40% to Burke’s 36%
-Nash had a glaringly higher FTr (.326 vs. .148) and hit them at a much higher % (90% vs. 65%). This accounted for most of the TS% difference (.603 vs. .563)
-Their rebounding %s, steal% and block% and fouls per 36 were virtually identical
-Their assist%s were identical
-Burke had a glaringly lower TOV% than Nash (9.5% vs. 18.5%)
-Their OBPMs were identical
-Nash had a less bad DBPM than Burke (probably not a significant difference based on other defensive metrics)
Neither guy showed much before their 5th season (Nash had a pretty good sophomore year but regressed in years 3 and 4.)

This is not to suggest that Burke is a future 2x MVP and HOFer. But PG is a notoriously hard position to master, especially when ego gets in the way like it did for Burke. Nobody knows for sure if his improvement was for real or if he’ll regress back towards his earlier numbers in a bigger role. But the level of swagger with which he want about scoring at all three levels last year made everything look pretty authentic and repeatable.

we’ve reached the trey burke as a poor man’s version of steve nash portion of summer. lance thomas is a poor man’s version of charlie munger.

Dang, my post is labeled 10:30. I was really hoping ptmilo was researching time travel or something in the hope of stopping the trade for Melo….

I forgot that Nash had those two initial seasons as a bench player with Phoenix. Apparently not every superstar drops into the NBA fully formed like Athena.

I found an Adonis on B-R, but no Athena, what team did he play for?

Panathinaikos?

Knick fan not in NJ at this time

Olymbiakos maybe, I forget now. 🙂

All I know is that if Trey Burke and TH2 keep us from RJ and Zion I’ll never forgive them.

Bookmarked. This is going to be a fun one!

What, that I’m cautiously optimistic about Burke? Sure, have fun with that. Would be even more fun if you stopped sniveling and went on the record with your own forecast.

Come on, I’m generally 100% against everything Z-Man argues, but this is not the one. Burke had very interesting stats in a very small sample, it’s not that far-fetched to think or hope he develops more. It’s not a Bargnani situation where the numbers sucked and it was only wishful thinking.

Nash wasn’t bad early in his career. He just had a hard time staying healthy and seemed to have stamina problems.

And then, lo and behold, at a time when blood doping and PED use was rampant and untethered, he made the leap at age 26. Maybe it was his diet.

And then, lo and behold, at a time when blood doping and PED use was rampant and untethered, he made the leap at age 26. Maybe it was his diet.

Nash was skinny as they come, never known for strength, not a leaper…not to mention that he declined pretty quickly in his late 30s, which is not a hallmark of PED users. I’m not a Nash expert or anything, but throwing him under the bus that way seems a bit gratuitous.

Knicks should have given Trey an extension this summer. Something in the neighborhood of 3yrs @ 15m; after he lights up the league in 2nd half of season, we will loose him for nothing.

Maybe an extended Burke on a dirt cheap contract would move Noah at trading deadline for an expiring.

@80, I think they want him off the books this summer for cap space reasons.

Maybe an extended Burke on a dirt cheap contract would move Noah at trading deadline for an expiring.

This is so unbelievably dumb I think the Knicks could actually do it.

I’m not sure if it was discussed here before but there’s the idea that stretch waiving Noah doesn’t make moving Courtney Lee a priority for the Knicks to get max space, and thus gives the Knicks leverage in trade discussions. If teams know that the Knicks aren’t desperate to move Lee, they can’t squeeze an asset out of us. It’s a pretty paltry silver lining but I think that’s interesting.

BC is back!