[NYTimes] Johnny Kline, Globetrotter Turned Advocate, Is Dead at 86 (Sunday, August 19, 2018 5:05:41 PM)
After overcoming heroin addiction, he became a drug abuse counselor and founded an organization to help long-forgotten black basketball players.
(Monday, August 20, 2018 3:00:00 AM)
Paola Estevez knows when her daughter Jacelyn is suffering, even though the brown-eyed 3-year-old is limited by severe autism and knows only a few words.
So it didn’t take long for the Bronx mom to realize that the little girl was in pain from her commute to the special education preschool classes…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 3:00:00 AM)
Decades after he says he was sexually abused by a priest who mentored him, Jim VanSickle struggles to reconcile his appreciation for the man who changed the course of his life with the persisting inner turmoil he also caused.
VanSickle, 55, was 16 years old when, he says, the Rev. David Poulson…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 3:00:00 AM)
A quick-thinking subway conductor saved the life of a straphanger after he suffered a heart attack on the F train.
But in doing so, conductor Kevin Bartsch also had to break the rules.
Bartsch showed plenty of heroism in the March 28 incident — and he also showed the MTA where there’s room for…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 3:00:00 AM)
Melania Trump is moving forward with her anti-cyberbullying platform, despite her husband’s habit of berating and belittling opponents and critics online.
The First Lady will attend a summit on the subject Monday, delivering “brief remarks addressing the positive and negative effects of social…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 2:00:00 AM)
Three years ago, we saw a crisis coming. So we took a stand against corporate greed, worker exploitation and congested traffic with a reasonable proposition: Limit the flood of new for-hire vehicles dispatched by companies like Uber and Lyft.
The reaction was swift. The industry assaulted us with…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 2:00:00 AM)
Mary Walter-Brown came to New York the other day on a mission to help save our local journalism. She may seem an unlikely savior to New Yorkers. A graduate of Northern Kentucky University, she went west to work in San Diego, which has the weather L.A. wishes it had.
But Walter-Brown has something…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 1:10:00 AM)
More than two years ago, farm worker Crispin Hernandez, fired by an upstate dairy for meeting with union activists, challenged the Jim Crow-era state law that excludes New York’s 100,000 field hands — and only field hands — from the right to organize, despite the state Constitution explicitly granting…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 1:05:00 AM)
When a powerful man stands accused of preying on young women, feminists rightly scold any and all colleagues who lock arms and reflexively rush to his defense.
Which makes it especially outrageous that scholars with impeccable feminist pedigrees prematurely ran interference for a female NYU philosophy…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 1:00:00 AM)
Stretched thin and popping Ambien, Tesla founder Elon Musk has proclaimed the past 12 months “the most difficult and painful year of my career.”
Shouldn’t he of all people know how to recharge his batteries?
(Monday, August 20, 2018 1:00:00 AM)
ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo wants Democratic National Committee delegates from New York to vote this week in favor of a proposed rule change to limit the impact of superdelegates in choosing the party’s presidential candidates.
“The superdelegate system undermines a fundamental principle of our democracy…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 12:55:00 AM)
The following is an expanded version of the third item from my “Albany Insider” column from Monday’s print editions:
David Catalfamo, a former top aide to the state’s last Republican governor, George Pataki, has formally joined the GOP gubernatorial campaign of Marc Molinaro.
Catalfamo, who had…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 12:55:00 AM)
The following is an expanded version of the second item from my “Albany Insider” column from Monday’s editions:
ALBANY — State Attorney General Barbara Underwood’s office recused itself from representing the state ethics commission in a GOP-filed lawsuit seeking to determine if the panel is investigating…
(Monday, August 20, 2018 12:00:00 AM)
Hallandale Beach, Fla.: Aretha Franklin blossomed out of her father’s church to become the most distinguished female black artist of all time, breaking boundaries while placing nearly 100 hits on Billboard’s R&B Chart, 20 of them reaching No. 1. The Queen of Soul’s hits included “Respect,” (You…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 9:00:00 PM)
General Horoscope for August 20, 2018
We might struggle to find a sustainable pace today, but it doesn’t come easily at first. Thankfully, the optimistic Sagittarius Moon forms a sweet trine to the heartfelt Leo Sun, inspiring an I-can-do-it attitude. Additionally, the future…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 9:00:00 PM)
An off-duty FDNY EMT died in a motorcycle crash in Queens Sunday night, police said.
Police and medics responded to the crash at about 10:25 p.m. on Utopia Parkway by 80th Drive, near the St. John’s University Campus in Hillcrest.
Medics rushed the 25-year-old victim to Queens General Hospital,…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 8:15:00 PM)
GREENFIELD, N.H. — An attorney who has bedeviled President Donald Trump during the past year over his personal relationships and immigration policies made a presidential pitch of his own to Democratic voters in New Hampshire on Sunday.
Michael Avenatti, who represents adult film actress Stormy…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 7:55:00 PM)
NEW YORK — The New York Times reports that Italian actress Asia Argento recently settled a lawsuit filed against her by a young actor and musician who said she sexually assaulted him when he was 17.
Argento is one of the most prominent activists of the #MeToo movement.
The Times says that Argento,…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 7:40:00 PM)
A woman leaving a Brooklyn restaurant and bar hopped into what she thought was a livery car — and was nearly raped by the driver, police said Sunday.
The woman, 39, got into the wrong car about 5 a.m. Aug. 6 in front of the El Gran Mar de Plata on Fulton St. by Logan St. in Cypress Hills.
After…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 7:25:00 PM)
Maybe the Mets took some pointers from the Staten Island team that played before them in Williamsport on Sunday.
The big league club, following in the footsteps of their Little League counterparts, received solid pitching and timely hitting to beat the Phillies, 8-2.
Jason Vargas backed up his…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 6:20:00 PM)
Gregory Bruno got his Staten Island team to Williamsport with a perfect game in the Regional Championship. On Sunday, he delivered another gem to put them one win away from playing for the U.S. title.
Bruno went 5.1 innings, allowing just three hits and one run while striking out six in Staten…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 6:05:00 PM)
Ariana Grande gets by with a little help from her many, many friends.
The singer will take the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards Monday to belt her latest single, “God Is a Woman,” with some help from a “diverse” group of more than 50 female dancers, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“(It’ll…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 6:00:00 PM)
Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen is under scrutiny for over $20 million in loans obtained by his and his family’s yellow taxi businesses in New York, it was reported Sunday.
Federal probers are investigating possible bank fraud charges against Cohen for the loans from two lenders that cater to…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 5:35:00 PM)
The good news is that a White House aide with ties to white nationalists has left the White House. The bad news is that he was there in the first place.
Trump speechwriter Darren Beattie reportedly left the West Wing after CNN made inquiries about his having spoken at the conservative H.L. Mencken…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 5:10:00 PM)
WASHINGTON — The former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, has a dire warning for Republicans.
Bannon tells The Associated Press that he believes the GOP would lose 35 to 40 seats in the House if the election were held today, thereby ceding their majority to Democrats he’s…
(Sunday, August 19, 2018 5:10:00 PM)
A New Jersey man vying for a seat on his local school board has dropped out of the race after racist Facebook posts referring to black people as “animals” and “f–king monkeys” resurfaced.
Richard Jankowski, 51, withdrew his name from the running for a seat on the Monroe Township Board of Education…
88 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2018.08.20)”
So, we max Porzingis out and proceed to complain our pseudo-star has no support cast.
Trying To Win With Unproductive Stars Has Become A Tradition For The New York Knicks
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidberri/2018/01/30/trying-to-win-with-unproductive-stars-has-become-a-tradition-for-the-new-york-knicks/#52688acfc0d4
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.
folks, KP is a big playing without a passing guard who can get in the paint and dish for high efficient lobs, dunks/layups/shots within 5 ft or wide open 12 ft jump shots or threes. Its not that he loves the long twos, its cause that’s the only thing that Jared Jack can deliver. This is why every PG in the league wants to play with KP, he’ll make them all look great. He’s teh unicorn partner for a PG to run the pick and roll with.
Here is my prediction: Trey Burke will tear up the league playing with KP in the 2nd half of season and get a massive contract. We will lose him for nothing.
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…
i’m sad. i thought we had a star in porzingis. it sucks that he sucks.
Man…just give Duke the national championship now. That team looks incredible with Barrett and Williamson
Marbury also brought other things to the table, he was a pretty decent passer, and he played in some absolute garbage teams.
If Porzingis was a superstar defender I’d be much more ok with the max, it’s just that it’s so hard to deal with how uncertain his offense still is. We can talk about his great October and November but we also need to talk about his horrible December and January. If he’s the average of those two vastly different periods, the max is just a mistake.
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.
@3 They’ve been searching (or not searching) for a decent point guard for 20+ years. I expect Burke to be better this year given more of an opportunity but I am not hopeful he is the answer for the Knicks unending woes at point guard. We’ll see. There is no doubt KP and the rest of the team would benefit greatly from above average play from the 1. Someday the management of this team will wake up and make acquiring talent at that position a priority ( hopefully I’m alive to see it)
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. )
I don’t mind too much if he’s a guy more suited to playing between 28-32 minutes a game, Yao Ming was never able to play heavy minutes and was still an amazing productive player, and he had more issues with his body than Porzingis has shown.
Maybe the Knicks do need a plan to maximize Porzingis effectiveness, but it also kinda sucks to plan your entire strategy around a guy who has shown only in small bursts that he deserves this treatment. Yao came into the league at KP’s age and was effective right away, so it was easier to figure it out. I’m just so unsure of everything Porzingis related, I just hope they don’t rush his return and he gets 100% healthy.
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.
Burke should start. We need a somewhat functioning offense even if we want the best draft pick possible.
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.
Here’s a video that demonstrates the difference between Burke and Mudiay.
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.
his inflexibility and inability to evolve?
I really don’t get this line of thinking. I mean, I really do appreciate the arguments that are stat based that point to why we shouldn’t extend him. But he went down last year before we got to see what he was like with Hardaway back as the second option. Who was the second option on the team once Hardaway was hurt? KP also never got to play with a bettter scoring/distributing PG in Burke and played like 2 games with Hardaway back before he got hurt. KP actually made comments about how he needed to evolve his game and not look to be the first scoring option all the time, so he gave comments that pointed to understanding that he needed to evolve.
His stamina is more of an issue to me. Last year was his first as the number one option. When he had a legit second option in Hardaway (and Hardaway isn’t even a legit second option honestly) he looked great. When that option was taken away, he struggled more and his efficiency dropped as he was trying to do too much on offense. But he acknowledged that…then he got hurt.
Its a very tough spot for us for sure. I wish we could have seen KP with Hardaway back and Burke at the PG spot. Hopefully we will get the chance to see that for a few months before the season ends although then if they play well people will wonder if its just KP going off before he gets tired and also people will be annoyed bc then it will hurt our draft spot.
So in some ways no matter what happens when KP returns, some people are gonna be mad!
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.
@18 yeah, that’s why Amar’e was so terrible all those years running the PnR with Nash.
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.
You want us to extend Berri? Because that is who the subject of the sentence was.
Ha. Sorry about that.
@19
Maybe because it was a very different Amare with a guy who’s not lesser than top 3 all time running the pick and roll.
On the Knicks Amare did that a whole lot, he would step out for a screen, set a super soft one and run to the rim right away. It worked a lot while he was on Phoenix because he was ridiculously fast and strong for his size and Nash was out of this world at finding him.
KP is pretty mediocre setting screens and has similar tendencies, and never had a guard who could run the pick and roll anyway. Of course if he had Chris Paul running with him it would be fine, but it’s yet another part of Kp’s game that has been lackluster. Even with our terrible guards it was clear the difference it made when O’Quinn, a very good screen setter, did it.
+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.
He specifically said that Amar’e made up for his shitty screening by being very quick. I don’t consider Capela a great screener, but he remind me of Amar’e in his ability to get the ball in traffic without requiring a whole lot of pick-created separation.
Steven Adams isn’t fast but he’s a monster pick setter. He’s huge, wide, strong and not afraid to maim people. Porzingis is not that guy and will never be that guy.
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.
Well, my point is that setting good screens is not necessary to be a great roll man. In fact, D’Antoni explained that it can actually be detrimental to the play.
You can argue that Amar’e made Nash great or the other way around. I tend to think that if you have an elite offensive PG that is deadly if you go under a screen, that makes the PnR far more effective than if you have a good screener. KP is plenty quick enough to do what Amar’e did.
Other than a few minutes with Burke before he went down, KP has played with the following PGs so far:
Jose Calderon
Jerian Grant
Brandon Jennings
Chasson Randle
Derrick Rose
Jarrett Jack
Ramon Sessions
Frank Ntilikina
That’s a pretty sad array of PnR ball-handlers. Burke may not be the answer, but he’s got to be better than any of those guys.
@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.
Amar’e was one of the quickest big men in league history- great first step and incredibly quick off of his feet. Plus he had very good hands and was strong enough to finish through contact. And while he seemed completely lost on defense the guy was a savant at finding space in the pnr. KP is nowhere near as quick, doesn’t have particularly good hands, and any contact throws him off balance. Would KP be better served by a good pnr point guard? Of course but he’s never going to be Amar’e in that regard.
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.
I don’t care how quick or strong a roll man is, if the defense can load up on him without worrying about getting killed by the ball-handler, he’s going to have a hard time scoring efficiently.
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.
“You can argue that Amar’e made Nash great or the other way around.“
Come on, you’re going way too far to support your argument. You really can’t. Did you ever watch Steve Nash playing?
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).
I wonder how many times we’ll have the same stupid argument about synergy on this board before it shuts down.
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.
@34
But I don’t disagree that Amare was very very good, I disagree with the idea that Amare somehow made Nash better, when Nash was a mega star in his own right. In fact, one of Nash’s absolute best years statistically was the one Amare played 3 games, 2005-06.
They were both excellent players and they played very well together and even without each other, which is my way of arguing against a wall for the umpteenth time that interaction effects are vastly overrated in the NBA.
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.
Did Nash and Dirk ever run the pick and roll with the deadly efficiency that Nash and STAT did? Dirk is a better player than STAT overall obviously but when it came to the pick and roll, which Nash was great at, STAT was probably one of the best finishers in the 2000s. That probably helped Nash up his assists average right there.
I’m sure Dirk and Nash with Dantoni’s SSOL would have been good too. But I just think STAT was perfect for Nash to pick and roll with and that made them both better.
And I wonder if Jowles actually watches basketball games or if he just reads stats all day.
Here’s the real question: In this year of our lord, 2011, will a decent PG finally feed Carmelo the ball right between the numbers, enabling a career high in shooting efficiency?
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?
@33 Bruno, I obviously didn’t express myself clearly. I think that Nash and Amar’e are both great players individually and would have been no matter whom they played with. However, I have no doubt that they both made each other better than they would have been if, say, Nash’s PnR partner during his prime was Nazr Mohammed or if Amar’e’s PnR partner during his prime was Derek Fisher. My smaller point was that you can argue the case successfully either way because they both benefitted from each other, just like Stockton and Malone. My larger point is that any PF/C (including KP) would benefit in the PnR from playing with Nash, Paul, Curry, etc. and that any PF/C would be hurt in the PnR by playing with the likes of the guys listed in @27. Is that really controversial?
@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.
Go ahead and repost that same post from 5 years ago again to put me in my place. It doesn’t change the fact that your the biggest tool on this blog.
I’m a fan. I like hypothesizing about basketball and the Knicks and I don’t care if I’m wrong bc it’s a game and I don’t take myself too seriously.
But go ahead. Be the snarky asshole that you always are. When the Knocks are actually good I’ll shit on you so hard every single day and it will be glorious!!!
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.
What I’m trying to say in the end is that a guy who has superstar production does it no matter what. Nash upped his usage a bit and lowered his assists a bit when Amare went down, but he was still very much a superstar. If the guy has this kind of talent he’ll do it eventually, and surrounding a guy who doesn’t might make him a better player overall, but it won’t cause a major leap.
If KP had better teammates last year Im willing to bet he would have had very similar levels of production, with slight changes here and there. He has superstar talent, I believe, but if he really does he’ll eventually show it with Trey Burke or with Kyrie Irving playing the point. Irving would obviously facilitate the process but wouldn’t be the difference between good player Porzingis and superstar Porzingis.
@48 agreed.
There might actually be a case for this argument when looking at Amare’s shooting splits. In his last year with the Suns he had 630~ FGA at the rim and finished them at a 67% fg%, while in his first year with the Knicks he had about 480 FGA and finished them at a 64% rate.
If we’re only talking about the pick and roll then yeah, I’m willing to concede that Nash did make Amare a significantly more productive player on that front. I was more talking about the overall level of play, as Amare also changed his playstyle quite a bit when he came to the Knicks and started shooting jumpers much more often, which also has to be factored in. Then again, he went from Nash to Felton plus old Billups, which is a massive drop and a very big difference in playstyle.
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.
no your
That’s cool. Don’t be mad when people tell you you’re wrong. This isn’t Bleacher Report. Go fuck off there if you don’t want to be told that your opinions on basketball (among other things) are real dumb and bad.
lmao ok
Good thing we don’t have to worry about that happening. (But like in 2012-13, I’ll probably see it coming because I LoOk aT tHe FaKe sTaTs.)
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?
@51
I tend to agree almost 100%, I would only argue that it can work out in a different way if the guy running the pick and roll is an elite passer and is elite at driving to the rim, like Rajon Rondo on his prime (or in a less great passing fashion, Westbrook). Defenders went under every possession against Rondo at his prime but it didn’t matter much m because he could still do a lot with the ball. But you have to be so good to be effective without being able to shoot that it’s always going to be very rare.
I guess we’ll see how it goes with Burke, he might have what it takes to be good at it if his shooting percentages hold up. It would sure be nice to for once find a really valuable guy off the scrap heap and not have to worry too much about PG.
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.
Yeah, of course sample sizes matter and Nash had better size than Burke, which helps quite a bit, but again, if he can be the super poor man’s version of Nash, without the genius passing and the crazy shooting splits of his prime but with a similar type of production, it’s more than good enough.
The super low FTA still bothers me a lot when I look at those numbers, but maybe he improves at that front, it’s not unreasonable to think so.
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.
Ptmilo, you are so freaking impressive….how are you now posting from the future?? (It’s 10:16 in our corner of the multiverse.)
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’m actually posting from next summer and you’re not going to believe who we think might be a poor man’s trey burke
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.
Trae Young?
I found an Adonis on B-R, but no Athena, what team did he play for?
I have had this Nash argument before. A few times. He has already been the point guard for two teams that posted a 112 offensive rating, which I think was a record at the time. Not sure how much Amare did for him. Didn’t hurt of course.
Panathinaikos?
It did take Nash until his age-26 season to become a star, but he’s a rare exception. Most guys who are bad for 4 seasons don’t have that kind of renaissance. Especially when it’s built on shooting 57% on long jumpers like Burke. I hope he’s an anomaly too, but more likely he’ll settle in as a slightly improved version of his old self, which is a back-end rotation player.
Olymbiakos maybe, I forget now. 🙂
Sam Darnold or Teddy Bridgewater? Maybe showcase TB for a few games and see if any teams lose their starting qb?
All I know is that if Trey Burke and TH2 keep us from RJ and Zion I’ll never forgive them.
Not sure that “more likely” is fair. Sure, his long 2pt shooting was an anomaly and should regress a bit. But there are some other metrics that might offset that decline. He shot a career low % by far from the FT line. He had a career low 3PTr and 36% doesn’t seem like a ceiling from there. His improved FG% at the rim seems for real and he’s shooting at the rim at a higher rate.
I don’t think his overall rate on long 2’s (from 16 ft out to the arc) tells the whole story, either. In looking at a lot of film on him from both the G-League and after his call-up, I would guess that he takes most of those shots 16-18 foot range. He’s a phenomenal ball-handler and cleverly uses dribble fakes and step-backs to generate clear looks in that comfort zone just past the FT line from elbow to elbow, and demonstrates a very balanced and repeatable shooting motion. I can see him stabilizing in the high 40s from there.
So the keys for him will be:
-Keep shooting and converting at the rim
-Get to the line a bit more and convert FTs at 80%+
-Take fewer long 2’s and more 3’s
-Keep the turnover numbers where they are
-Make at least a marginal improvement on D
Bookmarked. This is going to be a fun one!
Pheidippides could certainly fly down the wing on the break with her……..
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.
“no your”
Your not usually this subtle…
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.
I went in hard on Zion Williamson before he played a minute of NCAA ball. I’d latch onto that. You might actually get an L out of me, for once.
(I just find it interesting which prognostications Z-man decides to latch onto. At least he was reticent about Bargnani, except for the inexplicable optimistic “upside” predictions. If Burke performs poorly, I’d hope he does an about face rather than double down.)
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.
I never advocated for the Bargnani trade nor was happy it was made nor predicted with anything beyond a fan’s helpless optimism that it would work out well. My argument was largely based on comparing him to Andray Blatche, who’s career briefly turned around at a similar point under similar circumstances. I admit was terribly wrong in assessing the probability of a bad to worst-case scenario playing out, mostly because I didn’t look deeply enough to understand the root of his problem, which was that he was hopelessly dumb and didn’t give a shit about getting better. I grossly underestimated the value of the first round pick we gave up for him (turned out to be Jacob Poetl). So yeah, I fucked that one up, but again, never praised the deal, advocated for it, or was anything above “hey naysayers, let’s at least wait and see before passing judgment.” And once I waited and saw, I certainly passed judgment, and definitely didn’t “double down.”
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.
Lance Armstrong was rail-thin, too, except he was superhumanly strong. Blood dopers come in all body types. That said, there is absolutely no evidence that Nash was on PEDs. Chauncey Billups and Jason Kidd were also PGs who struggled until their late twenties, as well. Kidd posted his career-best BPM the same season he turned 30. Billups, 31.
The common theme among the three is that they were high-IQ players who never really relied on explosive athleticism to create their value.
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.
I don’t think we should give up any assets at this point to move Noah, and certainly not the best young PG on the team on a team-friendly contract, and certainly, certainly not before seeing who he really is. Patience is extremely important right now.
@80, I think they want him off the books this summer for cap space reasons.
We have Burke’s early bird rights. Not ideal but better than nothing, I guess.
This is so unbelievably dumb I think the Knicks could actually do it.
The only reason to waive and stretch Noah right away is to get an open roster spot. But they don’t seem to need a roster spot for pre-season, so I don’t see any need to stretch him until they see how players do in pre-season. I think it’s very likely preseason will show they will have some younger guy they want on the roster that makes them stretch and waive Noah.
What could change that is if some team actually wanted Noah. No one will want him at his current salary, but if they could get him for the minimum some team might want him. Then that team might do something for the Knicks in return for them waiving and stretching Noah, assuming that is legal under the CBA rules.
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.
True, they wouldn’t need to move Lee to get a max contract, but they’d still need to clear him to have any shot at getting two guys, right?
I meant to write an article the other day about how we sure are lucky that the Knicks do play in New York and while the allure of New York is likely overstated, it is not non-existent. For instance, there is probably a half-way decent chance that Kyrie Irving and Jimmy Butler seriously would like to come play together in New York and that only happens because of where the Knicks play.
BC is back!