Knicks Morning News (2018.08.27)

He’s a liability cuz he’s too slow both on reads and speed. That’s where our boy Mitch comes in.
He should be starting 20 games in once we’ve established our losing ways and we are relying on Mitch and trey to save us… good job fiz oh wait the season hasn’t started yet!

If Burke breaks out we could be in every game when kp comes back.
My wins prediction is based completely on Burke, Mitch, Knox and frank… if one or two breakout these others play consistent we could be in the hunt when kp if kp returns

You can’t analyze the effectiveness of a player this way.

We all saw the famous lip reading episode where Donovan said he was unplayable.

The coach was making a conscious decision to have him on or off the court against certain matchups in an attempt to maximize his effectiveness and minimize his liabilities. To say he was +15 or got rebounds etc.. is to say he was effective when the coach had him on the court. That’s terrific. The flip side is he could only play 10 minutes because the coach knew he’d get killed defensively if he played against other matchups.

The implications: stats are fake and coaches know everything. Wrong on both counts.

Yeah, ask the Thunder fan base about their opinion on Billy Donovan’s coaching decisions. I’ve never seen a fan base of an actual playoff team hate their coach so much, probably only the Bucks with Kidd had a similar level of absolute hatred. If you’re basing your arguments on the decisions this guy makes, he’s really not the guy.

At least 70. Maybe 75.

Typical Jowles cynicism. There’s 82 games in a season! I say they split their two games against the Warriors since Mario and Burke are definitely going to have super-break out years, and Fizdale is a superior coach who will only have Kanter play matchups guaranteed to make him an all-star defender.
81 wins.

Yeah Kanter is bad on defense but it is weird that so much of that reputation is based on a single playoff series against arguably the greatest team of all time.

Is his reputation based on a single playoff series? As you admit, he sucks on defense. We’ve all watched it. Being a sucky defensive player is more where his reputation as a sucky defensive player comes from.

Other than beating GS at their own game(Rockets) how do you beat small ball in a playoff series under current NBA defending rules.

Why is no one walking the ball up the court, taking 20 seconds on the clock to shoot it, feed the post & attack paint to draw fouls, rebound offensively & defend with intent to wear down opponent so that late in a series they’re bricking 3s.

So…annoying to watch Donovan run with them last year when he has Melo defending and spotting up on weak side while Kerr has Thompson.

Why is no one walking the ball up the court, taking 20 seconds on the clock to shoot it, feed the post & attack paint to draw fouls, rebound offensively & defend with intent to wear down opponent so that late in a series they’re bricking 3s.

Because most teams don’t want to get their brains beaten in.

This is the equivalent of saying “why does nobody play the three yards and a cloud of dust style in the NFL anymore” and “why don’t baseball teams bunt in the first inning anymore.” People stopped doing those things because they got tired of getting their asses kicked by people who understood the evolution of their respective sports.

I didn’t mean to imply that Kanter was in any way responsible for OKC having a solid defense that year. It definitely happened in spite of him. My only point was that it’s not impossible to build a good defense while giving Enes Kanter rotation minutes. Granted, it’s not easy!

The problem is that he doesn’t really belong in a playoff rotation for a great team at all. It’s hard to imagine any contender will feel like he’s an upgrade.

See, I continue to think this goes too far. If Klay Thompson doesn’t go absolutely nuclear in game 6 of the 2016 WCFs, there’s a very good chance OKC wins the NBA championship with Kanter playing 21 MPG and playing all 82 games (18 MPG in the playoffs). I’m simply unconvinced he was entirely detrimental to that team.

I’m not holding out hope for a first rounder, but here are some big men receiving rotation minutes on teams who want to be good this season:
Brook Lopez
Marcin Gortat
Jarrell Martin
Ivica Zubac, presumably
Once a Knick, Always a Knick Jason Smith

I may have missed a few, but I’m also sure you could make an argument that some of these guys are more deserving of minutes than Kanter. I’m just saying if a team is truly wedded to the idea of winning the most games possible this year, a second rounder or two for Enes Kanter seems like potentially good value. Especially considering how tough it can be to upgrade at the margins once a team reaches a certain threshold.

The implications: stats are fake and coaches know everything. Wrong on both counts.

The implication is that some stats are BAD.
The implication is that good coaches more than the box score, plus/minus, and most fans.

You need stats to create an inventory of a player’s skills (on offense and defense).

You need stats to determine how effective a player has been at using his skills.

You need stats to determine what a player’s role has been on his team (on offense and defense) and whether he has been used effectively.

There is a good correlation between a player’s actual ability and the boxscore metrics and plus/minus fans favor. They aren’t optimal because they don’t measure all the nuances and subtleties that impact them.

What could be more obvious than a coach and most fans observing that Kanter was getting killed guarding the P&R and then making the decision to try to play him only when the opposition had a unit on the court that couldn’t take advantage of his deficiencies?

If you are smart enough to do that (as Donovan was), you can even get a positive contribution out of the player. Of course the boxscore/plus minus will make it look like Kanter was playing great and should have been given more minutes, but the reality is that was put on the court when he was capable of being a net positive and held off when he would have been a defensive disaster and net negative.

Kanter’s best role would be as a bench guy who comes in and wrecks the opposing team’s backup center for 18-22 minutes a game, spotted into situations where he’s not going to kill you with his bad pick and roll defense. On his next contract, wherever he goes, that might be his actual role.

Kanter is an elite rebounder on both ends and is an efficient scorer at moderate usage despite not shooting 3’s. He can’t defend in space very well. But to call him “unplayable in the playoffs” because he had a lousy game 1 vs. the D’Antoni Rockets at age 24 is colossally dumb on Donovan’s part. He essentially benched Kanter based on his game 1 performance (playing him less than 30 minutes combined in the next 4 games). Never mind that in game 1, Westbrook shot 6-23 and Oladipo was a cool 1-12, and Steven Adams had 6 points on 6 shots and had a 121 DRtg to Kanter’s 125.

I guess Oladipo and his .424 TS%, -5.9 BPM and -0.2 was unplayable as well, since OKC ditched him and Sabonis for Paul George, who made such a difference in the playoffs with his -0.6 DBPM! And in a stroke of brilliance, they replaced the unplayable Kanter with defensive superstar and playoff-hardened veteran Carmelo Anthony!

Presti and Donovan. Sheesh!

The best part of Manu for the Spurs was how dirty cheap he was for them his entire time there. The Alamo gulag is finaly done .
Try to replicate highWS/low salary in Ny:(