true but they should rebound very well on the offensive end, meaning more PPP.

Yeah that is one thing about this team, it should be a very strong rebounding team. The four frontcourt mainstays can all rebound: Mitch, Randle, Portis and Gibson all rack up lots of boards. Marcus Morris also had a big year rebounding last year, RJ is of course a big plus rebounder and Elfrid Payton is a plus rebounder for a PG. You could put out a totally plausible Payton-Barrett-Morris-Randle-Robinson lineup and do very well on the glass.

The 2018-2019 Pistons followed this model, they were a crummy eFG% team (26th overall) that got lots of offensive rebounds (4th overall) and were league average in the other two of the Four Factors, and the end result was that they were the #21 offense. That seems like kind of a ceiling for what the Knicks offense could be. It’s going to be a similar bad eFG%/good offensive rebounding type of offense.

The average team shot 35.5% from 3 last year; we shot 34% and were 27th. We should be pretty middling this year.

eFG% is the number the team really needs to improve on though, and some of the guys we acquired have decent 3pt percentages but not great eFG%. Like Bobby Portis, for instance. Shot .393 from 3pt but still had a well below average eFG%. Marcus Morris is another guy, shot well from 3pt last year and had a career-high eFG%, but that looks like an outlier season, it was 30 points above his career average. Trier is another one– great 3pt%, low eFG%.

Payton, DSJ, Barrett, Trier, Morris, Knox, Ntilikina, Portis… those guys are all low eFG% players.

Randle, Ellington, Bullock, Robinson, Gibson are high eFG% guys but only Randle brings lots of volume. Team is probably going to have a low eFG% with lots of shots taken by the guys in that first group.

I do like Payton more than most and I think he’s s positive impact, it’s just hard for me to see a guy like him impacting too much a team that still has few weapons. We have 2 reliable outside shooters but one is already injured, and the other one is expected to play 18-20 minutes at most at the 2, with Knox possibly being a 3rd one if he progresses from 3 (and Morris too if he keeps it up). Randle is pretty good scoring but he’s not necessarily good for spacing, specially considering he should be playing alongside Mitch… so the way I see it, what Payton brings to the table is hampered by the fact that the shooting is so unreliable outside of Randle, and his defense isn’t good. I can see a world in which the team overachieves, but even if it does the ceiling doesn’t seem to be too high.

I’m not sure Fizzy is the guy.

I’m in full agreement with this.

And I agree that it’s hard to win without excellent guard/wing play. But it’s also tough to win without rim protection, rebounding, 3-pt shooting and size, and we have those things. And there’s no way we can be anywhere near as bad at the guard/wing positions as we were last year.

I think Payton is one of the most important players when it comes to winning. He seemed to play well when healthy last year. After the all-star break he averaged 12-7-10 per 36 in 32MPG with a great ast/tov ratio and a few triple-doubles. I don’t expect the shooting to improve all that much, but he’s a lot closer to being a decent starting PG than anything we had last year.

I still think this team will probably win around 25-28 games, with 30 being a possibility only if one of the young guys truly improves a lot and the rotations are set towards playing the veterans the most. There’s a lot of potential variance with this roster because it’s so full of players who could all get minutes or not, and we truly have no idea how Fizdale will work it out and what the priorities are going to be for the entire year. Since I think they won’t settle for development of the young guys, I think the win total will be somewhat inflated, but not more than 30 as the veterans simply aren’t very good too.

Maybe some scraptastic x’s and o’s genius of a coach might be able to drag this team to 35 wins but I’m not sure Fizzy is the guy. It’s hard to survive bad guard/wing play in the NBA and our guards/wings are pretty lame.