2019-20 Game Thread: Knicks @ Celtics

Not sure why you would run the risk of Frank getting fouls by playing him. Seems a foolish move.

Let’s Do it …Or Not ?

Frankie with the Lebron block.

Nice.

more sloppy turnovers

I love the surprise in the announcer’s voice when a Frank shot goes in

Mitch has got to shoot that ball at least once. He looks a little bit lost tonight but those fouls were weak calls.

Hit your free throws.

this game is hideous

Randle just badly missed a wide open Barrett

Well, we can get offensive rebounds, that’s for sure

Can’t knock the results at the moment

Brad Stevens is Pete Buttigieg

@23

I am glad I am not the only who sees the similarity.

I also thought Mike Shanahan and GW Bush shared many similarities.

I just don’t see it with Portis.

Where would you put the probability of a Knox floater going in?

I say about 20%

Portis, please stop.

Portis is ass

Jesus, Frank.

WTF?

How is Frank this slow around the basket? He plays so much faster on defense.

Frank didn’t even come close to making that layup

Honestly Frank seems to be playing a decent floor game but then some shit like that happens and you just want to stab yourself in the eyes

It isn’t just the missed layup, when he runs the point he puts zero pressure on the defense. He picks up his dribble and throws the ball laterally to a teammate.

I mean, I could do that.

I hope I’m not jinxing this but it’s Morris, not Portis, who is in front of his old team this time.

If there ever was a time to put in Trier it’s tonight.

What the fuck is Clyde talking about?

Smart hit wrist.

Smart should have just stepped out of the way and let RJ brick that off the front of the rim-he jumped like 3′ feet further out than he should have.

LOL Frank take the fucking shot!

who the fuck is that celtic who just hit a 3?

Pretty sure Kemba is gonna go off in the 4th quarter

Knicks shooting 37% yet up 1 at the half.

Frank 0 assists but has the highest +/- of the half for Ny.

Fiz is almost doin it right till now (partially thanks to injuries).

Pretty interesting game so far.
My impression is that the Knicks are missing a ton of easy shots — really a lot of wide open 3s.
Fiz’s obsession with playing big is paying off – they are absolutely cleaning the C’s clocks on the glass. 11-1 offensive rebound advantage.

And Boston is struggling with the switch everything defense. I’m not sure I liked how the last defensive possession worked out – with Frank on Kemba then switching to somehow end up with Randle on Kemba, but you can’t argue with 49 points given up at the half. And I don’t really feel like the C’s have missed a bunch of shots that they should hit. Pretty much everything has been contested.

Thrillakina!

Oh shit.

Skynet is going offline…

I hope Mitch didn’t break a finger…

With Portis, Randle and Morris together this team is unwatchable and the spacing awful.

I hate Morris’ game…

Is Portis worse than Kanter on D?

Portis isn’t worth whatever he brings on offense.

That defense is bad and he hacks to make up for it.

Good news on MitchRob.

Alright RJ!

I’m sorry, but stats really don’t capture Frank’s effect on D. His anticipation is great most of the time, and he ends up with a hand on or near the ball almost every possession.

Wanna see ‘the Frank Effect’ in full effect in the 4th Q !

Man that was a nice finish by Knox. There really is reason to hope there.

Mitch!

Mo and Po a combined 11/30 so far…

Nice coast to coast action by RJ. Always looks real composed for a rookie

That was the best sequence in knicks history

frankie swag

Should have played & sat Frank simultaneously with Kemba. RJ is fearless. After a poor play he follows up with a silent assassin like focused aggression. Kawhi-esqe like.

FT: NY 9/14 BOS 21/22

Fuck

I hate the Celtics

Since when do you review a call with more than 2 minutes left?

@105
When in Boston…ah, was a challenge.

LOL @ Barrett flopping for the foul call.

Damnit.

I don’t understand why we switch so much off of Kemba. What’s the point of putting Frank out there on him if you’re switching him off?

Frank defend on Kemba and he hit a hard 3
Knox let Kemba loose and he missed an easy 3
We really miss a real PG in close games… and an offensive system maybe?

feels like we have played way too well tonight to take an L

Boston is almost as dumb as we are.

Clyde: “asinine.” Never change, Clyde!

Wow!

I temporarily don’t dislike Morris

MOOOK! Huge play.

Not that Frank was defending on the perimeter as well as usual, but the Celtic strategy of running picks for Kemba and forcing Frank off him on a switch was a pretty good strategy. Kemba had quite a few mismatches and sometimes Frank wound up on a player that was stronger than him.

BS.

Man. Good D by RJ. Fuck Boston

That was a tough shot by Tatum, give him credit.

Scrappy losses lead to good draft picks!

All I know is that we need more minutes for Frank.

I mean 27 out of 29 free throws is kind of ridiculous but our misses didn’t help things much

This fucking sucks but at least I still gave a shit at the end.

I hate the Celts, but otherwise I’m fine with this game. Generally good strategy from Fiz, decent play from Frank, some awesome Mitch moments with no broken finger. Portis shows he can’t play D, didn’t play further. Morris wasn’t totally hateable, and Knox was showing a lot of intelligence in his choices.

As Strat says, we will win some of these games soon. Boston shoots 27 of 29 from the line, you aren’t gonna win with that.

You ain’t going nowhere with 66,7% at FTs.
Having a high FT% don’t make you a good team but having a lousy FT% makes you weak.
Needs fixing asap.

Barrett and Randle must work on FTs,
their style of play is conductive to a lot of freebies, they must take advantage of that.

Frank did enough on offense to be useful, his D is a plus,
small progress from Knox, smarter plays than a year ago,
Mitch is a presence, RJB a rookie with a great future (hit your free throws kid!).
Randle with 6 TO and a dumb technical, Portis is a matador.
Celts are too good for a real Morris’ revenge game, but in the fouth he was balling.
As a team we defended steadily (with Portis being the exception)
and after a slow start we kept dumb turnovers in check (with Randle being the exception)

Better rotation from Fiz,
I think that injuries helped him, but the Portis benching was a good move.

RJ shot 4-13 from inside the arc which is not going to cut it. He must have missed everything he took but a few layups. The rest of his game was good though.

Randle’s turnovers are killing the offense. Without Payton I’m not sure what we can do to get the defense to react other than throwing it to Randle but we should try something else. More PnR with RJ and a big? Or Frank and RJ? Something.

Still, a much better game overall than the matchup in the garden last week. We crushed the Celtics on the boards and probably should have won but we missed too many free throws.

Very pleased to see KKnox playing coordinated with fast decisions, confident shooting and body control.

Looks to me like Frank/RJ/KK/Mitch could be a nice young core if developed smoothly.

Knox needs to figure out how to get to the rim and finish a lot more before he can think about being a good offensive player.

randles problems are a manifestation of the overall issues on offense… he leads the team in assists regularly…. he can handle the ball well for his position but hes not lebron…

same thing with rj… hes a good passer and creator… but not at the load we are asking of them…

the best offense we get are these curl plays or on rj drives… thats basically it… thats not gonna cut it and the offense has looked terrible as a result…

Caruso with a posterization! Looked like me 40 years ago…

What a freakin’ game!

Anyone watching this game thinking that Porzingis deserves a max deal is out of their fucking mind

Dwight rockin’ the sea anemone on his head…

How is Avery Bradley shooting that ball?

Holy shit Danny Green!

Luka looks dazed

That last play was on Porzingis

If Doncic played for the Knicks the fans would blow the roof off of MSG

Luka is incredible but he can’t stay in front of anyone on defense.

I suppose to be fair it’s worth saying he might have been concussed

KP displayed all of the things that made us sour on him. He tries to do too much and coughs up the ball in crunch time, then jogs up the floor while LeBron cruises….sickening.

The fascinating thing about the Mavs is that KP’s injury really hurt them this offseason, as how could you possibly sign there as a big time player if you have no idea what Porzingis is going to be? Now that he’s healthy, even if he’s not playing great, that should be enough to assuage any similar player next season and if you pair another legit star with Luka? Holy shit, that Mavs team is going to be sick.

Let’s just hope that they somehow miss out on free agents this year, too, so that their 2021 pick is not too high.

As we have mentioned a few times over the past few months, how in the world does management think it is a better strategy for this team longterm to sign a bunch of mediocre veterans to short term contracts instead of just filling the roster up with fliers? Look at Kadeem Allen. The guy might really be the Knicks’ best point guard other than Payton (and hell, maybe even better than Payton). And that’s just some random ass dude! There are dozens of Kadeem Allen-like players out there. Why isn’t this team trying to find one of them? Why are they paying Wayne Ellington all of this money when they could get a dude for peanuts who might be better than Wayne Ellington as soon as, like, next year? Look at Alonzo Trier – whether you like him or not, the guy has some upside and they got him by being willing to try out an undrafted free agent. This shit isn’t that complicated. If your win curve is based around two young guys like RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson developing in the next couple of years (and thank god they finally have two guys that they actually can realistically build around), then why the fuck are they signing short term mediocre veterans? I mean, we know why, because they made a trade that was partially centered on clearing out cap room for this past offseason and when the big time guys all blew them off, they felt that they needed to spend all of the money to avoid losing face. So we know why, but the more important question is why are they so stupid as to think that that makes any kind of sense?

Respectfully, I find it hard to nitpick the coaching when our record is precisely what it should be given our opponents and our talent. Other than the Celts home game, we have been pretty competitive.

Once Randle and Portis were signed, it was pretty obvious that Randle was going to play mostly at the 4 and Portis and Mitch would split minutes at the 5. Given the team we have (which I agree was ineptly assembled) I don’t have a huge problem with the way Fiz has coached thus far. I’d like to see more Trier, but that’s about it.

How much you want to bet Golden State ends up with the #1 pick in the draft?

Hey…. if GS gets the #1 pick they did it legit just like SA with Duncan when The Admiral went down.

They HAVE tanked before…..to not ship off the pick that became Harrison Barnes…..

Another game like last night and Frank might make his first foray into positive WS48 territory! He should get another great opportunity tomorrow vs. the Kings.

@183

Isn’t there a minimum salary $ as per CBA a team needs to spend on a roster, having a bunch of young cheap players doesn’t work.

Also how does it make sense to run a team out there who he’s blown by 40 every game and isn’t competitive?

My point is that losing badly doesn’t teach A positive experiences to young players. If we are looking for a needle in the haystack young gun, losing terribly isn’t going to uncover that talent, the opposite will happen. At the very least we are competitive in all our games this season and the core is gaining a lot of tread by being in games.

Watched some highlights. Feeling a little queasy about RJ after the early euphoria. Still looks like he belongs but the numbers are looking more like what I expected and trending the wrong way. The ft % is crazy.

What in the world did Trier do to be so deep in the doghouse?

good question…maybe pissing off the vets by not passing more?

Do people want Trier to play because you think he’ll help the Knicks win games or because you just want to see if he’s improved?

I feel like the roster construction was actually decent.

You do?

I agree that RJ was forcing it last night. If it were his first game, I’d be worried – but we’ve seen a bunch of games that tell a different story, not just in the results, but in the process (where he was in the flow, wasn’t forcing, etc). I doubt he’ll have nights like this more than once or twice a month. He IS a rookie, after all – it’ll happen again. But even then, as d-mar points out, he does other stuff that has value.

I doubt his free throw percentage will improve a lot this year, though. That’s probably a focus next summer. But it’s tough to fix that during the course of the season.

The free throws are a problem though

It’s a little too soon for him to be thrown into the cauldron. Kind of like Knox last year but less bad. Knox was named tank commander and became literally the worst player in the league. So unfair. Imagine the fortitude it takes to get off the deck and keep your confidence after that experience. RJ has more support but it’s a bit soon to expect him to be playing such a key role. Such is life as a Knick.

That said, the kids do need to play, make mistakes, and not get a quick hook. Case in point, Frank is really improving it seems.

That said, I’m not sad to see Trier with the DNP. We’ll see what guys have when they get a full audition. The 8 man rotation was refreshing. When Zo plays Wayne will sit and we’ll see who the better piece is.

how in the world does management think it is a better strategy for this team longterm to sign a bunch of mediocre veterans to short term contracts instead of just filling the roster up with fliers?

I’ve been assuming it was mostly a function of Dolan demanding more wins and less that they thought it was an optimal strategy.

@ 188, that’s good to know. Going to take some time to internalize that difference though.

The Celtics are a pretty good defensive team, it’s no surprise that Barrett would struggle getting his shots. I agree with DRed, we all knew the shooting would probably be poor right away, and since the better than expected start it’s coming down a bit, but what matters is that he’s taking the right kind of shots and staying aggressive. He hasn’t settled for bad jumpers and has tried to get to the rim a lot and shoot 3s, and that’s what we want to see. I remember him taking one bad midrange jumper only and he was quite open even then.

He has to clean up the free throws, that’s priority number one. He’ll get to the line a lot with how much he attacks the paint, if he can make those at 70% he’ll be far more efficient at scoring already.

super entertaining game last night. WE’ve been right in every game (except BOS game 1) until the mid-end of the 4th quarter, which is promising. Unfortunately, what we’re missing is that alpha scorer/facilitator that can create good scoring opportunities for himself or others — which coincidentally is the hardest thing to find in the NBA. I love RJ but I don’t necessarily think he’s that guy. My guess is his absolute ceiling is as a 2nd or 3rd best player on a really good team. He just doesn’t have the pop to really take over in those tight end-of-game situations unless his shooting gets way better and defenses have to guard him tightly way out on the perimeter. But that’s ok — even that is good outcome from a #3 pick.

I really liked what Frank brought last night, crappy missed layup notwithstanding (in retrospect that could’ve been the turning point of the game — gimme layup turned into and-1 the other way, a 5 point swing in a 2 point game). I thought the switching was a little weird and even though the overall result was ok (DRtg for the game of 107 which is decent), Boston started exploiting that at the end with 12 FTA in the 4th quarter alone. Fiz overall had a good game but it might pay off to switch up looks on defense as the game goes on to keep the opposing offense off-balance.

Re: Frank – so much of his offensive issue is the lack of a killer mentality. That layup that he doinked? That should’ve been a dunk. By himself under the basket – dunk it!! That transition layup that was goaltended a couple games ago? That should’ve been a dunk. The beautiful layup he hit yesterday off the feed from RJ — that should be a dunk. He’s afraid of getting blocked and so it’s like he gets the yips around the basket and just wants to get rid of it asap. Maybe that will get better as he gets stronger, but a lot of it is just in his head.

I wish I had bet my house on the Warriors’ under

Really? You think long term his free throws won’t fall? It’s a six game sample…

I just gave evidence that no one in the league shoots as poorly as he has, even over a sample as small as ~25 FTA.

If he regresses, it’ll probably be all the way up to 50%.

Could someone help me find the boxscore matchup data on NBA.com.

NBA.com literally has to be the worst web site in the history of humanity for navigation.

I want to take a look at how Kemba did against Frank last night. There was a lot of switching that complicates matters, but I don’t care about perfection. I’m looking for ballpark numbers.

This was the only thing I could find, but I’m not sure it makes sense to me. It’s looks like he was only guarding him for 4.5 minutes and for partial possessions for 17.7 minutes but he only score 3 points when guarded by him. That seems impossible.

https://stats.nba.com/game/0021900072/matchups/?OFF_PLAYER_ID=202689&DEF_PLAYER_ID=1628373

One thing’s for sure: no matter how fucked up his shot is, he’ll never try the Barry method because athletes are thralls to their own egos

I always felt that it is the quick twitch guys like Shaq and Wilt who get baskets by being much quicker and more forceful than their opponents who have the hardest time shooting free throws well. Barrett doesn’t seem in that category, and he did shoot better in College, so i think there’s a good chance he will improve.

Quite a few of our players have a TS% below what I might have expected coming into the season. Part of that is the lack of good PG play getting us easy shots but I think part of it is lineups and team construction. The offense sucks.

Just a reminder that Ben Simmons also shot 67% from the line in 300 attempts in college, and now he’s a career 57% as a pro, 44% this season. But well, if RJ develops elsewhere like Simmons too I wouldn’t be mad.

@222

Never forget that Reddish’s peers said he would be the best rookie of the whole class.

How’s it goink

Clarence Gaines
@ClarenceGaines2

Everything with @FrankLikina revolves around his mentality. Greatness exists within his being but he’s still learning to let it flow. Playing with men helped/hurt him. Hurt him in that he became too deferential. He’s getting better at developing a next play mentality – A WIP.

Other that a brief flurry early in the game last night, I thought Porzingis looked terrible the last two games. He looks mentally disengaged, slower on defense, struggling with his shot, and gassed if he plays too many consecutive minutes. I was expecting it to take him a few months to get his game back after such a long layoff because that’s what happens with almost all these ACL guys. But I thought some of it would be a confidence issue related to injury. He seems fine in that way. It’s more like as soon as Doncic starts taking over he loses interest on offense and can’t move on defense to help like he used to. He should be doing a little better because Doncic is clearly getting him some easy shots he never got in NY and he’s also taking all the pressure off him to be the #1 option getting doubled teamed all the time.

Porzingis is a low-IQ player who isn’t smart enough to optimize his physical advantages. He’s very overrated and I am glad we are not on the hook for a massive contract with him. He’ll look great at times but overall he just doesn’t play a smart game.

Porzingis is a low-IQ player who isn’t smart enough to optimize his physical advantages. He’s very overrated and I am glad we are not on the hook for a massive contract with him. He’ll look great at times but overall he just doesn’t play a smart game.

I watched the 2nd half of the Mavs-Lakers game, and for about 10 minutes I decided to just focus Porzingis.

On a typical possession he just floats around the perimeter and when he gets the ball he really doesn’t have a post up move except to pound a few dribbles and shoot a turnaround jumper. He’s generally passive, doesn’t go to the glass hard at either end and as JK pointed out, doesn’t make smart decisions.

And don’t forget, he’s playing with one of the best PG’s in the league, remember when everyone thought he would be throwing down alley oops with regularity?

Amen to not maxing him, would have been an albatross contract sooner rather than later.

i agree KP did not play well yesterday on either end. his chemistry with doncic hasn’t been great. it seems clear doncic much prefers throwing lobs to kleber or powell, because KP doesn’t cut hard enough and/or still isn’t strong enough to be a good target. doncic likes to throw leading lobs with pace in congested areas and KP is not your huckleberry for that setup. this basically means a KP/doncic pick is either just a pick and pop or a kind of half assed roll that’s really just a set up to get KP a high post iso. you probably recognize the latter as like 80% of our current offense.

My NBA-normie-fan pal texted me when Porzingis started the game 3-4. “You watching this Mavs game?”

I told him “he’ll probably end at 7-16” and made sure to check in with him just before the game ended.

Is it worth remembering that Mitch turned his FT shooting completely around last year? Dunno which coach worked with him on it but they probably ought to have a couple sessions with Barrett.

@238

That’s one of a few things that makes me think he’s the second coming of James Harden. His tendencies seem hard-wired. He has decent closing speed when he drives but it’s how he uses space and contact that is mesmerizing. He’s so good at pulling up or using the floater (both decision-making and execution) that defenders seem to be confused about where to be, almost like watching a batter hack at a Greg Maddux 88 MPH fastball because they had no idea what to expect.

If I had to bet money on a player winning an MVP between 2021-22 and the end of the decade, it’d be him.

Meanwhile, how ridiculous is it that Vlade took Bagley over Doncic? No one talks about it much because it’s Sacramento, but that really may end up being a Sam Bowie Michael Jordan level screwup.

(let’s not let PHX off the hook too – for pete’s sake, their coach was the Slovenian national coach!!)

I really believe there’s something about the Knicks’ ancestral past that makes us really, really want to have a good defensive team. And Frank is a pretty nice defender. But he is once again stinking it up on the offensive end to the point where it’s just comical.

93 minutes, 0 free throw attempts. A career-low 3.1 assists per 36 minutes. A .308 shooting percentage on 2-pointers. A .273 shooting percentage on 3-pointers. eFG% stands at .354, TS% stands at an identical .354%. Turnover percentage at a career high.

Sure, it’s a very small sample but that is Frank-ier than ever. He has once again been pitiful on offense. I guess we can keep clapping harder and hoping that Tinkerbell comes back to life but it’s not looking real promising.

and yes, Frank has been super awful on offense.
but we are only talking about 93 minutes this year. *fingers crossed*

Do you know (and I mean know, not guess, or assume) that this is true, and that it is a clean stat? Free of interactions and confounders? (of course not, because no one knows).

yes this is fact… it’s also very intuitive and very very easy to demonstrate… but if you want recent proof you can look at 538’s defensive model:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-better-way-to-evaluate-nba-defense/

if you doubt that… all you have to do is watch any nba game and really watch it closely… pay attention to defense…. and keep track of contested shots and who has the most… and when you do this you have to weigh the shots closer to the basket more heavily…. then you count who has the most rebounds….

then if you want you can count dribble drives… but when you do this you’ll have to pay close attention… it’s usually not guards that are stopping drives… especially on picks… it’s usually big men too!

most parts of defense is pretty hard to quantify but positional value of defense is absolutely not one of them… this has been settled for quite some time…. you can have a very good defense with not so great defensive guards…. it’s very very difficult if your front court is weak defensively…..

and ok… let’s bring in how wrong i was about one prospect out of the 100s of draft prospects i’ve evaluated in the last 5 years…..

it’s not just about being right or wrong…. i’ve shown my methodology… i’ve shown my work…. and if you’ve ever paid attention to anything i’ve ever written about the draft… it’s not about they will definitely fail or definitely be good… it’s all about the risk profile… mitchell bucked a trend… that will happen..

no one is a fortune teller…. because someone got one prospect right that one time doesn’t mean they know anything either… consistency is what matters…. i have put in a lot of work and analysis into the draft and i am very very comfortable putting up my results against anyone else…. especially those who get paid for this kind of stuff….

if you wanna go there then i suggest you go a little deeper on my draft calls….

So while everyone here is going crazy, my only real argument is that we be patient.

Ok, that’s fine but really if you have to wait four or five or six years or whatever for a guy to develop what’s the point? He’s just not a very special prospect if that’s the case.

You can just go out and get the actual Patrick Beverley on a reasonably priced contract instead of investing six years developing the guy with the Patrick Beverley ceiling.

Through trial and error, we found that DRAYMOND performs best[3] if you assume that shooting percentages on open shots are about 8 percentage points higher than against average defense.

The above us quoted directly from the link DJPhan posted. If you read the footnote [3] you find that there is no data based reason for the 8% number, they just picked it so their new stat gave as similar results to RAPM as possible. And if think about it at all, you realize it’s ridiculous to use one number for the effect of defense on a shot’s make probability no matter where the shot is on the court. The difference good defense makes should be different close to the basket than far from it. Even though the authors of the stat actually have data that could test this assumption, they made no effort to do so. They just wanted their new stat to match some other existing stat they liked. So not surprisingly, their new stat seems to show a lot of positional bias in evaluating defense. That is, centers overall are rated much better defenders than guards.

Yeah, this isn’t Eddy Curry. We have our picks. We have players on one year deals. Those players have value to other teams.

Doing better than the absolute worst-in-the-league performance we’ve endured for decades does not mean actually doing well. Yes, keeping our picks is better than selling them – for Eddy Curry or almost anyone. Yes, one year deals are better than 4-year albatrosses like Noah. But those players have NOT had value to other teams in years past, and are unlikely to this year. The real question is, do you actually believe it was good front office work to sign so many forwards and a wing who’s 28 and a step above a replacement player and who’s in the way of other, cheap players we need to develop and/or make decisions on? Do you believe it was wise to sign Morris instead of make a trade for another pick? Do you think adding Portis was smart when you also added Randle and already had Mitch? Nothing crippling, but every decent move (Randle) was negated by a headscratching blunder (Portis).

Again, better than Old Moustache Guy, but that isn’t exactly an endorsement.

on another play frank seemed to run directly into hayward despite hayward looking like he was working in seclusion at a standing desk

Still chuckling about this one…

What i ve seen and appreciate from Frankie in D so far is a guy who’s most times in the right place with his body in a position ready to follow the attacking player or switch or direct him to the tall guy behind him.
Looks like he has studied his opponents since his positioning has the right angle to take away the preferred strong side of the opponent’s drive.
He has definitely made mistakes during his D but most of the times he’s ready and looks like an unsung defensive anchor to me making the whole team performing/spaced better defensively while also looking more alert judging by their body language.

I make my own simple rating now (very rough). On my scale, an average player is rated 200. I have Frank rated as a 170 right now.

What

i have put in a lot of work and analysis into the draft and i am very very comfortable putting up my results against anyone else…. 

I for one make sure to read what you have to say concerning different players in the draft, particularly lottery guys…

I always wondered why though, why put that much effort in evaluating draft choices to that level of detail…

just wondering what got you into that stuff…

538s models aren’t flawless…. i’m not a huge fan either.. but it’s something… we have a perspective… and it’s some sort of evidence… and a flat 8% contest value no matter where on the court actually penalizes big men…. gobert at the rim forces opponents to 37.7 % for example… an open layup conversion is way way way higher than that…. a contest on a 3 pt attempt from a guard is not gonna get anywhere close to that….

i mean that has to be pretty obvious right? i mean most dpoy are big men also so this is not some crazy theory… this is accepted fact and it goes way further than what nerd drew up in the last year… this has been recognized widely since the dawn of basketball….

the box score for warriors hornets is like if a summer league team played whoever happened to be running at la fitness that day

Sometimes, I’m forced to remember that we could have a Shai/D. Mitchell backcourt right now to work alongside RJ and M-Rob [deep sigh].

Zach Collins out with shoulder surgery….. Polly wanna power forward Portland???

I’m not sure the flat 8% will punish big men in the 538 metric. It might mean the metric says big men are great because they reduce the chance to hit a shot by more than 8%. I don’t understand the metric well enough to know if it does.

who’s out the door first – morris or portis…I like taj out on the court…he at least seems to wanna play defense and rebound…

Morris has trade value, so I would certainly hope it’s him. As soon as they possibly can trade him. I am actually a Morris fan, but he makes no sense here.

I had the Knicks postgame on in the background Friday night and my girlfriend, who is a psychiatrist and doesn’t know anything about Frank to have a bias, so him giving a postgame interview and said, categorically, “that guy is having a panic attack while he’s talking.”

It seems like we may benefit from a team therapist.

I feel sorry for Randle. He’s used to coming off the bench or being the 2nd/3rd scoring option on the court. With the Knicks he’s being asked to be the #1 option, bring up the ball at times,. and make plays on a poorly constructed team that lacks space to begin with and where he draws double and triple teams inside because we have no outside shooters. He’s probably peaking as a basketball player and it looks like he’s having a terrible season in the boxscore. I guess the millions make it worth it, but it’s
got to suck for him basketball wise. Maybe things will loosen up a bit if he can hit some 3s, but we all knew that last year’s breakout might not be sustainable.

you out there today hoofing it around the city z-man?

“that guy is having a panic attack while he’s talking.”

I’ve been saying things along those lines all along. He may be very mature in some ways, but in some ways he’s incredibly immature, insecure, nervous, etc… He’s a boy on the court.

If we make a comparison leaving skills and talent out of the equation, a guy like Doncic is a super duper basketball alpha. That man has absolutely no fear of failure. He’s the guy that walks into a room and thinks every woman there wants him. If he gets rejected he thinks there’s something wrong with her. That’s a small part of what makes him successful and will eventually make him a superstar. His confidence is off the charts and that allows him to maximize his talents.

Now go to the other end of the bell curve. That where Frank resides as a basketball player. He’s the ultimate basketball beta.

He’s terrified to make a mistake on the court. He’s deathly afraid to embarrass himself by doing something stupid. He’s scared to death to take a shot. He has zero confidence. He’s the guy that walks into a room of women and stands in the corner too afraid to talk to any of them even though a few are checking him out.

Benching or putting a player in the doghouse may work wonders for a confident player that’s having a rough game or not playing hard enough, but that’s the last thing in the world you want to do to Frank. An even worse thing to do would be to bring in bad PGs like Mudiay to take his minutes.

He needs time to mature, grow in confidence, develop his game etc..

He’s going to mature and grow in confidence in time and that will release better basketball while his skills are also increasing. He may even hit on two women and arrange a basketball threesome. 🙂

Some of the shit I say about Frank is trolling the pie-in-the-sky crowd out there (Strat leading the way after wrenching the standard out of Ntilikilla’s hand) but I really hope he proves me wrong and becomes a plus player at some point. As I said, this is a perfect opportunity for him and he needs to make the most of it.

If we make a comparison leaving skills and talent out of the equation, a guy like Doncic is a super duper basketball alpha. That man has absolutely no fear of failure. He’s the guy that walks into a room and thinks every woman there wants him. If he gets rejected he thinks there’s something wrong with her. That’s a small part of what makes him successful and will eventually make him a superstar. His confidence is off the charts and that allows him to maximize his talents.

Now go to the other end of the bell curve. That where Frank resides as a basketball player. He’s the ultimate basketball beta.

This is a chicken and the egg situation. Doncic can be “alpha” because he can go out there and actually do anything he wants on the court. Frank is “beta” because he legitimately can’t do shit on the court with the ball in his hands.

Since even Frank’s most ardent supporters seem to concede we aren’t getting jackshit out of him on his rookie deal, when can we expect to see the latent greatness manifest? His 5th season? 6th? How much should we pay for that? How many minutes are we required to play him while he’s still terrible in order to bring out the hidden power?

Right now none of this really matters because we’re terrible, so sure, go ahead and play Frank all you want. He sucks and will lose us games, but that’s fine. I have a slight preference for seeing what, say, Trier/DSJ/Allen can do, but none of this is likely to matter much when it comes to our future. Everyone is bad.

The thing is though, if one day we want to be a good basketball team these questions do start to matter. At that point, you really can’t give Frank Ntilikina even 10 minutes a game. There’s no precedent for a legitimately good team giving someone as bad as him offensively any role at all (though there’s admittedly not much precedent for a player being as bad as Frank on offense in general so maybe it’s not a fair question). I mean the Thunder struggled to keep Andre Roberson on the floor during their most recent playoff runs, and he’s Kyrie freakin’ Irving offensively compared to Frank.

TNFH,

I have consistently said that we should give Frank at least three years before giving up on him. This is the start of his third year and I think he’s better than before, but still not good. My impression of the last two years was that he shot badly because he shot badly, but this year I have more of the sense that his shot is intrinsically better and could be ok if he starts to trust it. So I’m still in the give him time camp.

As for giving him playing time, Last year everyone got playing time because they were there. This year I don’t see that happening. When Frank gets playing time it’s because Fiz thinks he’s the best available option. I expect that to continue. I’m hoping that getting playing time because he earned it will give Frank more confidence, but that is probably just wishful thinking on my part.

We’re already complaining about Frank’s playing time and his shooting numbers. He’s played 93 minutes in 4 games. All our other guards are hurt or also suck or both. He’s taken 11 3s. Frank is probably going to suck but yall need to be realistic about what you’re complaining about.

I guess for the sake of fairness I should add that the team was +1.3 points per 100 possessions better with Frank on floor in 2017-2018? This is all so arbitrary though–they were +5 points/100 better with Jarrett Jack on the floor, and +3.2 points/100 with THJ on the floor. This did not lead to those guys developing an army of people willing to tell everyone who doubted them that they just don’t understand basketball well enough.

Does this whole “the team is better with him on the floor” thing really stem from the fact that he appears to have been a slightly better option than the 2017-2018, .428 TS%/23.7 USG% version of Emmanuel Mudiay?

properly-calibrated eye test

It’s 2019 and this is unacceptable

Frank’s got a higher 3 point percentage than Steph Curry. I think we all would have signed up for that preseason

I’ve gone over this before. It’s tiresome.
Here is the link to the on-off data: CLICK HERE
Now scroll to the on-off column (it’s in green):
2017-18 PLUS 1.9
2018-19 PLUS 1.4
2019-20 PLUS 1.4

But…but…Jarret Jack? Look at Jack’s on-off for other years. On-off is unreliable for a single year – that is indisputable. With Frank we have 2 years of data and that’s his entire universe, a very important fact. The odds of it being noise drops after a 2nd plus year. And he’s a plus so far this year replacing Payton. All of this doesn’t mean Frank’s been a good player; it does mean that Frank’s not as bad as the hyperbolic whiny crew here would have you believe: he’s the worst player in the NBA. And you absolutely have to apply the eye test where defense is concerned along with on-off data over a long enough period. Of course, if you want to rely on WP Jowles, go right ahead. How’d that work out for you – guys like Calderon are Tier 1 stars?

Speaking of people throwing out stuff, here Noble checks in yet again with the JK47/Jowles canard we have to wait 6 years on Frank to know. No we don’t. We have him under contract for 2 more years. We’ll definitely know a lot about his shooting by then which is paramount. We’re gonna end up spending most of our cap in two summers so we’ll be able to go over the cap to sign Frank if he’s performing at a high enough level.

I’m not high on DSJ. I think he’s got the IQ of a coconut and he takes entire quarters off. Never liked his shooting which needs to be there unless you want another Payton. But I’m not here every day bashing the guy. I think he, like Frank, should get consistent minutes and I’ve always said that.

At the moment a center is more important to the defense than an elite 1 guard. But you have to anticipate trends in evaluating young players. I suspect athletic centers who are able to shoot 3’s a la Jaren Jackson are gonna be the future. These guys are now practicing their 3 ball early on. KAT’s father had the foresight to force his son to work on his long ball at an early age. More recently, Bamba is shooting 3’s. You know this is gonna be the trend when Lopez and Gasol adjusted their games to shoot more 3’s. Jokic, Vucevic and KAT are especially valuable since they have 3 ball range and are able to post-up. Players like Noel are on their way out.

Perimeter defense should rise in importance when the opposing 5 is no longer situated near the basket. So the value of strong perimeter defenders like Frank and RJ should rise. However, in a max spaced floor, the value of guys with burst will rise as well and that’s neither Frank nor RJ. Those teams have to rely on PnRs/Pops or screening in general but now it will be with any 2 players. And switchable defenders should also therefore be more important and Frank and RJ are both that.

Frank has two major hurdles on offense to clear:
1) He’s gotta shoot 3’s at a high enough clip. Roberson’s an example of the problems when an excellent defensive perimeter player is no threat at all from the arc.
2) He’s gotta be a threat to drive and finish in the PnR. He’s been OK in the PnR and PnPop. For some reason the offense this season doesn’t use them enough. But defenses know he always passes when he drives. So they wait on those pocket passes (all of his passes).

I think the best Frank comp for the future is Beverley. He’s got a career FTr in the Frank/Lonzo zip code. Excellent on-ball defender who has shot 37% from 3. He’s been a plus by on-off stats every season but 1.

Jesus watching this Jet/Miami game is like sticking a hot poker in my eye. Clearly the worst football game I’ve seen since the 1983 Giants/Cardinals Monday night tie debacle…..

Curiously it is like watching a slow motion train wreck. The last minute of the first half was priceless……

@304…well, that was a somewhat sobering post…I had a pretty good buzz going before that…

yeah, the truth is not always sunshine and puppy dogs…

when we have a roster that can get within 5 games of the 8th seed in february – then I’ll worry about throwing a guy out there who’s lost on O, but – who fires up the crowd and maybe, just maybe inspires guys like morris, portis, trier, smith to at least try to move their feet a little on D…

Categorizing Frank handing the ball off at every possible opportunity as ‘ball movement’ is fucking amazing. Frank doesn’t contribute to ball movement in any practical sense. Frank doesn’t even organize the offense in any useful sense either, as the only play he can run is ‘hand the ball off above the line and everybody runs a lazy motion set.’ I can see why, in the context of our shitty offense, that might look like good organizing to someone. But it isn’t actually effective. Frank has no ability to read a defense and adjust accordingly. He has no ability to freelance, and hasn’t developed chemistry with anyone such that he can adjust and run sets on the fly. You can see him failing to do this all the time.
It’s real common for Frank to get setup by a big for a pnr and then use that space to back out and look at what’s going on. Frank calls the play that Fiz yells at him while he’s on his way down the floor, and then runs that by the numbers. He can’t manage anything else. That’s a properly calibrated eye test. That it happens to comport with available stats reinforces it.

If you want to find the kind of player that Frank Ntilikina is supposed to be, just draft great defensive college players in the second round every year, eventually you’ll hit on one who can defend and hit some threes in the NBA. Frank’s skill set is not scarce. If you look hard enough you can prolly find somebody who plays 90% of Frank’s defense and doesn’t play offense like JK47 on a day when he’s being extra cautious about jamming a finger.

You can find role players if that’s what you’re really hankering for, and that is all Frank will ever be: a role player. His 95 percentile outcome is role player.

If he sticks with NYK as that role player, great! More power to him. But you’re deluding yourself if you think he’s a rare or special talent. He’s a low-ceiling specialist who may not even be able to stick in that role.

Clearly the Knicks organization is faking Payton’s injury and Smith general suck-itude just to fuck with Knickerblogger more on the value of Frank. I really can’t imagine that many scenarios where the value of Frank would have to be re-litigated to such an absurd extent yet again.

and we can include dennis smith as better than frank by plus minus last year also…

I’m really not sure what the anti Frank contingent here is arguing for. Are they saying he doesn’t deserve to play at all despite being the only healthy point guard on the roster? Are they saying don’t play him because if he has a little success the Knicks will inevitably overpay him? There doesn’t seem to be a strong case for either of those positions.

You’re conflating multiple positions. There’s one argument that (1) Frank sucks now; there’s another argument (2) that Frank will always suck; and a third argument (3) is what should we do with Frank now, that’s your argument. Some of these arguments do have crossover, but generally the third argument is the weakest position one must take in order to be on the Frank-side of things. For the argument your invoking Frank just needs to exist as a pg on the roster. I think few people here would argue for benching him now, even if he sucks there’s no other option (I’ll leave aside any argument for or against his value to a tank).

The problem is that not everyone views Frank as only a play in case of emergency player. You’re confusing the “what should we do with Frank now” question with the “is Frank, objectively speaking, a good player” question. Most of us are talking description and not prescription. Frank descriptively sucks; Frank prescriptively is our only option, so sure why not.

The final question, “will Frank ever be good,” is an intermediate position. You can admit Frank sucks now, but hold out hope he’ll improve. Some people reject this position, holding his defense is worth more than his atrocious offense. However, others will restrict their belief in Frank to a slightly more plausible claim that Frank needs to shoot the ball at least slightly below average instead of all-time worst. This argument hinges on people’s belief in an average offensive future-Frank outcome occuring.

I do think it’s hilarious we are talking about how Frank needs a therapist as we collectively tap out our 10,000 post on his future in the NBA.

unless this is identity and we are all frankburners talking ourselves up and down like some landmark forum bathroom mirror.

plus 1 or 2 per 100 in 2700 unadjusted minutes on a bad team (higher collinearity and variance on average) doesn’t die at the hand of the p hacking police bc it’s already doa-insignificant even at p = .45 internet blog threshold. frank’s career luck adjusted (for opponent’s open 3pt pct and ft pct) regularized rapm is literally 0.0 (tho positive on defensive and negative on offense, in line with the eye test and every other test).

adjusted or unadjusted, the plus minus signal is just silent at this point no matter how much you want it to confirm your priors. here’s just a fraction of a list of players on shitty teams whose first 2000-3000 minutes in the league were at least plus one per 100 unadjusted in just the last 5-10 years alone. it’s a long list that’s a sampling of a much longer list bc the variance is something to see.

tarik black
robert sacre
tj mcconnell
ben mclemore
mcw
ryan kelly
austin rivers
jared sullinger
phil pressey
chris johnson
gerald henderson
shelvin mack
cj watson’s

or as zfrankman and stratofrank would say, get a new slant but maybe you have a point there

and we can include dennis smith as better than frank by plus minus last year also…

Sure but let’s present all of the data.
DSJ 20yo season……………MINUS 9.4 in 2049 minutes
DSJ 21yo season ……………MINUS 1.8 in 908 minutes
DSJ 21yo season……………PLUS 2.0 in 600 minutes
DSJ 22yo season……………MINUS 45.9 in 23 minutes

Of course, you and others will no doubt argue that DSJ wasn’t playing his natural role with Doncic. But I could argue that Frank was being ping-ponged as a 1,2,3. And that Frank is almost 1 year younger than Smith. I’ve stated that I think Frank’s got a better chance of being a useful role player on a good team than Knox or DSJ and I’ve given the reasons. The difference is that I’m not as dug in on my position as others. I’ll root for the success of all of these guys.

It never occurred to me to cite Allonzo Trier’s +2.4 number from last year as a reason he should play more, but I guess this is a thing now, so yeah, play Trier based on his raw +/-!

I wrote a single year of raw +/- data is meaningless. If he puts up another plus season on high enough minutes played, then that’s a factor in evaluating the degree to which his lousy defense impacts his overall productivity.

Trier’s 1459 minute sample is meaningless, but Frank’s 2610 minute sample that we’re not even totally sure says what you’re saying it does tells us all we need to know.

Sounds like a good-faith argument about a very reliable statistic.

haha portis for mitch it’s all happening

Christ. Anyone still want to defend the “house the market on the guys no one else wanted that badly” strategy?

I almost feel ashamed for preferring to watch the games instead of reading the analytics afterwards !

Swapping Mitch for Portis to “unlock Randle” is stupid on so many levels

I would trade Golden State next year’s 1st round pick Unrestricted for DeAngelo Russell

i mean we just demonstrated how your eye test is pretty faulty… especially when you ignore all of frank’s defensive mistakes in the 4th quarter of the bulls game…. i imagine that’s pretty consistent when you watch him….

We’re able to judge Frank’s on-ball defense and how he navigates the PnR. Judging team defense is very dicey. SVG said at an analytics conference that stats and eye test do a terrible job at evaluating team defense. He stressed that you have to know where a player is supposed to be in order to evaluate their performance. So if someone doesn’t switch when the defensive system calls for him to switch, the other player then might have to closeout late and the stats and eye test ding him. Then there are subtle aspects like the ones Rama noted. And even if you were able to quantify all of this, you’d have to have some standard against which to judge. If Frank gets beat twice in the PnR against a certain player out of 10 times, is that good or bad? What’s the average against that particular player?

I don’t think anyone has ever argued Portis was a good idea other than maybe in the fourth quarter of the Bulls game.

I don’t care who starts as long as Mitch plays until he fouls out

Without looking at the “fake stats,” I want you to tell me every player who has been subbed in for Frank (their play constitutes the “off” data), what percentage of available minutes each one played, their on/off metrics, and the total number of possessions they played, collectively.

You don’t me or anyone else to tell you that stuff; it’s all easy to find. So is lineup data.

But it is kind of funny to see on-off data described as “fake stats” by a cohort that insists on the inviolability of individual box score data.

it is kind of funny to see on-off data described as “fake stats” by a cohort that insists on the inviolability of individual box score data.

Thank you for explaining that you’re missing the point by a country mile.

This conversation about raw on/off numbers and Frank Ntilikina is below the intelligence level of this blog. I get it that the stans really, really want him to be good, but alas he ain’t.

lineup data isn’t fake…. it’s the conclusions you draw from it that is….. and the limitations from it have been accepted for quite some time now… which is why you have all these attempts to adjust plus minus….

if you’re gonna take one data point in plus minus…. you have to accept all the numbers also…. and all the other numbers are actually more informative… way less noisy… and have sufficient samples to make the right conclusions…

and the conclusion is that frank have been a really bad player and unlikely to be come better than that… i imagine this is gonna end in tears for a lot of ppl but it’s the truth….