Knicks Morning News (2022.09.22)

We signed MJ Walker to a camp deal. He’s a 6’5″ shooting guard who can shoot a bit and is a pretty good athlete. Likes to defend. Sort of a poor man’s Grimes. Went undrafted after 4 years at Florida State.

TNFH, respectfully, I truly wonder if you give my posts a fair reading.

You seem laser focused on individual TS%. I have repeatedly stated that shooting efficiency is but a part of being a starting player in today’s NBA, and defense and rebounding are also huge parts of the equation.

That said, I absolutely feel that there is an inverse relationship between TS% and Usage. If Mitch had to move up to a 25% usage, my guess is that he would be a disaster in the scoring attempts accounting for the additional 15%, probably in the low .300’s.

If you are asking whether I think that playing largely with Kemba (ugh!), Mitch, Burks and Fournier, definitely had a detrimental effect on their TS%, yes, I feel very confident that it did.

If you are asking me whether I believe that if RJ and Randle deferred more to any of those guys, it would have significantly improved the overall TS% of those units, no, I don’t…it would have just incrementally distributed the missed shots elsewhere.

If you are asking me whether Kemba and Fournier’s terrible defense and Mitch’s offensive limitations played a more much significant role in the team’s bad +/- numbers than you are allowing for (i.e. you are distributing more blame to RJ and Randle than their share), then yes, I do.

And if you are asking me whether I think that swapping out Obi and Grimes for Randle and RJ in the starting lineup would have improved the starting unit, I would say no, rather emphatically. You would have a lineup that could be easily handled defensively by any starting group in the NBA. And you would have a MUCH worse defensive unit going against teams that virtuall all have an all-NBA player plus a multi-year all star, plus three solid starters.

Just like in any sport, if an opposing team sees a weakness on your team, they will target that weakness over and over until it is addressed by the coach. In baseball, say a hitter can’t hit a letter-high 95+ mph fastball, but can handle the same pitch down in the zone. Any good MLB pitcher can throw either pitch on demand, so he’s going to see that high pitch over and over again and rarely see the low one.

Like you, I watched nearly every Obi possession for the entire first half of the season, and saw teams targeting him over and over on both ends, esecially on defense. You could see Thibs’ exasperation with Obi on that end and how he would go back to Randle after a particularly obvious overmatch. On offense, Obi was almost entirely limited to run-outs and dunks, which I’m pretty confident would be far less available vs. starting defenses once they adjusted to prevent it. He was nearly useless in the halfcourt, whether in isolation or shooting open 3’s. He was never double-teamed and never took advantage of a mismatch vs. a smaller player. He never passed out of double-teams because it was never necessary to double him, and that meant that it was less likely that there was someone open to pass to anyway. It wasn’t until much later in the season that his defense went from atrocious to very mediocre and he started hitting some 3’s and showing some limited flashes in the paint beyond catching lobs.

I think that playing him 30+ mpg against opposing starters would have been an unmitigated disaster, way worse than anything you saw from Randle. No way that any coach in a win-now situation would have allowed that to happen. Obi had to improve to earn minutes, and he did.

I could go into the same process with Grimes, although Grimes vs. RJ would be a better argument than Obi vs Randle. Still a losing one, though. All rookies have gaping holes in their games on both ends.

As to IQ, I think he was a better option at PG than Kemba from game 1, and probably a pick your poison

“We’re presenting NBArank and vague recollections as #analysis. I understand why Mike K nearly blew a gasket.”

Do you think the projection of Randle somewhere in the 70’s (which was about what to expect for next year) was fair? I do, and explained why.

And if you believe that, is it far-fetched to believe that some sort of leveling effect was in play among the 200 respondants, where the folks who put him in the top 20 were leveled out by folks who put him totally outside the top 100? And that enough of the more serious students of the game felt he was due for a regression to his mean to rank him somewhere in the ’70s (but nowhere near the 20’s he was at the year before?)

What I never said was that all the respondents were serious students of the game. That said, I would guess that many of them knew of Randle’s woes to at least some degree.

As to Obi, we’ll never know the answer to what would have hapened if he started in place of Randle and their minutes distribution was reversed. If others didn’t see what I saw re: Obi’s defense, we’ll have to agree to disagree. I actually did refer to some stats from the 55 games pre-all star game, like Obi’s 22.6% from 3, and some were generally implied but not referred to specifically, like his taking only 12% of his shots not at the rim (102 of his 199 makes from 2 were dunks). I don’t see that shot profile as a particularly hard guy to defend if you keep him out of transition, or a guy that helps free others up in the halfcourt.

So it’s not fair to say that I “ignore” stats or don’t refer to them in defending my positions. I just interpret them differently. I also place more trust in Thibs’ judgment on these matters than some here, and yes, as a guy who has done nothing but eat, sleep and shit basketball for 40 years and who pores over stats and claims to watch and analyze film from games numerous times, I don’t think it’s flippant or disrespectful to say “I saw what he saw.”

Thanks, EB. I am not as skilled at making arguments as some here, and my word choices don’t always convey what I am trying to get across. But sometimes it feels like rebuttals are more of a game of “gotcha” than an earnest attempt to read between the lines and give a poster the benefit of the doubt.

TNFH is a formidable crafter of arguments, so much so that he will make an amazing living by doing just that (or less in agressively defending less lucrative but more noble causes…see what I did there?) So expecting me to make my points as skillfully as he does when we are going at it is a high bar. I’m probably going to lose, even when in retrospect he was dead wrong and I was dead right.

The same goes for strat. Even though I think he’s been wrong enough to deserve much of what he gets, he’s also been right more than he gets credit for.

And that’s fine. It’s part of the fun of this blog. I just don’t like it when folks get unnecessarily condescending or dismissive or pick one poorly articulated phrase or point and use it to unfairly characterize a much more complex and nuanced line of reasoning. That shit happens all the time, and only adds fuel to the fire. I try hard not to do that, and am not always successful, but will keep trying. I hope others will too.

“TNFH says:
September 22, 2022 at 12:34
If Saben Lee really was considered an asset in this trade I suppose I’m obligated to note he was drafted with the 38th pick in the 2020 draft, a pick we traded for a future second in a move that was criticized here at the time but has been memory holed.”

Saben Lee had a .499 TS% last year, a career 3pt% of .265, and a career BPM of -1.3. I’d way rather have the pick we traded for than him.

Hubert, I was not using the ranking in any way to defend Randle’s performance last year. In fact, I was saying that even if you accept the rankings as fair, when the 70th best player in the NBA is your team’s go-to guy, you’re in trouble. I made that clear when I created that spreadsheet and demonstrated that he’d be the lowest ranked go-to guy of any team trying to win.

But I still think Randle gets more share of the blame for the shitty play of his lineups than he deserves, for all the reasons I mentioned. The rankings, even if accurate, don’t matter one way or another in that regard. If he’s the lowest ranked of all of the #1 options in the NBA, to me, that’s as much of a team construction thing as a Julius thing. No serious poster here believes that Julius is suited to be the #1 option on a contending team. If he plays well like he did in 2020-21, or in select games in 2021-22, you can win regular season games with him in that role. But sooner or later things will break down.

The thing is, he’s not getting paid like a #1 option, so to me it’s a salvageable situation. You simply need to get better players for the #1 and #2 role and get him to buy in to being third fiddle. That’s where the guys ranked #70-80 are slotted in on contending teams, and that’s where he belongs here. If he refuses to accept that, you bench him, and/or trade him in a fire sale with assets attached. But if he can buy into the Chris Bosh role, he can be an asset at his salary.

The problem is, getting him to buy into that role is harder when everyone knows there isn’t a single player on the team suited for a #1 or #2 guy on a contender. Brunson was our highest ranked guy, and he’s at #60, so the same things apply to him as to Randle and RJ. It’s not like the team has better #1 options to defer to, and they certainly didn’t have any last year, especially once Rose got hurt. And if you think that any of Obi, IQ or Grimes was better suited for that role last year, then I don’t know what to tell you.

But someone has to take on that role in the starting lineup. Every projected playoff team has at least 2 guys in the top 50. Many have three. Several fringe teams only have one, but those guys are Dame, or Luka, or Beal.

TNFH it’s funny because on a long drive I was listening to the HOF stuff and George Karl said that post-Melo season was his favorite year and he thinks his best coaching job.

That said, they had some clear advantages over our team, most notably one of the more underrated PG tandems (Andre Miller and Ty Lawson) running the show and an all-time great complementary player (Iggy) leading the team in minutes.

But yeah, that would be a great model to follow this year. I think Julius could actually excel in somethinh like that Iggy role, (more emphasis on scoring and rebounding and less on positionless defending) meaning as a 3rd option who can distribute or be opportunistic against matchups. Obi could be Chandler, IQ could be Brewer, Mitch could be McGee, Hart could be Koufos, Fournier could be Fournier, I guess Grimes would have to be Gallo, and Cam could be Anthony Randolph. (of course you could say that Al Harrington was the Julius of the shorter season and they got better after ditching him…)

I think Obi is already a much better defender than Willy and his 3pt shot started to come around late last season, but funny you bring him up. He was also a guy who couldn’t get off the bench because he was downright atrocious on D. Some folks here were upset by that, and were even more upset when he asked to be traded and was unceremoniously dumped for 2 second round picks. But he never really developed.

Aaron Judge’s season is amazing. I don’t think it is the equal of some seasons in the past, but it certainly ranks as an all-time great season.

There were some disadvantages in the past as well. I’m sure if Judge had to use Babe Ruth’s 40-oz Hickory bat, or to hit in the old Yankee stadium, he’d probably agree.

Well it’s official….Udoka suspended for the year.

I still don’t get that Bojan trade. He’s an expiring contract, yet Olynyk has an extra year on his deal and Lee sucks. I know Olynyk was a Celt under Ainge but it really doesn’t make sense that he couldn’t have gotten a better return for such a great shooter.

Detroit just might be pretty good this season…