Knicks Morning News (2022.11.28)

I will also pass on a complete 20 game check-in because too little has changed from my POV at game zero for it to be particularly interesting. The front office just hasn’t put us in a very desirable spot. I’ll stick to things that have genuinely stuck out to me in some way or another:

-I was unambiguously on the “go after Brunson” train and even I’m surprised at how good he’s been. The numbers are all there, both the granular (he takes literally the most “short mid” shots of anyone in the league and hits 54% of them) and the AIO (3.8 BPM). His defensive deficiencies and work-in-progress long range jumper require some creativity in lineup building around him, but he’s good enough to justify it.

-Cam Reddish continues to fascinate me as a Rorschach Test. As seen in this very thread, a lot of people feel he has clearly proved he’s a keeper. Yet when you look at the numbers…they still look pretty Cam Reddishy. He’s upped his efficiency to league-average territory, but has done so by lowering his usage to Tyson Chandler levels. I think it’s good for the team that he has seemingly pared down his ambitions in this sense, but it also calls into question his ceiling. I am definitely not exempt from finding him more interesting as a player than the numbers indicate–I think he’s the rare plus defender who doesn’t really generate defensive box score stats and some of his finishes are hypnotizing. However, we should ask ourselves how much we, as a team that isn’t good with Cam making $6M, can afford to pay a guy who only impacts the game in so many (read: not many) ways. I’d still much, much rather have rolled the dice on someone at 19 to be honest.

-I’ve already discussed the Novakization of Obi Toppin (tl;dr he’s taking an absurd number of threes at the expense of shots at the rim compared to past seasons and college). I don’t think it’s the right way to utilize him. He should definitely be shooting threes, but they should be one weapon in a larger arsenal that I do think he has. Of course, until he actually shows us said larger arsenal that’s just conjecture on my part. Hopefully we eventually kind of unleash him fully and the time spent playing like Davis Bertans winds up being beneficial developmentally.

-I think the team will improve, but our record won’t. I don’t think we’re the 25th best team in the league and our net rating should go up as RJ Barrett stops being historically bad, Quickley hits some shots, and Grimes settles into the rotation. We don’t have very good shooters generally, but 32% overall feels a tad unlucky. There will probably be some positive defensive regression too with regards to opponent 3PT%, though maybe not as much as we’d think given that some of that seems intentional/scheme based. I don’t think this improvement will be reflected much in our record though, because we’ve picked up some cheap wins that will be harder to come by as superior teams get healthier and gel a little more.

-Lastly, I am generally struggling a bit to get invested in this team on a game-to-game basis. There are just so few players I think genuinely have a chance to be on the next 50+ game winner. Whether it’s because the front office has already shown a desire to trade them, because they just aren’t good enough, because they’re too old, or some combination of all of that this just very much feels like a rental team of sorts.

“What would the most realistic best case scenario be for RJ right now, maybe an Andrew Wiggins type career?”

I struggle with this question because RJ is kind of unique among players who haven’t washed out of the NBA immediately in that he really just does not have an above average skill. Even Wiggins was a pretty good finisher right from the outset, it just took him forever to get his jump shot together.

It doesn’t bode well for RJ that both “finishing at the rim” and “jump shooting” fall under the weakness category for him right now. That really puts you in a deficit when it comes to becoming a good player.

I guess it’s possible he gets good enough at spot up 3PT shooting that he can be a legitimate threat off the ball who also looks to score on cuts. That obviously doesn’t sound like a player who scores 20 PPG, so my envisioned role for him here probably doesn’t comport with his own.

That Ringer article just made me scared that we’re gonna be the team to bail the Bulls out of this with a stupid DeRozan or LaVine trade. You can tell me about how that isn’t necessarily *this* front office’s M.O. all you want, if you aren’t at least a little worried about the same thing I don’t believe you’ve followed this team over the years.

Re: Cam, “good defender” was probably entirely too strong a term. I’m likely unduly influenced by actually watching a lengthy wing defender, because it feels like it’s been forever since we’ve had one of those. I mean that literally—I am not sure we’ve had someone who fits that description during the entire time I’ve been watching the Knicks.

Realistically his defense isn’t particularly close to where it would need to be to justify a serious long-term investment, given that his offense continues to be a once-a-month kind of thing.

Our net rating is definitely more telling than our record, given how many badly injured teams we’ve faced plus just general early season weirdness. Ours is 25th.

Net rating trutherism has a very poor track record on this board, so I’m gonna stick with it over our bad-but-not-as-bad record.

A little fun with Stathead–trying to cope with our predicament by getting a better feel for the chances of landing a star in our draft territory.

Took a look at the last ten drafts, and searched for how many players in each of them have produced a single 4+ BPM season in which they played 2000+ minutes. Not because there is anything supernatural about that number, but because the exercise requires the use of a shorthand and if you think mine sucks propose a better one.

Somewhat arbitrarily chose the last 10 drafts because I think there’s probably something to be said for the idea that as front offices have gotten more sophisticated, the number of these kinds of draft steals has gone down and might continue to go down.

I set the minutes benchmark at 2000+ to avoid The Isaiah Hartenstein Problem.

Didn’t include 2022 because that data seems useless for obvious reasons.

Results:

2011: Kawhi, Butler, IT, Vucevic (4)
2012: Draymond (1)
2013: Giannis, Gobert (2)
2014: Jokic (1)
2015: Booker (1)
2016: Murray, Sabonis (2)
2017: Bam, Mitchell (2)
2018: none
2019: none
2020: none
2021: none

Caveats:

-There are guys from the more recent drafts who may well do it one day, so I purposely am not taking an average because I think that could be a little misleading.

-There are guys who just miss either the “last 10 drafts” cutoff or the BPM cutoff. SGA was technically omitted because in his 4+ BPM season he played fewer than 2000 minutes, and I didn’t include 2022 (he’s on pace to get there quite comfortably). Siakam just missed the BPM cutoff last year. Again, if you don’t like my shorthands propose better ones.

Still, I can’t say I’m confident in the “simply sit back and watch Leon Rose make the single best pick in an entire draft” plan. This really is a rare phenomenon, which is why we all know the examples off the top of our heads.