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92 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2022.12.29)”
Guys got a little testy last night. I watched the Wagner and Allen hits and frankly, while both were fouls, neither needed to be bench-clearing events. I know these guys are worried about injury but the tough guy routines are stupid. It’s a sport, so people are going to accidentally bump you! I know, shocking!
“Zero of the players you mentioned have ever scored 33 points in a single game during their entire careers. Grimes did it in his first 70.”
it kind of seems that you’re using career highs in pts as some sort of forward looking indicator just because it’s there… what on earth would make you think that?
guess who scored 40 pts within their rookie year? grayson allen… does he have more upside than quentin grimes then by the transitive property? what about channing frye who scored 30? or fucking jeremy lin? or does quentin grimes have more upside than mikal bridges who hasn’t scored 33 pts either in his career?
it’s a faulty premise to begin with but it doesn’t take more than two seconds of scrutiny to test it out….
Obi Toppin had 35 and then 42.
Why would Quentin Grimes have been “holding things in reserve”? Do other players do this, too? Was he doing it in summer league?
On a non-Grimes subject, I was checking out DeJounte Murray’s season so far, since there was some criticism on this site when we didn’t actively pursue him
His TS% is at .528 (he’s never been above .53) and he’s shooting around 34% from 3 (career 33%). I know he’s a great defender and all, but what am I missing with this guy? Seems pretty average to me
I’m not sure which metrics you do like for forward looking analysis, and I know you dont like TS%, I’m happy to discuss what metrics you like because you do seem ro know this area pretty well.
That said, in absence of knowing, Grimes is putting up a similar TS% and higher usage than Mikal did in his 2nd season despite being a year younger. Mikal is a longer, better defender but offensively I’m not sure and Grimes could be a high level defender without being Mikal defensively.
He’s hitting twice as many 3s per 36 as Bridges.
He’s hitting .9 less 2pt shots on 1.8 less 2pt shots per 36, again a year younger. In the same age season he’s hitting .2 more 2s per 36 than Mikal. Mikal has expanded his offensive game largely through upping his 2pas.
“now the Grimes pick is not on that level but you should get the sense of what i’m talking about… 3pt specialists are freely availablle in the nba… donte divencenzo would be making a pretty darn good grimes impression now.. probably better in fact… and he signed for 2 / 9… bruce brown 2/13.. delon wright 2/16… lonnie walker 1/6..
and how likely is Grimes going to be better than any one of them? that’s the problem…. maybe you ‘miss’ and pick a guy like jaden springer (who wouldn’t be a miss yet but argument’s sake)…. the kind of front office that misses with jaden springer maybe/probably doesn’t miss with hali.. ”
You will receive absolutely no argument from me on the larger point here. Grimes was 35th on my 2021 big board for this exact reason, and I have no regrets about the process that led me to ranking Jalen Johnson, Springer, Cam Thomas, and plenty of others ahead of him even though Grimes has outproduced all of them so far.
But I have to disagree on a few more specific fronts. Grimes is currently pretty clearly the best out of the Grimes/Allen/Walker/DiVincenzo/Wright group: https://stathead.com/tiny/zOh2o. I’d put Brown in a different category because his role is night-and-day different from these guys, but Grimes is at least arguably outproducing him as well.
More importantly, Grimes is *by far* the youngest player in that group. Most of them were complete non-entities at age 22. Hell, Walker is the only one who wasn’t *in college* at that age, and he sucked as a 22 year-old.
This of course means absolutely nothing if you don’t think Grimes is capable of doing more than exactly what he’s doing right now, because while he is the most productive among that group it’s definitely not by leaps and bounds. So you’re absolutely right that it’d be worth just signing one of them and using the pick on someone else IF IF IF you think Grimes’ production at 22 will be his production at 27.
And therein lies our disagreement. I think it’s reasonable to project Grimes as a relatively low-ceiling player, but I would still be surprised if he can’t raise his volume to, say, 15-17 PPG while maintaining at 60% TS at some point. When you account for his defense, that’s a player you’re gonna have a hell of a time finding on the cheap in free agency.
Side note: both Walker and Brown would’ve been excellent signings for us as opposed to Hartenstein and I swear I’m not just saying that because I went to the University of Miami.
They should have taken a bigger swing than Grimes at 25, just as they should be taking swings at people like Reddish.
There’s nothing to be gained for this team by minimizing risk. That’s the path to continued purgatory. *Maybe* the Ivey try shows that at least elements of the FO gets this. Thibodeau clearly does not.
*** I know he’s a great defender and all, but what am I missing with this guy? Seems pretty average to me***
You are missing the first clause of your own sentence.
Dejounte’s big season last year is looking like a pretty big fat outlier.
I was in favor of acquiring him as a Hail Mary upside play, with the idea that maybe 5+ BPM seasons could be sustainable, but… alas.
His TS% is barely down from last year. The things that are down significantly are rebound rate and assist rate, the latter pretty clearly because he plays with a very ball-dominant backcourt partner. He’s not really a lead guard anymore.
I don’t see anything in the numbers that would sensibly account for that big a drop in BPM, unless it’s assist rate and that is easily explainable. Seems quite black boxy. There’s no real reason for anyone who liked him before to no longer like him.
Re Grimes, a friend told me once that there are two types of people.
1. Those who can project into the future. (the people you want to meet when pitching an idea)
2. Those who cannot. (because they lack imagination and only see what’s in front of them)
The draft and an eval of young players in general is an idea about the future. Some people get it, some don’t.
The problem with being basketball smart at 22 is that there’s no upside there from growing older and wiser. Basketball IQ is an “old guy” basketball skill. “Shooting 3 pointers” — old guy basketball skill. There are others. That’s how you project things — “which of these talents is likely to look which way when the person matures fully”? In part we can use data to project that, but that’s only a piece of the puzzle.
You don’t really even want your really young guys to have old guy basketball skills. The only benefit to that is that you then absolutely, positively know they will have them when they actually get older — as opposed to being only quite sure.
If you’re afraid of 19 and 20 and 21 and 22 year olds doing stupid things on the basketball floor, you’re in the wrong business and if you’re phobic bordering on clinical about 19 and 20 and 21 and 22 year olds doing stupid things on the basketball floor, you’re *really* in the wrong business.
22yo Quentin Grimes hasn’t hit the 1500 NBA minute mark. He just passed the 400 FGA mark for his career, and only 174 of them have occurred this year…and 117 of those have occurred in 12 December games. Of his 174 shot attempts this year, 60 of them have been 2PAs and he has made 65% of them. He is currently at a 14% usage
Mikal Bridges played 2400 minutes just in his rookie year and had 563 FGA, only 137 of those were from 2 (55%) at a 12% usage and a 3PAr of 55.6%. Fast forward to last year…in 2800 minutes he took 858 FGA, 546 of which were 2PA and hit 63% of them, at a 15% usage.
DiVincenzo never came close to QG’s 2P or 3P percentages in his first 2000 minutes from either 2 or 3. Bruce Brown shot terribly from everywhere. Lonnie Walker was terrible from 2. Delon Wright was 25 when he hit the 1500 minute mark and is .502 from 2 over his career. Klay Thompson never surpassed .526 from 2 and is a career .488 from there. Bones Hyland can’t crack 40% from 2 this year.
The list of high 3PAr guys who don’t score efficiently from 2 is pretty long…Prichard, Bey, etc.
Desmond Bane might be a nice upside comparison for Grimes. Here’s a look at how their age 22 seasons compare (rookie year for Bane, 2nd year for Grimes)
https://stathead.com/tiny/Q4Px9
There are some minor differences (2 2PA/36) and of course Grimes had an offseason to improve his game based on last year’s NBA experience, but that’s probably what you are hoping for with Grimes…a slightly larger, better defensive, similarly efficient but not quite as versatile scorer…both tough, tenacious 2-way players. It will be interesting to see what happens to Grimes’ efficiency as his usage creeps up.
The fun and fascinating thing about Grimes is that he’s so very hard to predict. This is a guy who was going to be a repeat NBA all-star coming out of high school, who failed in college, stepped back, switched schools, and remade his game into grit and grind. I don’t know any similar history comp.
In terms of tools, he lacks nothing. Sweet shot, quick hands, good handle, swift drive to the basket, capable pull-up, hard-nosed D, nice passer, great motor, and almost no mental lapses. Not huge, but tall enough. He also plays within himself, there’s no Cam “I’m already an all-star, you’re keeping me from greatness” crap.
Even if he’s 90-95% a finished product, he’s already a solid NBA pro who will likely play for 10+ years somewhere or other, even if it’s mostly top of the bench and spot starter. It’s where you put the % that’s tricky.
Even if he’s 90-95% a finished product, he’s already a solid NBA pro who will likely play for 10+ years somewhere or other, even if it’s mostly top of the bench and spot starter.
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In other words, a Tier 5 The Athletic guy — where he’s already rated. This stuff is already baked into the cake and there’s no argument from any quarter anywhere, making it continually inexplicable why he’s such a center of attention around here.
I guess it’s inevitable since he came out of the Incineration Draft and to a degree he’s the anti-Reddish, but the latter seems quite obsessive indeed. As we sit here today, he’s a better player than Cam Reddish — particularly in the Thibs deployment — an assertion with which literally no one disagrees but one that remains irrelevant to anything. Quentin Grimes eats his vegetables. Cam Reddish does not. We all know this.
BTW in 12 December games, Grimes is playing over 35mpg and has a TS% of .642 at a 15.3% usage. That includes his terrible game vs. CHI coming back from a sprained ankle.
Maybe we should wait another 1500 minutes before we get too worried about Grimes’ low ceiling.
Sorry, E. But saying you don’t want young players to have b-ball IQ or that it’s an old player’s skill is one of the most idiotic statements you’ve ever made on this blog.
Sure some dumb young players get wiser with experience. Some also don’t get that much wiser at all.
Jason Kidd came into the league with a high ball IQ. So did Steve Nash. They got even wiser the more experience they got. Old man Kidd pulled some super crafty shit with us in his one season.
Another way to put it. Athleticism fades. Basketball IQ does not. And yeah some young players can gain that IQ but some dudes come into the league young and already smart. They can become more athletic as they go through NBA training and get bigger and stronger. But dumb basketball players rarely get wise enough to make up for their athletic skills that inevitably decline.
“Sure some dumb young players get wiser with experience. Some also don’t get that much wiser at all. ”
And if they don’t, they don’t. Still might be worth the risk.
I’m with WalkerandBender on this one. You WANT young guys with smarts. All players do some dumb shit when they start because the NBA is hard, man. But is the light suddenly going to go on in Cam’s head? I’d rather bet on Grimes continuing to grow in craftiness than on Cam suddenly ‘getting it.’ The NBA garbage dump is literally filled with the bodies of great young athletes with no clue.
And E, while your statements above are all more or less correct (it’s baked in that he’s what he is [for whatever that statement is worth], he eats his vegetables, etc.), you completely disregard the solid, impossible-to-argue-against fact that some players actually get better over time. You seem to be arguing that outside of the Zions and Jas of the world, a “Tier 5” (and for the record I loathe that term, which guarantees you’ll continue to use it) will always and forever be locked into Tier 5.
There are many reasons (Z–Man lists just one) to think Grimes might well be one of those players who will move up in the world. No guarantee, and how much is also open to debate, but that’s why there’s such interest — there’s hints and evidence, and real possibility.
I understand the sentiment but it strikes me as odd to say that a guy with old guy skills can’t make meaningful improvements in the young guy skills.
Players with quintessential old guy skills improve their young guy skills, i.e. 2PT% and/or 2PA volume, all the time. In fact it’s rare for players that stick in the NBA in general not to make those kinds of improvements.
Mikal Bridges did it, Desmond Bane did it, and Buddy Hield did it, just to name a few. There are of course counter examples and I’m not betting my rent money on Quentin Grimes becoming Desmond Bane, but *ruling out* potential improvement for a 22 year-old former top-10 recruit who has already improved in the NBA seems just as irrational.
a “Tier 5” (and for the record I loathe that term)
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Why do you loathe it so much? It’s from an outside writer of some renown and the premises and analyses he uses are very solid.
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“There are many reasons (Z–Man lists just one) to think Grimes might well be one of those players who will move up in the world.”
Z-Man isn’t that great a source, but in any event, Z-Man was comparing Grimes to some of the comps that were offered up — Brown, Allen, etc. Those comps have nothing do do with Grimes “moving up in the world.”
but *ruling out* potential improvement for a 22 year-old
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No one’s ruling out potential improvement. If you’re referring to me specifically, I’m not only not ruling it out, I expect that he will in fact improve.
I can’t believe we’re dinging the FO for picking Grimes at 25 over other players who were projected to be picked around 25 or hen grimes so far is better than those players.
Once to you get into the late teens of the first round if you draft a good player you’ve Done a good job. Getting mad that we could have picked grimes at 30 instead of 25 is idiotic. There is no difference at all btwn those draft spots. This isn’t picking Knox at 8 when Mitchell or Bam are picked a few spots later. If you pick at 25, you pray you get a decent young player. If you do, you did your job well.
swifty, what’s funny is that on one hand we should preach patience with Cam and RJ and on the other hand we should clamp a low ceiling on Grimes. Let’s do cartwheels when RJ has a decent streak (for him) like he’s having right now, with 7,800 NBA minutes under his belt at the same age as Grimes because RJ’s ceiling is so very high, while Grimes is permanently stuck in Tier 5 or whatever. And if only Cam could find the magic coach that could unlock his greatness…how dare Thibs permabench him in favor of old man Grimes, even though Cam has put up 3700 minutes of suck for two different teams, including the one who wasted a #10 pick on him. But Thibs of course is maximizing Grimes’ efficiency by playing him mostly with 4 paint cloggers.
It’s a little weird to dismiss a guy who makes good basketball plays with an “eats his vegetables” tag, and to suggest that another, demonstrably worse player, doesn’t get a fair shake because he doesn’t eat said metaphorical vegetables.
Grimes has been a productive NBA player and Cam Reddish has not. One guy plays smart, and one doesn’t. One guy is good at throwing the ball into the basket and the other isn’t. I’ll take the guy who plays smart and seems to be able to throw the ball into the basket when asked.
Also if you pick a good player at 25 and another team picks a better player at 30, you shouldn’t be upset that we didn’t pick that guy. You picked a good player.
“It’s a little weird to dismiss a guy who makes good basketball plays with an “eats his vegetables” tag, and to suggest that another, demonstrably worse player, doesn’t get a fair shake because he doesn’t eat said metaphorical vegetables.
Grimes has been a productive NBA player and Cam Reddish has not. One guy plays smart, and one doesn’t. One guy is good at throwing the ball into the basket and the other isn’t. I’ll take the guy who plays smart and seems to be able to throw the ball into the basket when asked.”
Trolls gotta troll…
“I understand the sentiment”
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I figured you would. We essentially agree on the player at issue; the only disagreements, if they exist at all, are at the edges and the product of internet litigiousness.
We also agree for all intents and purposes on the Incineration Draft.
I think there’s slight disagreement in risk tolerance generally — mine is very high under the philosophy of anything but anything to avoid purgatory. I’d prefer swinging at the Cam Reddishes of the world and missing, to purgatory.
But maybe there’s not even significant disagreement there. In the fantasy GM lives KBers are living, I would never — and I mean never — let my team get into purgatory. I sense general agreement from you on this point, as well as certain other “Team Pessimism” types, the only possible difference being one of definition or degree.
There’s zero evidence that Cam has a higher ceiling or is more athletic than Grimes.
Grimes is also younger than Cam.
“I’m not sure which metrics you do like for forward looking analysis, and I know you dont like TS%, I’m happy to discuss what metrics you like because you do seem ro know this area pretty well.”
you have to take everything into account but instead of taking TS.. you should be breaking it down to it’s more stable components…. 2pt fg% .. ft%… ftr… all of this are foundational to scoring well and scoring well into the future… ftr especially is a very rare skill for anyone to have which is a measure of how difficult you are to be guarded….
but what does that mean? the guys who do well tend to do certain things well because they are close analogs to what they are already doing well….
the inverse of that is also true… it’s hard for players who are already limited to improve because you’re asking them to do things they’ve never done before… it’s much easier for a guy who’s already getting to the line a good deal to do other simpler things like shooting a basketball after catching it… than asking a guy who’s used to only shooting it after catching it to then learn how to dribble a ball to the point where they can get past a defender in dynamic situations.. lot of these nba players figured that out in grade school and have done so at very high levels….
that is why guys like Knox and Frank had no chance… there’s simply too much for them to improve upon.. and they’re coming from such a low skillset to improve upon.. .Grimes is climbing past the succeeding at low usage part but there’s no part of that usage that asks him to do anything himself…. it’s basically all catch and shoot from beyond the arc….
maybe he’s kobe bryant in practice who knows… but he hasn’t shown any of it anywhere.. not in college or the pros… if he has that ability there would be some evidence of it somewhere but in all likelihood he’s limiting himself out of necessity and not some deferral to his role…
Laughing at the long ESPN story about how LeBron still wants to win at age 38. Yeah, he wants to win so badly that he signed a $97M extension with the 33-49, capped out, asset-barren Lakers. Not, you know, opting out and going to a team that has a championship-contending roster. Winning in LA. With the Lakers feat. Russell Westbrook and DNP Davis.
Grimes averages 1.8 FTA/36. For his college career as a whole, 3.9, peak of 4.9 his first year at Houston.
To pick a name out of a hat, Matheson is already at 7.1 for the Pacers.
“The fun and fascinating thing about Grimes is that he’s so very hard to predict. This is a guy who was going to be a repeat NBA all-star coming out of high school, who failed in college, stepped back, switched schools, and remade his game into grit and grind. I don’t know any similar history comp.”
Corey Joseph
but stories like Grimes isn’t actually all that uncommon… you have to realize that everyone who is in the nba they might look rather ordinary but almost everyone came in with huge accolades.. mr basketballs… mcdonalds all americans… from very young ages… raymond felton was basically a journeyman but he was a generational star coming up from the north carolina hs ranks… shane battier was basically a legend at duke…
college is where all these high school hotshots compete against each other and then you have this other gate into the nba where the best of that group compete…. at each stage you are asking guys who would normally be the best on their team to swallow their pride for a lesser role because that’s what they’ve settled in as from a competitive standpoint…
if grimes can keep up 38pct from 3 at 7.5/36 with plus defense, he’s going to be a scarce and useful player, and definitely not a sub mid level type. he’s not drawing dead at being even better, given the signs of life in his life dribble passing and finishing. delon wright and bruce brown are low volume modest efficiency won’t-obliterate-your-spacing-shooters. grimes so far has a been a “you can swing the ball around the perimeter and this guy might just rise up and shoot efficiently because his guy is a step off” shooter. big difference in actual production and how it affects the defense. he might not turn out to be the excellent high volume shooter he’s been in only 1400 minutes and as a junior, but if he does he’ll be a very valuable player even without much gravy.
I’d guess that Cam can leap higher than Grimes, thus he’s more “athletic.” Cam would probably dominate Grimes in a slam dunk contest. Kenny Walker style!
Top 10 recruits go bust all the time in college … not sure how that became such a unique story.
I’m not going to hop on a time machine and go back, but most likely the recruiting services underrated his deficiencies athletically.(*) And then the player had the wherewithal and intelligence to remake himself along the lines of his more old man-ish type skills, stayed in college where he could get more reps against lesser competition with the “new” game, and carved out a niche for himself.
It all fits together pretty seamlessly, really.
(*) Or he gained thickness as he matured, thus becoming different projection-wise, but still not time-machining.
Great description of Cam Reddish.
“big difference in actual production and how it affects the defense. ”
and if this is a big difference it should be observable and measurable right? so where is it?
I think the hard thing for Championship or Bust (COB) lifers is that you only get a few windows where putting your philosophy into practice is a possibility.
It’s always been my mentality but once the ink dries on the Randle and RJ deals, there isn’t much to be said anymore.
I don’t understand how anyone can be anything other than delighted by Grimes. He is somewhere between pretty and very good and exactly the kind of guy a superstar would like to play with.
“and if this is a big difference it should be observable and measurable right? so where is it?”
I pointed it out at the beginning of this thread: he’s scoring more efficiently than all of the players you listed. In some cases by a lot and in others by a little, but he’s doing it.
The affect on the defense is of course much harder to measure, but one could do worse than pointing out that the offense is 4.9 PTS/100 better with Grimes on the floor–a 78th percentile differential.
I’m well aware of all the noise involved here as all of the starters have good differentials…but that’s at least partially due to Quentin Grimes!
This isn’t the all-star game. Everybody on the team isn’t going to be a high usage high efficiency player. Even if they were, we couldn’t afford to keep them and there would be diminishing returns once we got past 2-3 high level scorers anyway. What we are trying to do is build a team that covers all our needs at a high level.
Once you have your 2-3 main high usage high efficiency scorers, you aren’t looking for another player like that. You are looking for someone that is elite at other things besides volume scoring.
You are looking for the lock down G/SF that can hit 3s at a very high rate and make some plays.
You are looking for the stretch PF than can defend and rebound at a very high level.
You are looking for the C that can defend the paint at a high level, cover the P&R really well, and be efficient around the basket etc..
You are looking for a great playmaker that can defend.
We already know we need a upgraded #1 option. Grimes is not going to become that player. But it looks like he can become a plus defender that gets his 3 point shot off quickly and hit it as a solid percentage. That’s already a very useful player on a very good team. We don’t necessarily need him to to start creating off the dribble a lot. If we get that, I’ll take it. But what we really need from him is to keep improving the 3p% and defense so he’s an elite role player we can count on.
No superstar is calling his agent and saying, “I want out, get me to New York, Quentin Grimes is there.”
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“I don’t understand how anyone can be anything other than delighted by Grimes.”
Well you have to admit that the fanboyism makes it at least a little tough and I’ll admit that we’re in kind of the association quiet season and this fanbase is starved. Fair?
In terms of basketball, it’s kind of been asked and answered at this point and I’m not sure there’s much more that can be added nor can it be understood why the expectation is delight and cartwheels. Give me an an actual star here and I’ll do all manner of delighted cartwheels.
If the archives are still up, you’ll be able to find something like the deligted cartwheels you expect in my comments on early IQ. But that was all before it became clear that the team was going to purgatory itself. At this point, I’m purgatoried out.
i was referring to the defense part…. the actual production part leans very heavily on 114 3pt attempts which if you were looking at the first 80 or so it wasn’t looking all that appreciably different than all the folks we are poopoo’ing and looking alot worse in some cases…
maybe in a week folks will think differently about it as these things have tended to swing pretty drastically as 3pt’ers tend to do… which is why all this talk about upside after games like this is gonna likely wind up looking very silly….
but maybe i’m wrong…
i don’t know what causes this… but the actual star on this team hardly ever gets talked about! talk about him more ppl! he’s been fucking amazing… and we’re out here talking about practice.. i mean grimes…
Oh my. Just tuning in, and Grimes is up on the big board. I love it. I hope he pans out. Is there a number of games/minutes at which Grimes Watch can be judged definitive?
Also (belated props) I so loved reading through that old draft thread and catching our wiser minds pick Doncic as MVP, Robinson as a stealth good pick, and Kevin Knox as a pick to break our spirits. The vitriol was next level and sublime.
Going forward: Gotta say I’m intrigued by the games without RJ. Onward.
I’ve been trying to find an unathletic short-wingspan guard who in his second year played 27mpg and shot 38% from 3 and 65% from 2 (74% assisted, 78% at the rim) on 14% usage while being a plus defender.
I love Grimes now and I’m excited about his potential. I also want to see more Cam minutes, mainly because of his disruptive defense. Is this an acceptable position here?
+1 to Owen
If I had to bet my life on which Knick would be most likely to box out Luka on the *next* game ending free throw, I would pick Grimes.
I hereby move that Quentin Grimes be given the Knickerblogger nickname, “Neo.”
“that is why guys like Knox and Frank had no chance… there’s simply too much for them to improve upon.. and they’re coming from such a low skillset to improve upon.. ”
I disagree with this from a team building perspective.
IMO, the goal is not to try to maximize “all around” skills and boxscore metrics for every player. We are trying to maximize team output. That typically requires high level role players to compliment elite scorers. Not everyone can be or has to be an all star caliber scorer.
Both Frank and Knox had almost no chance to become well rounded all-star caliber players and elite scorers, but they weren’t even close to similar in their chances of success.
Knox came in as a negative player in every facet of the game.
Frank came in as a plus switchable defender, good ball mover, but one of the worst scorers in the league.
Even though Knox was a much better offensive player than Frank, his path to success was much tougher because he had to get better at several things to become a high level role player.
The path to success for Frank was to add a consistent very good 3 point shot. It wasn’t necessary for him to become a great finisher, shoot off the dribble, or very good ball handler as long as he was a plus switchable defender, could make some plays, and knock downs 3s.
That’s the player we want Grimes to become.
Years into his career Frank still can’t shoot into the ocean. This may be his worst year so far. So he’s probably going to wash out. But his path to success was easy. Loads of players add a solid 3 well into their careers. Even Cs have done it.
Grimes looks like he can become a very good role player even though he’s not really long.
Some see this discussion as being about cooling one’s fanbois jets on Grimes having some kind of monster ceiling.
Others see it as refuting the assertion that Grimes is most likely a career Tier 5 player whose upside statistically compares with Bruce Browns and Delon Wrights of the world.
Maybe we should just agree that a 1500 minute sample size is way too small to make any kind of definitive assessment of a 22yo player’s theoretical upside, but that having a 22yo starter playing over 35mpg at a TS% of .642 on a 15.3% usage with promising defense, rebounding, passing, and overall smarts is pretty fucking cool.
“To pick a name out of a hat, Matheson is already at 7.1 for the Pacers.”
It’s Mathurin, not Matheson. Now it’s clear that you’re doing it on purpose, along with Markaten for Markkanen. Why do you have such an issue with players whose last names begin with “M” and end with “N”? Just because Clyde gets it wrong on accident doesn’t mean that you should butcher people’s names on purpose.
“i don’t know what causes this… but the actual star on this team hardly ever gets talked about! talk about him more ppl! he’s been fucking amazing… and we’re out here talking about practice.. i mean grimes…”
I’m not actually sure who you’re talking about, but we definitely discuss both Randle and Brunson a lot.
If you’re talking about Mitch, I fully agree he’s not getting enough credit for our relative success this year and have said so myself. I think we’re 5 games under .500 without that guy.
Re: Grimes, guess everyone has kind of made their positions clear at this point. I get not being all that excited about him if you think there’s not much juice left to squeeze, but I happen to think there is. We’ll just have to see. These non-RJ games should help with that.
“but that having a 22yo starter playing over 35mpg at a TS% of .642 on a 15.3% usage with promising defense, rebounding, passing, and overall smarts is pretty fucking cool.”
Absolutely!!
The idea here is that we seem to have a very solid 3&D player with some passing skills that can really hustle. That’s makes him a very useful good player on a very good team. We are getting a free roll on anything he develops over and above that.
People are acting like the standard for success is suddenly “superstar”.
The standard for success is whether this guy is a starter on a very good team or even a very important guy off the bench like we hope for Quick.
Downtown, we’ve been doing the Clyde pronunciation thing here for a while. It’s not any kind of insult, it’s us paying homage to our hero.
Tell me the Knicks are going to be out of purgatory to the upside before Grimes has to get paid and I’ll get excited. Until then, purgatoried out. Sorry. Is what it is. I’m sure this won’t be the last I’ll say about him, but right now, he’s beside the point.
“Downtown, we’ve been doing the Clyde pronunciation thing here for a while. It’s not any kind of insult, it’s us paying homage to our hero.”
It was funny the first couple of times, seems pretty gratuitous and tedious now that we’ve passed the million mark…but whatever, no real biggie…
Or is Downtown doing some elite deadpan post Mmmmmmagic?
PS — Grimesanity? Too soon? (Too late?)
and if this is a big difference it should be observable and measurable right? so where is it?
yeah this is the outcome of pretty much every rapm regression that’s ever been run on any time period in the last 25 yrs: increasing only an individual player’s 3pt volume will, ceteris paribus, increase the expected ppp of your offensive lineup. this is why essentially every all in one stat includes a bonus for 3pt volume over and above the efficiency implicit in the points and efficiency those 3pm generate. for bpm 2.0, e.g, the bonus coefficient from the rapm regression for 3pt volume is .389.
Seems like at least part of the reason why KD and Kyrie chose the Nets over us is because their roster had a bunch of Quentin Grimes types while we had Ntilikina, Knox, et. al…
For the record, I think that being extremely frustrated with our current position in relation to building a sustainable winner/contender is totally justifiable, even if pointless given the lack of control we have over it. But I don’t see the logic or usefulness in judging an individual player’s current performance or upside solely through that lens.
An underrated Clyde bit is that he seems to think our 15th man’s name is Archie Diacono
I’m very happy with Glue-Grimes’ development, he did show versatility (passing skills, ability to put the ball on the floor, movement without the ball) since the SL and now he’s honing his game with the big boys.
To use some ex-Knicks as references (for impact on games, not stats), he’s already a far better offensive player than another former 25th pick, our last 3-and-D player Reggie Bullock, and if his progress take him to “Evan Fournier* with very good defense” (he’s not far already), that’s a very useful player for a good team. Beyond that everything is gravy.
Maybe he’ll never be an All-Star but he has room to grow and skills to refine.
* We tend to forget because now he’s playing with the Novosibirsk Freezers, but for years Fournier was a high volume 3PT shooter with some creativity.
i’m not sure about rapm specifically but bpm uses coefficients for every variable and not just 3pm…. that’s just what you have in a regression… and not sure what a bonus coefficient is.. but here’s the whole chart and all the coefficients….
Variable Coefficient Per 100 Possession Statistics (2017 LeBron) Total
Pts (adjusted for team context) 0.860 34.9 adjusted to 30.4 26.1
3PM 0.389 2.2 0.9
AST 0.727 11.5 8.4
TO -0.964 5.4 -5.2
ORB 0.473 1.7 0.8
DRB 0.137 9.7 1.3
STL 1.252 1.6 2.0
BLK 1.125 0.8 0.9
PF -0.367 2.4 -0.9
FGA -0.560 24.0 -13.4
FTA -0.246 9.5 -2.3
TOTAL
and yes 3pt attempts do increase offense efficiency… but 2pt efficiency also increases offensive efficiency.. even moreso than 3pt attempts depending on the year you’re looking at… and so does passing the ball .. getting to the line…. point is that it all counts… and yes 3pt’ers are good but this is not the sole basis for judging any one player and i don’t know why we’re starting to do that now with Grimes…
because if we are then why weren’t going bananas about kevin knox’s 39% 3pt shooting at 6.9 attempts per 36 at age 21?
Evan Fournier has fallen off a cliff since coming to the Knicks for his age-29 season. At his peak, he anchored offenses — a mere two years ago when he still had the ball, he TS’d 604 on 26.2% usage, 20.9 AST%, 5.6 FTA/36.
(So yeah, Quentin’s still kinda “far away” from that.)
The real question there re his collapse, then, is — nature or nurture? It quite likely should not have happened at that age.
By far the best part of these threads is Doogie’s outrage over mis-spellings. I don’t even care if he’s serious about it or not, it’s delightful either way. And not knowing actually makes it better.
i’m not sure about rapm specifically but bpm uses coefficients for every variable and not just 3pm…. that’s just what you have in a regression… and not sure what a bonus coefficient is.. but here’s the whole chart and all the coefficients…
it’s “bonus” bc you already get credit for the points scored from both 3s and 2s and fts, adjusted for relative efficiency. but then you get an additional positive coefficient for 3pm made. the same is not true in the bpm model for 2pm. it is absolutely not true that this is just the way regeressions work nor that every variable has its own coefficient — many variables were set aside for lack of explanatory power including a potential bonus variable for 2pt makes. no extra positive coefficient for 2s is in the current model. this is bc the out of sample rapm tests very reliably show that replacing higher volume 3pm is, ceteris paribus, uniquely valuable. there are other ways you can assign credit for usage but the regression finding that individual player 3pm volume matters, and matters more than other kinds of usage, on average and all else equal, is widely known.
Grimes’s 3PA/36 is actually down around 25% this year over last year, from 8.7 to 6.3.
Using 20-21 on-the-ball ORL Fournier as a reference point, he had 8.6. Last year’s was 9.5.
Athletes vary in the degree and timing of Father Time’s assault, to be sure — but man, that is one big-ass collapse at 30 for Fournier. Other possibility, a very real one, is that he just got Thibs/Randle/Barrett’d out and just kind said fuck it. Understandable, if so.
“but the regression finding that individual player 3pm volume matters, and matters more than other kinds of usage, on average and all else equal, is widely known.”
Not widely known enough for me to have known about it, but it checks out in terms of basketball common sense and is a really interesting finding.
Our resident geniuses who have no time for capitalization should peacefully disagree more often. I’ve learned a lot.
because if we are then why weren’t going bananas about kevin knox’s 39% 3pt shooting at 6.9 attempts per 36 at age 21?
probably bc he was a poor defender who did it in on 89 attempts after shooting 34pct on his previous 550. grimes could easily turn out to be a significantly less effective shooter than he’s been, but he’s had a much more auspicious start.
***Is this an acceptable position here?***
The only acceptable position here is crash position.
3PA volume proxies “ability to space the floor” which is going to have knock-off effects. Makes sense.
Maybe you can guess where I lean on this… 😉
If we are talking about 2p%, Grimes’s is absolutely Mitch-esque. Low volume and all but 65% inside the arc is on par with Mitch’s (lowest) season.
“Other possibility, a very real one, is that he just got Thibs/Randle/Barrett’d out and just kind said fuck it. ”
Jinx. E4 deserved better. I wonder if the Bulls and Minnie had similar doghouse-player situations with Thibs like we did with Kemba and Fournier.
And +1 to the joys of reading ptmilo and djphan in whatever case they choose.
I’ll also add that Thibs has a track record of limiting players, e.g., Hartenstein and quite probably Obi.
KAT hated Thibs’s guts and said so out loud.
Austin Rivers was also disappeared by Thibs.
Thibs has his guys and that’s it.
Bulls-friend tells me Chris Duhon was their Elfrid Payton.
Naturally Katz in The Athletic stopped by KB and noted our topic du jour and wrote a piece on Grimes. Not a whole lot in there, but this is interesting:
“Two-way exhaustion is now Grimes’ norm. He spends almost half of his possessions guarding the opponent’s highest-usage player on the court, which places him in the NBA’s top 10, according to data tracked by Second Spectrum and supplied via a league source to The Athletic.
It puts him in a unique class of trusted players. The people that surround him in the top 10 include the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Lu Dort, the Toronto Raptors’ O.G. Anunoby, the New Orleans Pelicans’ Herbert Jones, the Chicago Bulls’ Alex Caruso and the Philadelphia 76ers’ Matisse Thybulle. Each one of those players either has already made an NBA All-Defense team or has a great chance to get there as soon as this season.”
And this:
“The Knicks are seventh in the NBA in points allowed per possession since Grimes joined the starters. That unit is outscoring opponents by an impressive 10.7 per 100.”
And finally:
“It’s Grimes’ turn to show off some of those moves he learned from Penny. He went for a career high Tuesday, and he’s averaging 15 points and hitting 44 percent of his 3-pointers on 7.3 attempts a game over his last 10 contests.”
If liking a second year player we’ve drafted bc he’s starting and flourishing and hoping he can get better, maybe even much better, fanboyism, what should we call your obsession with Cam Reddish?
That’s what this all comes down to. You hate the fact that grimes has taken cam’s spot and is playing better than him so you use all sorts of smart sounding phrases to denigrate him.
E – My reaction to people getting super excited about Grimes is to want to join the party because for once I am a believer also.
As you said upthread, we all actually agree on this. And if Randle, Grimes, Mitch, IQ and Brunson had contracted a mysterious disease in October that left them unable to play basketball for a year but otherwise unharmed I would have been totally fine with that.
Down to basically an 8-man rotation, I would like to see Cam more. I don’t think it’ll happen in the midst of a 4 game skid since Cam looks pretty upset on the bench. He’ll be out of the rotation when RJ is back, and we know how he feels about being out of the rotation.
ok i understand what you’re getting at with ‘bonus’… what i was referring to was it’s relation to the other variables… it’s already being counted within bpm and so weighing it more would be double counting.. according to bpm there’s not much separating grimes and all the folks that i mentioned…. only in 3pm but that’s already being accounted for in that metric… maybe it’s a different story in another metric but i dont’ think it’ll be too different…
and that’s not to mention we are talking about backwards looking metrics…. the forward looking part is a lot murkier as the heat found out when they gave duncan robinson all that money…. 3pt’ers are volatile and if most of your value is tied up into that it’s going to be a bumpy ride…
Doesn’t the league sort of force teams to be more open with injuries nowadays because of gambling? Why so much secrecy over whether Brunson plays tonight?
I mean, maybe that is an interesting case with Duncan Robinson. No doubt he’s underperforming his contract but he’s an example of teams valuing shooters much higher than your list. If Duncan had kept a relatively high 3pt percentage, then he’d be a worthwhile contract.
Other players like Bridges, Kennard, Fournier, Joe Harris, Buddy Hield all landed contracts triple, quadruple, quintuple of the list on the previous thread. How sure are we that Grimes is closer to your list than this one?
Raven, I won’t let you know whether I’m serious or not. I’ll even add a neutral emoji so that you will know even less. :-S
But regardless, it touches my heart that my outrage” (with only one quotation mark around it for further confusion) does so much to make your day. :-S
Why don’t we know whether Brunson is playing tonight? How can the league be okay with this?
No Vassell.
Ptmilo and DJphan, when you are talking about how regression is used to set the coefficients for some all in one metrics, what are they regressing against?
Doogie, much appreciate your keeping me in the dark.
Hey, since the thread’s going away shortly, a Geo-esque non sequitur (who am I kidding, no sense going up against the master…):
Jowles, not sure if you gym or just lift at home, but when did muffinheads start doing multiple sets on machines and just sit there, playing with their phones?
Just came back from my gym without accessing any of the machines I wanted. It’s maddening.
“Ptmilo and DJphan, when you are talking about how regression is used to set the coefficients for some all in one metrics, what are they regressing against?”
short of it is.. rapm… long answer is a bit long winded but you should read this:
https://www.basketball-reference.com/about/bpm2.html