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86 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2023.01.24)”
If you’re reading, Sims, tonight I want you to get every single rebound. Unleash your inner-Rodman.
It seems ironic that we went into the season touting our depth and now we have no bench.
Raven, that was a fun article from the Washington Post about the Wizards. Thanks for linking it. It makes Knicks management look better than the Wizards in two counts, despite all the Knicks management warts. The two things are the actual contracts returning players are signed to (compare Beal and Randle) and the ability to find useful players in the draft outside of the lottery. That said, the Wizards team isn’t awful and they have some good players, so it’s not like we are head and shoulders above them in front offices.
I have been thinking that too. But to be fair, some of our bench woes were due to injuries. Obi’s injury directly made our bench worse and RJ’s injury made the bench worse because we had to move some one from the bench to the starters to replace him.
“I have been thinking that too. But to be fair, some of our bench woes were due to injuries. Obi’s injury directly made our bench worse and RJ’s injury made the bench worse because we had to move some one from the bench to the starters to replace him.”
Two things:
1) part of having a deep bench is having guys who can step in when someone gets injured. And we have had better injury luck than nearly every team in the NBA.
2) I personally did not figure on healthy Rose and Fournier not being part of the rotation, or Obi getting even less minutes than last year, or Hart being so disappointing. Going into the year, it seemed that Sims, McBride and Cam would definitely not be in the rotation, and even then we were a solid 10 deep.
I also think that the fact that we were able to shift gears when RJ and Obi were out is a bit disturbing in that it doesn’t suggest depth as much as easiness to replace them with theoretically lesser players. Whereas replacing Mitch, Randle or Brunson (and to a lesser degree IQ and Grimes) seems undoable. We have four roster spots filled with virtually unplayable players…Svi, Archie, Cam and (sigh) Deuce…and two others filled with break glass incase of emergency types…Rose and Fournier.
We can debate whether its a Thibs issue or a Leon issue, but it is certainly a shitty position to be in.
Derrick “former MVP” Rose used to draw a lot of attention and let the others work with less pressure, now we have Deuce that draws exactly ZERO attention. This is a huge difference, and the reason i think Deuce can’t be a rotation player. At least, until his shot comes around.
I mean, we’ve been playing (and often losing to) teams missing key players all year. We just played Toronto missing everyone’s fave OG and it was like he didn’t exist. And ATL and WAS at full strength kind of toyed with us.
If Mitchell plays, seems like a sure loss tonight. If we win, obviously I will retract some of my criticism, but it will probably be on the back of 40+ minute hot shooting efforts by Randle, RJ and/or Brunson and that simply isn’t sustainable.
a basic fact about this year is that randle/brunson/barrett are the leading 3-man lineup in minutes (1041) and have played at a worse than pedestrian -3/100 clip. it’s easy to intuit an imperfect offensive fit for these three, but it’s the defense that has stuck out: a 120.8 defensive rating in 1041 minutes; no overall team has a defensive rating worse than 120. Admittedly it’s harder to go against starters, but this is also the worst defensive rating in the NBA of *any* trio with at least 600 minutes together.
a lot of this could, of course, be luck. opponents hit 37.55% from 3 with all three on the court, versus 31.93% in the other 1293 minutes. The 37.55% would be second worst in the nba while the 31.93% would easily be best. Of course, this lineup also gives up 57.3% on 2PA vs 49.9% on opponents. 57.3% would also be worst in the NBA by a whit.
RJ, himself, has one of the cleanest defensive stat sheets in the league. he has 20 steals and 6 blocks in 1458 minutes, this ties for dead last in the nba in “stocks” per 36 at 0.6 with doug mcdermott, kevin love and duncan robinson among players with at least 500 minutes. stocks don’t tell all the defensive story, but RJ is also toward the bottom in offensive fouls drawn and deflections.
ptmilo’s post seems some ghastly news. do we think an intrepid Knicks assistant is passing such info on to Thibs? If so, is Thibs ignoring it or countering it with some other “gut” data? Asking for a friend.
That’s pretty depressing about RJ’s defense.
I also wonder why Brunson is the only Knick that draws charges.
And that’s why we need Mitch. He’s holding together a godawful defensive unit.
We should probably move one of the 3. It’s not going to be Brunson.
For all you armchair GMs, Katz has a piece in The Athletic on trade scenarios covering most of the roster, but he is really just asking questions, not providing any real answers (or even recommendations). Which is how the situation feels, to be honest. Bunch of questions, no answers.
RJ’s ranking in stocks really illustrates the continuing puzzle of his athleticism. He can look really athletic, especially in the open court or when he can ski ramp himself into a lefty drive to the hoop. He is physically imposing. He absolutely looks the part.
But on the court, it’s just not there. It’s almost like someone took a Jordan level athlete and then surreptitiously covered all his bones with a thin veneer of a metal alloy. There is something slightly leaden about how he moves and jumps compared to other NBA players. That alpha spring and explosion is absent.
I sometimes wonder if he would do better losing 10-15 pounds.
It is pretty funny that one can perfectly reasonably gripe that Tom Thibodeau isn’t playing Derrick Rose enough. Strange times!
It’s quite possible, likely even, that the dude is just completely washed, but at this point I’m here for giving him a shot. Lineups without Brunson have an offensive rating of 111.5, which would be 27th in the league. We’re not going to survive these Mitch-less games without getting a little weird.
The collapse of our once vaunted bench is in many ways the story of our recent struggles. I don’t blame Thibs for Cam, Svi, and Archie Diacono sucking because those guys always suck, but I think he has some culpability in the cases of Obi, Fournier, and Hart, who all have demonstrated they can be effective NBA players in the very recent past.
I wasn’t super high on Deuce as a draft prospect, but I didn’t foresee “worst offensive rotation player in the NBA.” Tough to know what to do about this one because it would be a shame to bench a recent near-first round pick in a non-contending season, but he really makes it hard on the other 4 players he shares the court with on offense.
In any event, getting next to nothing out of over 50% of your roster spots is a huge institutional failure. It’s easy to write off things like making mediocre-to-bad trades on draft night as small potatoes right up until you’re playing a 6-man rotation and it’s not clear the coach is making a mistake in doing so. If Leon is gonna stick around, he’s gotta start taking resource allocation more seriously.
For old-timers, RJ ~ Mark Aguirre without the feathery jumper. Big belly, big hips, 4 inch vertical.
Idk how much you believe in RAPTOR, but RJ is the 13th-worst defender in the league according to it. No other Knick is even close to that (Randle is next, but he’s much better than RJ.)
Meanwhile, Caruso is first by a serious margin in defensive RAPTOR, so I might reconsider my stance on him.
RJ for Caruso straight up?
Over halfway through the season RJ really hasn’t moved the needle much on his projection. This is probably his best year as a pro, but that says way more about the others. We’re in year 4 and it’s still not easy to answer the question “what is RJ Barrett good at?” Would he get any minutes on any of the legit contenders?
The silver lining is the formula to drastically improving this team is fairly clear: replace RJ Barrett with someone a lot better than RJ Barrett.
That’s a great stat on RJ’s “stocks”. I had no idea he rated that low but once you hear the stat it makes perfect sense since I really can’t generate a mental image of him either getting a block or steal this season. I’ve been saying since shortly after we drafted him that when you take a shooting guard with the #3 pick who’s iffy at the “shooting” part of that job description, you kind of expect a truly explosive athlete and RJ really isn’t that. But even accepting that limitation those numbers and the company he’s keeping are startling. I really don’t have any intuition for why his “stocks” are down 60% since his rookie season, maybe tougher defensive assignments?
I am completely in agreement that having 5-6 players who are functionally unusable on the bench is not ideal. And that is on Rose.
Rose and Cam have to get some run. Not even a Cam guy but this is ridiculous.
And Deuce. Look, it’s been clear from the outset that he has zero offensive game. It’s a lot like with Frank. It’s also clear that 6’1 is not the ideal phenotype for a do it all defensive stud.
Love the way he gets over screens, love what a pest he is, but he’s not an NBA player. I’d rather see Svi out there from what I have seen from him. He at least makes shots.
I’m not a Cam fan and “high basketball IQ” is not the first phrase that comes to mind when describing him , but I still don’t understand why he’s getting no court time considering how anemic our bench scoring is.
There has to be something between him and Thibs.
I think they should just live with Fournier playing like crap and trust he’ll find his rhythm. The track record is too long.
I say no to playing Cam. He’s too injury prone and we can’t move him if he’s injured.
Thibs will be on the hot seat again soon. Hope he makes adjustments before then.
I was watching some of the Weird Al Yankovic mocubiopic yesterday and when I Love Rocky Road becomes a huge hit and launches him to international superstardom he begins a 25 night residency at Madison Square Garden making the Knicks play in a hockey arena in Jersey that month.
That made me laugh for several reasons.
Exactly. Leon has to do his job and make some trades to better balance the roster. A better bench can be the difference between fighting for the 6th seed or fighting for the 10th seed.
Sounds like poor funneling to me.
How did Isaac play yesterday? I’m very curious of his situation because the Magic already have 2 forwards for the future (Banchero and Wagner), so Isaac is expendable. If he looks healthy and playing like he was before the injury, i would try to trade RJ and picks for him. RJ is a SG, which is a position the Magic need to fill with a young player, so maybe they would be interested in the trade too. Isaac is a SF, is long and is an excellent defender. Would be perfect for us.
Was about to comment on Isaac. Seems like a great re-debut.
the stocks story is the most concerning part of RJ’s growth story.. or lack thereof… he had this problem in college where he was sort of borderline but in the pro’s it’s gone the other direction…. but this was more of a problem historically than in recent years since there are instances of players overcoming low stocks (booker)… but it is something that is likely to cap his upside in the long run….
another food for thought though is that it’s something thibs is coaching in his defense… because while randle was bad at stocks in his previous stops… he’s also at career lows and also ranks very low for his position…. brunson’s also had historically similar problems but out of the three is not having a career low in that category…
Stocks are a secondary factor to defense. The primary factor is “impact on your opponent’s expected field goal percentage” which can’t really even be directly measured but instead has to be indirectly proxied and/or intuited and/or judged by the eye test.
Stocks reduce that expectation to zero, so they’re good — but they’re so rare as to pale in comparison to how much you impact your opponents’ shot.
“There has to be something between him and Thibs.”
Yep — *once again* Tom Thibodeau has a problem interacting with another human being with whom his job requires him to work closely. He has had that problem since the time he became an association head coach and likely became an association head coach later than he otherwise would have.
Applying the “asshole” test to it, we’ve long since passed the point where the identity of the asshole is ambiguous.
More grist for my “RJ is actually a terrible defender” mill. It’s very hard to have a good defense when only two starters are plus defenders. We need a rangy forward desperately.
“a lot of this could, of course, be luck. opponents hit 37.55% from 3 with all three on the court, versus 31.93% in the other 1293 minutes. The 37.55% would be second worst in the nba while the 31.93% would easily be best. Of course, this lineup also gives up 57.3% on 2PA vs 49.9% on opponents. 57.3% would also be worst in the NBA by a whit.”
and this is why lineup data.. especially lineup data broken out like this is not going to tell you much…. the most stable part of this data is going to be the ft% by far and ft% should converge in relatively smaller samples but even still there is some volatility to the point where our ‘big 3’ is shooting worse at .769 when sharing the court together when they collectively shoot .777 in totality….
we all know this about lineup data… but for whatever reason we keep doing this trying to find signal…. it’s going to lead to bad conclusions!
and tying this back to the stocks story…. it could very well be true that brunson.. randle and rj are terrible defenders… in fact i believe this to be true too… but i don’t think lineup data will prove that…. what will likely show that is the stocks story….
randle and rj.. and now brunson have been terrible at getting steals and blocks… and while stocks are mostly a proxy box score stat…. they do have the most impact on preventing points that we can quantify….. and we just so happened to collect probably the worst guys at their position in doing so….
i haven’t calculated this…. but there are all probably a couple std deviations away from the norm…. and being short something like 0.5 steals and 0.3 blocks per 36 from your top 3 minutes getters is likely adding on something like a 0.2-0.7 points in def rating… which is a lot! that’s the difference between the #13 defense and the #20 defense…
i happen to think that’s the biggest culprit which is why it’s going to be difficult to build something with this foundation…. but you know beggars cant be choosers and you just have to deal with imperfect players and do what you can with them….
“It seems ironic that we went into the season touting our depth and now we have no bench.”
We have a bench. We just aren’t using it.
The shortened rotation was given all the credit for turning the season around, but imo that wasn’t it. Early on the Knicks needed defense at the SG position next to Brunson. That was the hole. It was Grimes getting healthy and eventually up to speed that turned the starting lineup around. He provided an upgrade on defense next to Brunson, spacing, and efficient scoring on low volume.
The Knicks need scoring off the bench now.
They have Rose, Cam, and Fournier but aren’t playing any of them????
Rose was the driver of the success of that 2nd unit at times with Quickly and Obi. He should clearly be playing given Deuce’s limitations on offense.
The Cam situation is the most ridiculous because Thibs trusted Cam to finish games at one point, Cam was outplaying RJ on both sides of the ball for a good stretch when RJ was slumping, he got hurt, rushed back, had one terrible game and was put in jail.
WTF was that?
Not only did that not make any sense given Thib’s incredibly long leash with RJ and Randle doing dumb things for months at a time, it helped kill Cam’s trade value. This was at a time they needed some shot creation and scoring – which Cam can do if you him the green light.
Everyone knows I’m a Thibs fan in many ways, but the player management this year makes no sense at all.
“Stocks are a secondary factor to defense.”
i don’t think this is true…. opponent fg% is really hard to control… we know this to be true with 3s….. and to a lesser extent it’s true with other types of shots….
the things you CAN control are going to resemble the four factors… and part of the four factors are creating turnovers… or getting steals…. and it just so happens the biggest part of opponent fg% you can control are shots near the rim.. both in how many you give up without fouling… and how well they shoot there…. which is where blocks come in….
steals and blocks tell you a lot even though they are infrequent occurrences… teh ball will ping pong up and down the court a lot and you might have these unique events happen 5% of the time… but this is where a lot of the best players create their advantages and where it becomes quantifiable…
we dont have that unfortunately.. but fortunately for us there are ways to have a good defense in spite of that… but it’s just a lot harder…
“and tying this back to the stocks story…. it could very well be true that brunson.. randle and rj are terrible defenders…”
Brunson tries hard, but they can shoot over him and he clearly can’t switch onto anyone bigger. So he can be targeted.
RJ is a little slow/unathletic for some wing players players and a little undersized/unathletic against some others.
Randle’s effort level is all over the place. He often takes plays off. He could just be gassed at times, but I think it’s also effort.
Mitch covers a lot of problems that Hart and Sims do not.
“we all know this about lineup data… but for whatever reason we keep doing this trying to find signal…. it’s going to lead to bad conclusions!”
The small samples in lineup data are always going to be a problem.
IMO, the way to use lineup data is in combination with “common sense basketball knowledge” and other data.
Let’s assume based on a skills assessment you think the combination of Randle and Obi is going to be a problem on defense against some matchups. You don’t know for sure until you try it and have a large enough sample to be statistically significant. But if you put them on the court together against a certain combination and you immediately start seeing breakdowns and problems with the defense that are verified by the lineup data, you can be more sure your skills assessment and basketball knowledge wasn’t missing anything significant.
I think as a coach you have to constantly look at what you think will work in certain situations and what won’t (including matchups), but watch the game and look at the results for evidence to support or refute your position.
“How did Isaac play yesterday?”
He’d be a big risk, but I’m an Isaac fan if you could get him cheaply.
“opponent fg% is really hard to control”
*****************************
It’s a little tough to tell the sense in which “control” is being used here — statistical or on the court — but it really isn’t that hard.
Imagine 20,000 possessions where nine of the players, all five offensive guys and four of five defenders, do exactly the same thing. Same cuts, same action, same speed. In each of the possessions, the ball winds up in Devin Booker’s hands for a shot. In 10,000 of these possessions, Devin Booker is guarded by James Harden. In the other 10,000, he’s guarded by prime LeBron James. Or prime Michael Jordan. Assume the offensive sets and actions are sophisticated, association quality in both design and execution.
Devin Booker’s going to make more of these shots when he’s guarded by James Harden, right?
(To make proving the principle even easier to see, instead of James Harden, substitute 25-year-old me.)
That delta is the defensive metric that matters more than them all, way more than stocks.
There are of course factors that make this simple model a little more complicated — switches, team defensive principles, etc. — but this is the model we need.
But the fact that there are these complicating factors making direct measurement more difficult doesn’t mean that defaulting to the factors that can be measured exactly — stocks — makes much sense. Prime LBJ/Jordan are also going to steal the ball more than James Harden will and block more of Devin Booker’s shots, so stocks aren’t entirely pointless. But there’s way more going on.
I couldn’t understand why you guys were talking about stocks. Then I realized you were actually talking about bleals and now this thread makes more sense.
Yeah, he is. Mostly because of injuries. But keeping RJ is a big risk too. What if he never improves from where he is now? That’s what Leon has to ponder, will RJ breakout or not? If he’s not confident that RJ will do it, he should try to trade RJ when his value is still up, for a very good 2-way player. Isaac and OG fit the mold but there’s certainly other players we can potentially trade for.
Stocks now means steals & blocks.
I believe what was once stocks is now called Stonks according to the New Reddit Dictionary 5th Edition.
——-
I don’t think the difference in 3p% with RJ/JR/JB is entirely due to variance. It’s to some degree that they just suck at defense.
Mitch was more of the fix on defense, though Deuce & Grimes didn’t hurt. Mitch had those early missed games and the defense improved dramatically after returning.
Good Ol’ Thibs team. Just what we expected… elite offense and shit defense
—————-
I think Sims may just kinda suck. If we had the personnel to switch everything maybe he’d be better, but we have a 140 defensive rating in the last 2 games. The impact metrics back this up. Hartenstein looks much better by those metrics on the defensive end. Sims is fine for a 3rd option, perhaps with some upside, but his on court track record is no bueno.
Yeah, I agree that RJ seems like a bit of a 3/4 tweener. Not really strong enough to defend the big 4s in the league, and not quick enough to effectively guard wings.
Some sort of OG for RJ deal would be nice for the Knicks, but if Toronto deals him, it’s being speculated that they’d want young/cheap players and picks in some combination.
Some team has supposedly offered 3 firsts for OG… I mean, if they are those protected firsts, that’s fine.
How much did Masai Ujiri pay Zach Lowe to tweet that OG was going to get a Donovan Mitchell price?
Rose better be sending Masai photoshops of RJ & Scottie Barnes in front of the Canadian flag looking patriotic as maple syrup & Tim Hortons. Throw in a maple leaf face tattoo.
OG just feels like such a perfect fit for this team.
*** he should try to trade RJ when his value is still up, for a very good 2-way player. Isaac and OG fit the mold***
Isaac wasn’t really a good 2-way player yet. He was a low-usage tweener forward with mediocre efficiency. His offensive potential was still highly theoretical even before his disappearance.
That said, Orlando didn’t pay him $30,000,000 over the past 2.5 years while coddling him along through the slowest rehab ever just to “sell him cheap”. He’s a game changing defensive player if he returns to what he was pre-pandemic and is under contract until 2025.
I for one think that RJ’s best position is as a big 2. He reminds me a lot of Jaylen Brown in that regard..he “can” be a plus player at the 3 but is a load for opposing 2’s to guard if he can stay in front of them (as Brown can.)
And that’s the dilemma with having him and Grimes on the court. One of them has to be in the 3 spot and neither is ideal there.
And I’m not sure either of them is a starting-caliber 2 *OR* 3 in a league full of *star* 2’s and 3’s. It would seem that acquiring a big-time 3 should be a priority…
jonathan isaac cannot play the 3…. he was anchoring the orlando defense as a 4 with vucevic as the nominal 5….
I get the love for OG in a vacuum, but he makes $18.6M next year and then has a player option for $19.9M in 2024-45 which he almost certainly will decline. I don’t see the point in giving up lots of assets for a defensive wing who has mediocre efficiency on medium usage when he’s going to get paid less than 2 years out. He makes way more sense for a team with a true star offensive player. We don’t have one of those.
Until we do find one, I’d rather pick up the closest approximation to OG in the mid-late first round. That seems to be where Toronto finds all of their many wings.
Speaking of scoring wings, wtf is up with Johnny Davis? I really didn’t like him at draft time but didn’t think he’s be THIS bad…
Speaking of stocks, Cam is among the teams leaders in block and steal rates. He is also hitting corner 3’s at 37%. I’m about to get on the E train regarding Thibs.
Uh just looked this up but here’s Johnny Davis’s G-League stats: https://stats.gleague.nba.com/player/1631098/
Trevor Keels may suck but at least we drafted him in the 2nd rd
I was really nervous whenever Johnny Davis’s name came up as a potential Knick draft target. He looks like a poor man’s Barrett to me.
Just to give context to corner 3s, Obi is also shooting 37% from there and is hitting twice as many per 36. Grimes is hitting 45%. You probably want those two manning the corners.
Based on Cam’s overall 3p% compared to his corner 3p%, you can’t play him above the break either because he needs to be shooting sub-.300 from there.
OG for RJ!
OG for RJ!
I scream/you scream/we all scream for ice cream!
Yeah, Cam must have committed some real serious off-court or disciplinary offense to be so thoroughly banished from playing time.
There’s no reason to be certain OG Anunoby will decline his player option a year and a half from now.
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2023/1/24/23568973/clippers-trade-rumors-fred-vanvleet-mike-conley
“According to executives around the league, the Clippers are also interested in their former backup center Isaiah Hartenstein, who is now with the Knicks.
L.A. tried to re-sign Hartenstein last summer, but he went to New York for more money and because he felt he was wanted there. But unfortunately, not all free agent decisions pan out the way you originally envisioned them.
The Knicks have blatantly misused Hartenstein as a rim roller more than a playmaker, his previous role with the Clippers. He had a 20.5 assist percentage with the Clippers, compared with only 5.1 percent with the Knicks. Tom Thibodeau doesn’t know how to get the best out of him, while Ty Lue has already proved he can. Getting back together might be in everyone’s best interests.”
The platonic ideal of Robert Covington would be great for us. Unfortunately he seems completely washed, so not sure swapping Hart for him does anything for us besides getting rid of Hart (which isn’t nothing, considering he’s our worst rotation player).
Maybe Amir Coffey is a more worthwhile target?
I don’t know the league average for corner 3’s off the top of my head but I would guess 37% is below it. That’s probably a shot with an expected conversion rate of 40-42%.
Trade 1 – Hartenstein for Covington & two 2nds
Trade 2 – Four 2nds & Cam for Grayson Allen & Ibaka
Or
As one trade:
(1) Hartenstein to LAC
(2) Covington to Bucks with four 2nds
(3) Allen & Ibaka to Knicks
(4) Send Cam elsewhere to replenish 2nds
but even still there is some volatility to the point where our ‘big 3’ is shooting worse at .769 when sharing the court together when they collectively shoot .777 in totality….
that’s way off; in fact it’s the opposite. big
three combined ft% is higher when they play together. you’re confusing it with the team numbers, which are heavily influenced by mitch being a starter.
hubert this season it’s 38.9pct
Not saying he’s a great 3 pt shooter, but on this team he’s 4th on corner 3’s. He should be playing.
Obi is shooting only .003 worse from the corners on much higher volume… and there’s only so many corners for players to stand in.
I would love to see Obi playing the 3.
EB, with you on that one. If someone is going to be pointlessly standing in the corner, I’d way more rather it be Obi. At least it means he’s getting a few minutes of playing time.
But WAY not with you about the dried husk of Serge and satanic seed of Grayson. I wouldn’t trade them for Cam straight up, and I’m a big fan of Cam not having the door hit him in the rear on the way out.
i’m going off nba.com data here:
https://www.nba.com/stats/lineups/traditional?slug=traditional&GroupQuantity=3&TeamID=1610612752&PerMode=Totals
i assume ft’s are calculated the same as the other box score stats in that it’s compiling off the individual players in those lineups but if not then i guess i’ve been looking at it all wrong the whole time…
but in any case… my original point was that even something like ft% will have some variation…. which is why other things that are more volatile will have even more variation ….. which renders any observation into that sample supremely difficult… that’s going to be true whether your numbers or my numbers are true….
here’s another example… 1000 minutes is roughly about 20 games…. the first 20 games we were bottom quarter of the league in defense… then in the next 20 games we were a top 10 defense… now we are 14…. mixed in that whole sample are a bunch of star players missing time as well as our own players missing time which has an impact over the sample over and above the normal variation of half a season’s worth of data…
the only time lineup data really tells you much at all about individual players is over the course of multiple seasons… which is how bpm uses it… anything smaller than that you are going to be prone to crazy looking data.. and given that you’re not from the future you have no idea what you’re looking at is crazy or not….
Not a fan of Grayson… but he’s available, the money works, and the Knicks aren’t the most scrupulous when reviewing the ethics of their personnel.
Ibaka is just a backup big because we need one if we move Hartenstein. Even if we go Obi-Randle we should get a 3rd string guy.
If there’s other guys available I’d prefer that, just don’t know who they are.
It’s not about being a SF or PF, it’s about how many guys you can have standing in the corner and the opportunity cost of putting a guy there that takes so few 3s.
He also needs to relocate above the break on drives and hit 3s from there too. Cam only takes 34% of his 3s from the corner and that fits in line with the proportion most players take.
An RJ for OG trade is perfect in a lot of ways:
– it sends RJ home and allows Toronto to trade Trent Jr.
– it pushes Grimes to our #2 defender
– it raises out starting unit’s TS%
– it gives OG the bigger role he wanted pre-Barnes
– it allows Toronto to get significantly younger through RJ and draft picks without losing much
– it lets RJ play SG where he’s better off
Re: RJ
To me RJ Barrett is a SG where “S” stand for “Slashing”, because he’s an unreliable shooter.
But he’s big, strong, a good rebounder for a guard (while mediocre for a SF) and can help as a secondary ballhandler.
He needs to work on defense and exploting matchups.
Re: Bench
Our bench situation is a joke.
Depth was considered a strenght and, on paper, few teams have a better bench.
The inability to use it in a positive way is all on the coach.
Let’s give this players to Kerr, Spoelstra, Bud, Lue, Snyder and so on and watch how they use them.
RE: Trades
Do we really need another 6’4 shooting guard(Allen)? I don’t think so.
Do we really need to trade only for despicable players/human beings (Allen, Isaac)?
One is the dirtiest player in the league, the other a fucking ignorant bigot, they can stay where they are thank you.
i assume ft’s are calculated the same as the other box score stats in that it’s compiling off the individual players in those lineups but if not then i guess i’ve been looking at it all wrong the whole time…
yes you have it wrong. those are stats for the entire team when those 3 are on the court.
but in any case… my original point was that even something like ft% will have some variation…. which is why other things that are more volatile will have even more variation ….. which renders any observation into that sample supremely difficult… that’s going to be true whether your numbers or my numbers are true….
yes agree lineup and on/off numbers are very noisy. still, it is easy to show that there is a lot of information in 2000 possessions of 3 man lineups on average if easy to show can be said to include making people run their own reliability tests. stratify intra-season samples randomly over any multi-year sample in the last 20 year and run kr21 tests or even just simple monte carlo simulations of regressions and you will quickly see that most of the 3-man lineup stats show substantial components of signal once you get past 1500 or so possessions and start to get very informative after 2000 poss. this includes the noisy big picture numbers like defrtg and net rating. opponent 3pt% is one of the only exceptions.
it’s very common to abuse on/off data but it’s just not true that you can’t learn much from 2100 possession 3-man lineups or 20 full-team games. that the noise is still quite notable doesn’t mean you can’t learn much. as robert rubin should have said, not all confounding is created equal.
We could also move Svi or Archie for Ibaka straight up and leave Grayson out of it. Ibaka still might not be worth it, but it’d rebalance the roster until Mitch comes back.
i hate fake trades but one that i’ve been thinking about:
Immanuel Quickley for Mo Bamba
Mitchell Robinson + Dallas first for OG Anunoby
then swing RJ to the bench…. these trades will never happen because their both against masai and a masai alum… but i think it’s much more realistic to trade Mitch for OG since they’re probably looking to size up instead of… what would be at best… a status quo move when they have 4 wings and a pg…
It doesn’t matter if he’s our worst rotation player. He’ could still be much better than whoever isn’t in the rotation now who would move into the rotation once Hartenstein was traded. That is, it’s a not a good idea to get rid of your worst rotation player if all your alternatives are worse.
I just want the picks for Hartenstein. It’s definitely a punt on this season. We could look to move those picks for another C or a backup wing if there’s a decent one available.
Hahaha. Click on the link to watch the video.
“stratify intra-season samples randomly over any multi-year sample in the last 20 year and run kr21 tests or even just simple monte carlo simulations of regressions and you will quickly see that most of the 3-man lineup stats show substantial components of signal once you get past 1500 or so possessions and start to get very informative after 2000 poss.”
i certainly have not seen these recently but i’d be very curious to see what the 90% confidence interval would be like for the sample that we have for our big 3… .from my experience looking at college basketball and offensive/defensive ratings almost every season along with my nba observations year to year… these things can still be pretty volatile… the def rating of our whole team should provide proof of that…
and yes you can derive SOME signal…. how many foul shots you give up is pretty stable… some shots you give up within 2pt territory are relatively stable…. some others are not… and that’s the problem with using a singular number like def rating… it includes a whole lot of randomness in there and there’s a lot to control to the point where your confidence intervals… at least last time i checked… were very wide….
ken pomeroy discusses a bit about volatility from game to game here and while it’s about plus-minus you can apply most of what he’s saying to other things related to lineups:
https://kenpom.com/blog/a-treatise-on-plusminus/
Fournier out tonight for personal reasons
Congratulations to Evan and his wife for their new baby 🙂
Welcome Evan Five-nier!!!
Tonight, the Knicks will occasionally just run four guys out there. “Nah, nah, it’s fine,” says Thibs.
“I sometimes wonder if he would do better losing 10-15 pounds.”
“I for one think that RJ’s best position is as a big 2.”
I agree with both of these things after initially thinking we should move him to SF after seeing his rookie season.
I think if he lost a little weight he’d get a little quicker but still be strong enough to play bully ball and overpower a lot of SGs going to the basket.
One of his problems finishing has been that the players guarding him are often taller/longer and he also doesn’t have the strength edge he had earlier in his career when being guarded by smaller players.
That’s partly why I’ve been so annoyed Cam hasn’t worked out. I was picturing him at SF to get more length and athleticism on the court and dropping RJ back to SG making us bigger and stronger at that position.
The closer we get to the trade deadline the more pissed off I’m getting at Thibs, just for different reasons than most people.
“Tonight, the Knicks will occasionally just run four guys out there. “Nah, nah, it’s fine,” says Thibs.” — LOL
>it’s very common to abuse on/off data but it’s just not true that you can’t learn much from 2100 possession 3-man lineups or 20 full-team games.<
I don't think you have to wait that long other than in very fuzzy situations. A LOT is already known about what kinds of combinations tend to work or not work. Coaches are going into lineup creation with those insights in mind.
Like I said earlier, if you go into a test already enthusiastic or skeptical about a combination (like me speculating that the Fournier/Brunson backcourt could be a problem defensively or me being skeptical of a Mitchell trade because the of size of the Brunson/Mitchell backcourt or Thibs being skeptical of Randle/Obi) if you are seeing evidence on the court that supports your belief almost immediately, there's no point in waiting for statistical significance. Go with what you think/know will work better.
Tonight, the Knicks will occasionally just run four guys out there. “Nah, nah, it’s fine,” says Thibs.
“Our four man units had a great week of practice, so if we come out with the right intensity and respect the process, we’ll be fine ….”
IQ will be back so it won’t matter…
You know, unless he’s still injured and shouldn’t be playing. But Thibs surely would never do that during a 4-game skid and with a bench whose points in the boxscore is a photo of death valley. Never.
Austin Carr with his Clyde fashion vibe tonight…