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173 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2024.12.02)”
With Mikal having a good game last night it is crickets over here.
All the ex Knicks also had good games last night. We should’ve traded iHart! (haha, kidding)
If you like, GoldClub, I can talk about how OG had his third shit game in a row and is now 8 for 36 (22%) from the floor since y’all hysterically compared him to Kawhi Leonard.
I could even mention that his BPM is negative on the year (-0.4) and make a long list of all the players who signed one year deals this summer that are outperforming him.
But it was a fun win and I prefer to look forward to Orlando. They were a bogey team for us last year, but I think we match up much better now with Town at the 5.
25 and 8 per 36 doesn’t sound that crazy but only ten have ever done it (1K+ mins). jalen would be 11 if he keeps it up. of the ten, lowest tov/36 is 3.1 vs. jalen currently at 2.4.
since jalen left, mavs offense with luka on vs nyk with jalen on:
luka on—–jalen on
119.8——–121.2
121.0——–122.8
119.1———123.7
If you like, GoldClub, I can talk about how OG had his third shit game in a row and is now 8 for 36 (22%) from the floor since y’all hysterically compared him to Kawhi Leonard.
I could even mention that his BPM is negative on the year (-0.4) and make a long list of all the players who signed one year deals this summer that are outperforming him.
if you’re just trying to check people like strat who decide og improved his handle in the offseason every time he scores 20+, there’s got to be a better way. you watched these games right? og is sending mfers to therapy on defense.
RJ’s been way better than OG over the last three games, and OG’s ceiling is quite a bit below RJ’s (and of course OG is already in his prime).
LOL. OG’s a sub-20 USG guy, a role player. Kawhi was a top-fiver, 30 USG guy, for multiple years. The infatuation with OG around here is unbecoming to say the least. When he has a good game it borders on boy-band obsession.
“When he has a good game it borders on boy-band obsession.”
So said the non-obsessed fan who posted this in the middle of yesterday’s game thread: “RJ with 13 points on six shots in 10 minutes.”
OG is mostly missing 3s (last 15). I’m not worried about that other than he’s obviously taking some tougher ones this year. The last few games he also took a few late shot clock rushed ones that he normally would play hot potato with. Some decline from 40%~ is likely if he keeps doing that, but it may be the right thing to do. Yesterday was a defensive gem. He added more value on defense than he gave up with a few missed shots.
IMO his handle is a hair better this year but he’s still out of control at times trying to finish unless he’s in a dunk situation.
If RJ ever learns to defend well his upside would become more interesting, but overall not only is he not a top defender like OG, he’s a negative defender and can’t put together consistent efficient scoring. It’s not even close between the two at this stage.
BPM is garbage.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5961693/2024/12/02/mikal-bridges-karl-anthony-towns-knicks-nba/?source=emp_shared_article
Good conversation between Katz and James Edwards III about various questions, including Mikal’s defense, our problems against switch-heavy teams, Thibs’ use of Towns, and Hart’s ridiculous offensive efficiency through 20 games.
You guys coming here to loosen your bowels metaphorically make this site SO much fun. Thank you.
A few thoughts, since Max isn’t doing grades anymore. I was really pleased, psychologically, with KAT just saying “I got the rebounds, guys, y’all shoot.” Very impressive team-first behavior from a star.
Speaking of such, some guy named Sims grabbed 13 rebounds in 23 minutes. Both points might speak to the competition, but still.
Gravedigger can shoot threes, but his out-of-rhythm gunning that followed was pretty ugly. If I was one of his scrub teammates hoping to show something in those last minutes, I’d poison his gatorade. Plus he does not look like an NBA defensive player.
Kolek didn’t show much, but I watch him and he’s orchestrating. He’s not overthinking or going too fast. I think there may be a future there, even just as a backup rotation player.
When Miles or Josh make threes, it sends jolts of joy into my heart. From Miles it’s like a long, slow kiss from a partner. From Hart it’s like your partner suddenly leans over your chair and kisses you unexpected.
What ptmilo said.
It might be, it might not be. All I know is that it’s routinely quoted around here as a meaningful metric — “Nikola Jokic is a 10 BPM player,” “KAT was 7 BPM player in Minnesota,” etc. Even something like “Let’s make a shorthand back of the envelope call that to win the Larry O’B, you need at least one 4 BPM player.”
So around here at least, it consistently “counts.”
Except when it’s OG’s -0.4 (*) — then it doesn’t count. Go figure.
(*) Say what you will about it as a metric (I personally view OG as a plus-player), it’s easy to see why an OG would be negative (or at least not very high). OG doesn’t generate usage, he doesn’t really rebound, and he never sets up his teammates. (**) The really good players in the league do those things. Not doing those things doesn’t make you some special, superduper, K-Pop snowflake, as many would hold. It makes you a limited player.
(**) To take one random example, RJ Barrett averages 6.6 rebounds and 6.5 assists per 36. OG averages 5.5 and 2.7. Those things matter which is likely why we see RJ at about 1 BPM above OG. Other examples abound, to be sure.
I should add one thing. Even if RJ becomes a consistent efficent higher volume scorer than OG, if you swapped OG and RJ imo we’d be a worse team anyway. We already have a surplus of scroing. What we need is elite defense and adequate efficient scoring (like 3rd option quality). That’s what OG gives us.
For discussion’s sake people often refer to these all in one metrics, but they are all flawed. That’s especially true when it comes to defense and how to fit players together well. So eveything about it understates OG’s value and value to this team specifically. It’s fine to justy throw out there as a number.
They also included Quickley in the trade.
“So eveything about it understates OG’s value and value to this team specifically.”
No. OG doesn’t have some special superpower wherein he “fits” with teammates or “fits with good teammates,” or “fits with good teams” better than other association players. Nor does he provide some special “value” because of his superduperness. That doesn’t work. He’s a regular player, to be judged just like all other regular players (i.e. everyone else).
It’s imperfect. It’s not as useful as something like WAR in baseball, but it’s always been counted on as a somewhat reasonable benchmark for box score impact.
The full scale rejection of BPM we’re suddenly seeing here seems to be a response to the fact that it fails to capture OG’s value. Just OG, though. There is no other player making 25% or more of the salary cap that bpm is spectacularly wrong about.
Rather than admit that our assumptions are wrong, we’re completely rejecting a standard unit of measurement to let our assumptions survive.
In that Athletic convo, Katz noted that by far the most frequent question that people on other NBA teams ask him this season is about what’s up with Bridges’ defense. On BlueSky, I asked Edwards if he gets the sense that the Knicks (an admittedly tight-lipped organization) are similarly baffled/worried. He replied: “No one is acting overly concerned about it on that side.”
And he did look much better getting through and around screens last night than he was for most of this season. Again, you have to factor in the level of competition, the Pels’ lack of size even when healthy, etc. But it was promising!
And that’s because OG’s original reputation around here was primarily constructed not on OG himself, but on his status as “not RJ Barrett.”
That’s a lot of priors to slink away from.
Oh lord, the cycle continues.
See y’all in 2 days when the thread will be Mikal Bridges sucks, then in 4 days when it will be OG sucks, bla bla bla
Considering everybody on the Knicks suck except Brunson it must be a miracle they’re 12-8 with a point differential saying they should be 14-6.
These threads are joyless. It’s not that I don’t want to engage in critical analysis of the Knicks. It’s just that a few of the posters here sound like my 18-month old who learns a word and repeats that word for 10 minutes nonstop. Over and over again. At least his vocabulary is expanding, while here it’s basically the same three concepts always.
In Dennis Rodman’s 3 years in CHI, his BPMs were 0.0, 0.5, and -0.3.
Cam Payne is currently 4th on the Knicks in BPM!
I’m sure the screaming teenyboppers didn’t get a lot of joy when their parents picked them up from the Cheap Trick concert in Budokan.
Hey, I’m over here trying to talk about other stuff, and not engaging in the lather-rinse-repeat of it all.
The only OG stat I care about is games played.
In Dennis Rodman’s three years in Chicago his salary as a percentage of the cap was 10%, 39%, 16%.
One of those years he was extremely overpaid but that came after a 72 win campaign so they could afford a gratuitous waste of money. A 50 win team whose defense is a sieve and is two tiers below the top contenders in the league doesn’t have that luxury.
I think Bridges will be fine. Maybe not 5 first rounders fine, but something closer to what we saw last night.
Makes me wonder if it’s a minor injury or if he’s out of shape. I’m still worried it’s aging. Luckily, the East hasn’t put a ton of pressure on us to win games immediately (which we’re doing enough anyway) and we can keep trying to figure it out.
Hopefully we see a few more Mikal games like this.
I like their discussion of Hart, people need to talk more about how he’s kept up his efficiency as a 6’4″ player. Sure, most of the shots are at the rim, but every once in awhile he needs to take the step back midrange or contested floater that a C never takes.
Thank you, Alan, and apologies for the generalization.
Here’s something that surprised me perusing Basketball Reference: the Knicks are not too bad in defending shots at the rim. There are holding opponents to a 65% FG percentage, 8th best in the league. They do allow a few too many shots from there (11th worst in the league).
Where they have been pretty bad is in 3PA allowed: tied for 3rd worst in the league (and opponents are making 36.8% of those shots, which is the 8th best – for the opponents). To me, the lowest hanging fruit in the defense is to cut down the over helping that is allowing for too many 3s. Coupled with some regression in opponents’ FG% from deep, I think this can turn into a league average defense. They are currently 20th in DRtg, but this could jump to 15th if they improve just 1.5 points/100 possessions. If they improve 3 points/100 (it’s a lot, of course, but maybe Precious/Mitch coming back can help), they’ll be fighting for the best net rating in the league, considering how good the offense is.
BPM is fairly good at capturing offensive value, but totally fails at capturing defensive value. If a player’s defense is what makes that player especially good (which is the case with OG, at least so far), then it’s going to underrate him. So you should discount the metric specifically with respect to defensive players, especially ones that don’t post lots of rebounds (DBPM loves defensive rebounding.) OG is a special case not because of some bias because he is the canonical sort of player that gets underrated by defensive box score metrics (likewise with, say, Rodman, who had low stocks and therefore got underrated by DBPM.)
Also, fit does matter, obviously. Replace RJ with OG on this team and we lose two more games, easily. RJ wouldn’t be putting up 25+ points per game on this team compared to offensively challenged, dregs-of-the-league Toronto and he wouldn’t be making any defensive stops either.
Indeed, RJ is this generation’s Rudy Gay–a guy who if you squint looks like he could be a #2 option but is ultimately empty calories. Except he’s worse on defense. Meanwhile if you watch the games you can–eye test alert!–clearly see that OG is worth the money he’s paid and that the trade, so far, was a manifest win, both for us in a particular and in a vacuum. UltimTBD until IQ comes back, but I am not pining for RJ and IQ together at a combined salary of ~55m per and nothing since the trade has suggested that I should think otherwise.
Well we’re cooked then 🙁
One more thing: Sims has been pretty good defensively. Some really good strides this season.
I’m very pleasantly surprised by Sims. His extreme offensive limitations means he’s likely never going to be more than he is right now. But going into the season, I was ready to write him off as a guy who couldn’t do anything but jump really high and switch a bit on defense. He’s been very effective defensively, and the on-off numbers he and Deuce have (which Macri wrote about today) are impressive.
Since E is a broken clock, just skip his posts and don’t engage and guess what! The threads will be much better.
It’s 20 games, and honestly, I don’t yet know what to make of this team. It’s feast or famine….so I guess the analysis is simple as, hey, these guys are crazy inconsistent! It does seem like everyone is pretty unselfish, which bodes well for continued success on the offensive side of the ball: we aren’t dependent on any particular player. As Raven said, it speaks volumes that KAT is willing to step back and play a role if that’s how the night is going. And Jalen is still figuring it out while posting very good numbers; clearly he’s going to do whatever helps the team win (including getting Mikal going). I still think we need a healthy Mitch if we want to contend – Precious is a nice piece, but not essential – so there’s a lot riding on his healthy return, at least in my eyes. But the offensive dominance isn’t a mirage.
It’s a lot of fresh faces, and Thibs is famous for taking most of the season to figure out the best version of his team, so maybe this year is more of a “let’s see where we are at 82 games”….
For me the most pleasant surprise in the first 20 games has been the play of Deuce. What a difference in 12 months.
The TWolves are below .500, so at least we can’t be heartbroken about losing the KAT trade. If Towns is better at PF than Randle, which I’m pretty sure he is, then even the emergency option makes that trade look like a win.
Some of this has been miscommunication too. Just knowing who should step out on a player would significantly drop the number of open 3s a game. There’s legitimate issues that do need fixing too.
Yeah, I would be up for an emergency discussion to iron out what we think about Sims.
I saw somewhere on Twitter that Sims is allowing the lowest rim fg% allowed in the entire NBA.
https://x.com/BenRitholtzNBA/status/1863593053698584607
I have had my feelings about Sims’ defense in the past. He has definitely been noticeably better this year but I kind of chalked it up to him being the only interior defender we have on the team.
So, I was shocked by the statistic above.
What do we make of it? Obviously, it’s a small sample and there is tons off noise, caveat caveat caveat, but holy hell that is a big number.
My tendency is not to believe it even though I desperately want to….
Defensively, I think the 0-3 ft FG statistics are a bit misleading. We have a real issue protecting the rim despite these statistics. For example, we are top 10 in the league in shots from 3-10 ft allowed and are 3rd in the league in FG percentage allowed on those shots. This is due to playing drop/avoiding switches, which means we’re soft in the short middle, along with KAT’s really annoying and terrible habit of not coming out to contest with anything but his body–raise your hands dude!
KAT is actually pretty decent when someone *forces* contact into him (which would help explain our surprisingly good rim protection stats from 0-3), but one reason why he got the reputation as “soft” is because he seems to shy away from contesting shots on defense. And I think gets reflected in the statistics for the “short midrange.”
I don’t think Sims has improved all that much and even if he has the bar was so low that he’s still a productivity black hole, imo. This is the view of most of the all-in-ones, as well. He’s never going to be anything on offense and he has too many lapses on defense for me to consider him an average defender.
This is surprising, given that their strategy is to pack the paint.
From Macris newsletter
Thanks Alan, it’s been a big help!
I’m still not sure on Sims, I think he’s integrating better with the lineups, but I also wonder if his better numbers are a result of this new Thibs rotation where he pulls KAT for a rest early and Sims gets to play more minutes with Brunson, Bridges, OG etc.
I expect him to lose pretty much all of his minutes once Precious and Mitch are back, but it’s been better than I expected.
The rim protection numbers I mentioned are just for Sims. Obviously, he benefits by comparison to Towns.
I don’t know, it’s an unqualified good if he has made a leap. Just not sure whether to buy in.
You are underestimating the importance putting the right pieces together. There are teams where OG may not add as much value as he does with the Knicks, but he adds a ton of value to rhe Knicks. Point being, the Knicks already have a #1 and #2 option with Brunson and Towns. Adding another high scorer will result in diminishing returns because there are only so many shots. That’s part of what’s going on with Mikal. There was no way he was going to average 20+ on this team the way he did as the #1 option with BKLN and neither would RJ. If either did, they would taking shots away from more efficient scorers which would be dumb.
What you want to put next to Towns/Brunson is someone that brings other things to the table besides high usage scoring. OG brings high level defense, spacing and efficient scoring on moderate volume. That makes him a great fit (much better than RJ even if RJ can score more).
All one number measurements have major issues, but they are worse for some players than others depending on the weaknesses of whatever stat we are talking about and the skills of the player in question. Individual defense is on area they are ALL bad at. So if your primary attribute is defense, it’s going to underrate you. IMO, the value of spacing, being a willing ball mover as opposed to a stopper and lots of other little things are not fully captured.
If you wnat to take a quick look at BPM (or whatever stat) as a starting point to a conversation, I have no issue with that, but you have to get beyond that if you want to understand a players value and specifically his value to the team he’s on.
I think Sims doing better might be a combination of (i) more consistent floor time; (ii) player development; (iii) opponents game planning to attack KAT and then pursuing that plan even when Sims, a more capable rim protector, is in; and (iv) he is more switchable and sometimes ends up defending smaller players.
I hear you on this, but at the same time, as a defense you are probably happier giving up those shots than those at the rim or from deep. Ideally you’d want them to shoot from the longer mid range, but you have to pick your poison sometimes.
There is plenty of room in both BPM and team structure for a guy to do BPM-friendly things in a 3 or 4 role, but OG doesn’t really do many of them. I’ve already posted the rebound and assist numbers. I suppose he’s not a ball stopper, but neither is he a facilitator or creator for others.
He doesn’t rebound well, he facilitates and assists poorly. Three and four options routinely do those things well and there’s nothing about those things that are crowded out by high-usage one and two options. Close to home, Josh Hart (8.3 boards, 5.3 assists per 36) is a textbook example.
As Hubert has kind of noted already, all this essentially just reduces to “BPM doesn’t pick up OG’s value, I really can’t explain why, but I’m just going to ignore it anyway because OG.”
(One look at the team defense rankings of Rodman’s teams will disabuse anyone objective of the notion that OG is a Rodman on defense.)
RE: Anunoby
I just think he may have bought into the hype with him averaging a career high so far this season and is pressing to prove he can create. All he has to do is let the game come to him the way he mostly has and he’ll still average 18ppg. Part of it may be conditioning too. Let’s not forget that he also is coming off injury- he just happened to be the first one back and playing heavy minutes due to the other guys not being ready. I’m fine with him scoring more, I just worry about what it means for Bridges- who has already shown he can create way better than OG. Speaking of Mikal, I hope yesterday was the springboard to him playing more like himself. The other day I asked if he may be the new OG on this team. Meaning- shooting from OG’s old spots and being put in positions where he can be efficient on offense. Does Thibs really wanna risk a chemistry issue if he takes the ball out of Anunoby’s hands a little to accommodate Bridges? I know OG’s a good soldier, but he did ask for more usage with his deal- so that could rub him the wrong way for a bit
RJ sprinkles in more good games than he used to. Looks like a good player at times. Still has a 95 TS+, 95 eFG+.
This site shouldn’t be called Knickerblogger, it should be called “IWasRightAboutThatOneThingBlogger.”
Also, OG doesn’t have high usage, but he does have a 104 TS+, 104 eFG+, and is clearly the best defensive player on the team. That’s a valuable player and it’s just weird to act otherwise. And even his usage (19.1) ain’t THAT low. No, he’s not Kawhi Leonard, that should not be taken seriously. What he is, is the least of our problems.
It’s hard for me to pin down the all issues with our defense unless I want to start getting obsessive about it like Thibs, but some of the issues are obvious.
When we get beat off the dribble or off a screen, we don’t have elite rim protection at C to back us up and when someone else comes to help it often leaves someone else wide open. Obviously, we don’t want to get beat as often and we want to be stronger against screens so that happens less often, but intuitively it feels like we are often breaking down somewhere else when it does happen.
I think the rest of it is just effort. There have been games where they simply weren’t playing with high energy and urgency closing out and helping. I say that because there have been other games where at least for a portion of the game, they were playing with a more playoff like intensity and showed that they are capable of playing better defense if they really want to. I’m not sure what to make of all that. You can’t play at 100%, 100% of the time. But I do think they have to start at least locking down better in the 4th quarter with more consistent intense effort.
Lil’ Penny
I was one of the first people to point out that OG is not a good rebounder when we made the trade. That’s why I was eventually pounding the table for Hart to be in the starting lineup if OG was moving to PF. Hart is very good for his position.
We can sit here and nit pick almost every single player. Almost all of them have a few things they can’t do. If he was good rebounder, plus playmaker, and could create at a high well, he’d be in the MVP discussion and no amount of money would be enough.
We are talking about a highly efficient 3/3a scoring option that’s lilely to at least be in the discussion for All Defense and that spaces the floor really well. That’s a damn good player. It’s borderline insane to be discussing how to make the Knicks better and then focusing on OG. He’s one of the bright spots so far.
Sims at least has been a non disaster and that’s more than I was expecting.
i think there is something to sims’ improvement but also that’s it’s getting overhyped. the rim contest stats are great but we are taking about like 40 attempts against very mixed opponent lineups. the categorization of these stats is always riddled with errors so small samples are especially fraught. still, he’s been good.
sims has always been a great switch 4 defender with weak side shot blocking, but a really poor pnr drop guy for a 5. he has looked better dropping this year. he’s still backing up and getting caught in between and/or never exiting crouching tiger mode, but less so. personally don’t sniff enough improvement in that critical role to be the seeds of a defensive 5 good enough to really make up for his offensive weaknesses but hopefully the crazy good numbers will have the last word on that.
Sims at least has been a non disaster and that’s more than I was expecting.
Completely agree. On both parts. Silver lining of Precious being out is he got the (precious!) minutes to show he has improved.
He’s “efficient,” not “highly efficient.” There are double-digits of qualifying guys between 17 and 20 USG who are more efficient. Obi Toppin and Deuce McBride are two. BB-ref has the data.
He’s a plus player. Massively overrated here. That’s the underlying cause of the so-called “cycle.” De-Eckstein the dude, play the numbers straight, that’s probably the end of the cycle.
Our old pal also has a bar graph showing the difference from year to year: https://bsky.app/profile/mikevorkunov.bsky.social/post/3lcdjgsnih22w
“Ignore DBPM” is the same as “play the numbers straight.”
The numbers people here have always been consistent that DBPM is a garbage stat.
One last observation on the topic for me. Josh Hart actually does all the things people imagine that OG does and his BPM — 3.2, including 1.1 DBPM — amply reflects it.
People are ignoring BPM, not DBPM. (And OG’s OBPM is 0.1. Josh Hart’s is 2.2. RJ Barrett’s is 1.6.)
—
I have to say, I am very much enjoying E’s embrace of Josh Hart — once upon a time the hustlebunny object of his absolute scorn — as part of his anti-OG holy war. It’s very much, “We have always been at war with Eastasia.” I look forward to, a few years from now, E holding up OG as an example to whom our next big acquisition should aspire.
Recognizing that this is bowing to authority, one other small piece of datum is Thibs is clearly trusting Sims now. So it seems HE is seeing something there. Bits and pieces of other data, like Macri’s points, also suggest it could be true.
Thibs’ trust is sometimes irrational, though — and at other times is more out of desperation than actual trust. For the former, see RJ’s minutes for most of Thibs’ tenure with him. For the latter, see Elfrid Payton’s usage in Thibs’ first year.
I mean it’s pretty obvious why Josh Hart racks up a high BPM— he gets a lot of rebounds. That’s valuable! It’s also something easily captured in a box score, and rebounding is honestly something that probably gets outsized importance assigned to it because it’s a counting stat. It’s why KAT has a higher DBPM than OG Anunoby: he gets lots of rebounds and those are counting stats. You’d have to be a pretty special class of moron to think KAT is the better defensive player, or even close.
The conversation here is starting to delve into an area where most of it is actually pretty fucking stupid most of the time. It feels like you have to ignore 50%+ of the posts here. Might have to peace out of this place, that’s how obnoxiously idiotic the conversation here is most of the time.
It’s been a good run.
E – OG has a DBPM of -.5. Does that feel right to you?
I think he’s the best wing defender I have ever seen in Orange and Blue. He makes a huge impact every night and Josh Hart is out there collecting the credit for misses he forces.
Goddamn, I have come a long way from my Berri days….
Edit: I see JK got there first
Oh, JK, don’t go! Especially not now that we seem to be a reasonably good and/or fun team!
Just do what I do and learn to scroll right past two or three people’s comments. You will generally find that the rest of us are trying to have a genuine conversation, whether about the team, guitars, teevee, etc.
E, if you want to be seen as an honest broker re: OG, you could try looking at one of the many defensive impact metrics that do fairly represent his defense instead of flogging the one you know to be very poor at capturing it.
Jokic has led the league in DBPM in 3 of the past 4 seasons. Do you think Jokic is secretly Mutombo reborn? If not, isn’t this a pretty clear example of BPM making a massive error on a player other than OG?
Thibs has always had a lot of faith in Sims, deserved or not. He started Sims over iHart for no apparent reason a couple years ago and also insisted on using him in 2 big lineups even though the spacing was horrendous.
“What he (OG) is, is the least of our problems.”
Well said, JK. Well said indeed.
We need you JK. A few years ago might have welcomed your sabbatical as it clashed with my views of building through the draft. But got to admit you have been right more than wrong, and pretty unbiased as you typically back your takes with data. Plus since E isn’t planning on leaving…
Walking back my Thibs thought. Sort of figured it wasn’t a good one, but it was nicely shot down like the clay pigeon it was. Glad I could provide some sport…
And I’m on the don’t go JK bus. As Alan says, just ignore them. Me too, if you must…
that has me laughing like crazy marechal 😊
look, see, not totally joyless…
and bravo milo on the apt description of sim’s “crouching tiger” mode…
that made me smile too…
I still can’t believe we got over 9 minutes of garbage time in a game…that was freaking awesome…
This has literally nothing to do with OG’s DBPM. Straw man. His OBPM isn’t really any good, either. I’ve already said I disagree with his negative overall BPM and that to me, he’s a plus player.
Defensive rebounds are part of DBPM because they’re part of defense. Standard axiom.
E’s position on BPM is clear guys. It is the end all be all, except as it relates to RJ Barrett, Frank Ntilikina, Cam Reddish, and Dejounte Murray. In those four cases and no others, it is utterly useless.
Doing the best I can do with EPM, I can see OG at 40th overall in the association. Is that accurate? (Meaning not is he really the 40th ranked defender, meaning does EPM rank him 40th).
EDIT: I guess technically tied for 40th with several other players.
Ok now do assists being part of DBPM.
I’m not gonna explain the same kindergarten level thing repeatedly to bad faith posters who are only here to reinforce their own dumb fucking narratives.
JK, then don’t. Feed. The.
You don’t have to leave. You just have to skip. It’s kind of freeing. Like being on ice skates. Zip right past the excrement.
And Marechal, c’mon, I compared Deuce’s and Hart’s threes to different ways of kissing your partner, What’s more joyous than that?
If you’re referring to me, no one asked you for an explanation. It’s already understood.
OG doesn’t rebound, Josh Hart does, rebounding is part of defense, therefore Josh Hart gets more credit for it than OG. Again, standard issue stuff.
If you’re going to spend multiple years relentlessly and perpetually shitting on Knick draft picks that other people in the fanbase like just for the sake, and then follow that up by slurping over a dude’s ‘intangibles,” I’d recommend a little thicker skin when people push back or have “narratives” other than yours. Just sayin’.
And it’s all supported. Stick your “bad faith” where the sun don’t shine.
In my 30+ years of being a Knicks fan I could never fathom actually rooting for a team with the best offense in the NBA. 14yo me would be in shock right now…
Yeah, its pretty incredible. Brunson and Towns are on the short list of best offensive players in Knicks history.
Yet somehow the vibes are mediocre so far. I love defense so that is part of it but the Jekyll and Hyde routine is kind of hard to stomach generally compared to last year’s relatively low variance day to day.
I still think it’s going to turn out ok though.
Personally, I’ll be happy when JK47 is gone. He brings too much objectivity and music expertise to a blog that is supposed to be about ripping good trades. Good riddance!
Thibs giving up personal life to be a dedicated basketball coach (circulated here a few days ago) is so moving. It explains a lot. As a guy who couldn’t picture himself mixing both family and his chosen career, he goes all in, it’s his own narrative. He cannot understand the idea of taking his best players out, or demanding less than 110%, or losing a game to invest in a nebulous future. For him it’s full commitment or bust.
I don’t know that he’s done a good job so far this year, but I do hope he wins a championship. It would be too good of a story. A dramatic vindication of his entire life (I’m sure he’s more complex than that, simplifying just for the sake of story).
I disagree. I think him and Bridges are 1 and 1A.
What you guys have done today by focusing on OG’s DBPM is openly admit he is only impactful on one side of the ball. It’s not that BPM is a total failure, it’s just not capturing his defense.
Ok, that’s useful. Now let’s examine the market for wings whose impact comes predominantly on the defensive side of the ball to get a benchmark. Here’s a few:
Alex Caruso: 9.8M
Herb Jones: 12M
Alexander-Walker: 4.3M
Derrick Jones Jr: 14M
Let’s throw Alexander-Walker out, he’s a bit of an outlier having come good on a bad contract. The other 3 were proven commodities when they signed their deals.
So using the Mid Level Exception, you can consistently find NBA wings who are All-Defensive team caliber and can provide spacing. So it’s really not just a few million we overpaid for OG. It’s as big a mistake as the Bridges trade.
Far from being the least of our problems, our biggest problem is that we have two wings worth X but we paid approximately 3X for them (Bridges in picks, OG in money). And all the things those two wings can’t provide that you would expect for the price we paid is everything this team is lacking. That’s probably what you mean when you say he’s the least of our problems. But their cost is the reason those things are a problem.
I don’t think this is accurate as it relates to a guy scoring 17.4 PPG with a .596 TS%. Alex Caruso and Herb Jones aren’t doing that.
So I open up Knickerblogger and I see 83 comments, and hope against hope that there’s actually an interesting discussion going on.
And once again it’s the same rehashed shit, just like every other day.
As Marechal said earlier, this site is joyless. And I’ll add really fucking tedious.
It doesn’t get more joyless and tedious than the perpetual, years-long, oft-rehashed drumbeat of how much the home-grown Knick draft picks suck.
The whiners should understand — it doesn’t seem like they do — that there’s a big chunk of the Knick fanbase, including me, who actually like to watch home-grown drafted Knicks and root hard for them to grow and succeed. The no-second-contract since Charlie Ward was — actually is, since the only one they resigned is gone now — beyond ridiculous.
*Applause erupts from the crowd*
On a mostly unrelated note, I think everyone is thin-slicing a bit too much on this current iteration of the team. We’re already at least as good as last year’s team (unless you think the January Knicks were for real–which I don’t, sadly) and only have room to grow.
Closely following the 2025 Knicks–or any team that just went through a massive roster shakeup–is sort of like checking your investment portfolio every day when you have a long time-horizon. You can do it, but you can’t panic and pay too much attention to any individual data point, because then you’ll prematurely exit instead of holding, holding, holding on the way to better returns. Or, even if you hold, you’ll suffer emotional pain that comes with the variance you observe by checking your portfolio daily.
The solution? Watch and enjoy the individual games, but resist the urge to treat them as referenda on the team’s prospects this year. Or, at least, wait until near the end of the regular season before we declare this iteration of the Knicks dead in the water. In any case, this will massively increase your enjoyment of this team. Or at least it has for me.
But this is KB and we can’t just kick Knicks-PTSD to the curb.
I think we got spoiled with the team fighting so hard last season. They were incredibly fun to watch. If we hadn’t experienced that we would probably be elated with this season’s team.
Alex Caruso: 9.8M
Herb Jones: 12M
Alexander-Walker: 4.3M
Derrick Jones Jr: 14M
In good faith, you really can’t compare Mikal with them offensively.
That’s kind of what bpm does measure well, though, right?
Caruso is off to a terrible start so that doesn’t help my case but if you look at his numbers in Chicago he absolutely did perform at that level, he just too half as many shots as OG is.
What bpm is saying is that Brunson and Towns make this offense great, and OG is just a passenger. You could switch him out for a lot of dudes and the offense wouldn’t suffer. And frankly that does match up with my eye test. If Towns were to go down like Banchero, for instance, I don’t see OG Anunoby stepping in like Franz Wagner and carrying us for two months.
The point is that OG’s offense (0.1 OBPM, 95th among qualifiers in points/36) isn’t worth the $30M+ delta between his money and the defensive specialists’ (or the acquisition cost, though that’s a different issue).
In terms of the “1/1A problem” Hubert raised, that’s also true — they aren’t creative or potent enough offensively at the wing to be as good as they could be and they’re clearly at least a weapon short, even if that’s just a bench weapon. That’s an OG/Mikal issue.
We are looking at his OBPM. Most of the wings you listed struggle to get over a -2 OBPM most years. Jaden McDaniels got a new contract starting at $23M this year and his OBPM was -3.3 last season.
“It doesn’t get more joyless and tedious than the perpetual, years-long, oft-rehashed drumbeat of how much the home-grown Knick draft picks suck.”
This is perhaps the single most disingenuous think E has ever posted…and that’s a bar so low that an earthworm couldn’t slither under it.
Just about everyone adored IQ. Most drooled over Mitch. Grimes won lots of folks over. Deuce is universally praised here. Hell, even Sims is getting praised heaped on him in this very thread.
There were also many posters who loved Obi, and felt that he should be starting over Randle, or at least playing many more minutes.
Only a couple of us were out on Frank the minute he was drafted. Most gave him a grace period. He never came close to measuring up to even modest expectations for a late first rounder, let alone a lottery pick. He fucking sucked. Full stop.
Nearly everyone here hated the Knox pick from the get-go. The dude sucked here, and everywhere else he has played, and is out of the league.
The real issue here is your bizarre infatuation with RJ. It’s actually more tedious than ruruland’s sucking up to Melo, except at least Melo was pretty good!
I get taking a couple of victory laps every time RJ plays well. He is clearly better than many “respected” folks though he was…kinda like strat has the right to crow about KP’s play in Boston. And frankly, some of the folks especially exasperated with you can be way over the top with the anger and insults.
But saying dumb shit like the quote above is beneath even you. Please stop.
Good one, Z-Man — “other than the draft picks everyone shit on for years, everyone loved the draft picks.”(*)
Never change.
(*) And no, everyone didn’t “adore” IQ; you yourself spent Thibs’s entire first year and the playoffs shitting on him on Thibs’s behalf and arguing he was worse than Elfrid Payton.
“kinda like strat has the right to crow about KP’s play in Boston.”
Oh, man, I wasn’t even counting that one. Yeah, the KP stuff for years on end was the very zenith of joy. The apotheosis. Lol. I mean, seriously — get a grip and a mirror.
I don’t think you can say that yet, Alecto. I get that 12-8 = 49 wins and last year’s team won 50, but last year’s team was besieged by injuries and played the entire schedule. This year’s team has gotten 100% participation from the starters and loaded up on the cupcakes so far (the 5th easiest schedule in the NBA, and that doesn’t count how many lucky breaks we got like no Luka, no Durant, no LaMelo, etc).
Hey, guys! Look! It’s news! About the Knicks!
No one doubts what a terrible mistake that contract was.
I’m really wondering if we use him as a backup C or more as a PF. We could really use some minutes relief for our wings.
I’m not convinced Thibs is willing to bench Sims right now either. Does Precious even play?
ETA: EB, that answer would suggest that Precious and Sims will both be in the rotation, at least at first. I’m concerned what a two-big lineup will do to our beautiful spacing, but Precious can at least fake having an outside shot, which Sims can’t even.
FWIW, I think it’s totally fair to wonder whether the OG trade and subsequent extension was worth the opportunity cost. Same with the Mikal and KAT trades. I don’t think the debate is tedious or joyless per se. I think that E has alienated most of the board over the past four years of continuously antagonistic posting…whether about Thibs, Randle, Leon, Hart, Reddish, RJ…that even his somewhat good faith arguments are triggering. That, and his inability to read the room for any length of time.
As to RJ specifically (and that’s really what this is all about, isn’t it?) it may very well be that the 24 year old has actually turned the corner. My recollection is that some posters involved in today’s argument were making some sport of bashing him a couple of weeks ago when his TS was in the toilet and his BPM was underwater. But the sample size of good play in TOR is getting bigger. Seems like the “we’ve seen this from RJ before, he’ll revert to his shitty 10K minutes worth of Knicks numbers any day now” rebuttal might start getting tedious.
But even an improved RJ and an overpaid OG doesn’t merit twisting the numbers into pretzels to inflate any marginal differences to gotcha the board. There’s really only 2 posters who adamantly believe that we’d be better off, both right now and going forward, without that trade. Everyone knows how they feel.
Since nobody has ever lay on their death bed and said “I wish I’d spent more time working and less time with my family”, all I can say is that I hope some of you KB regulars are there by his side when it’s his time to go.
@hubert,
Maybe it’s a matter of perspective. But by my lights, if you told me before the season that we would be playing at a 49-win pace (or, if you prefer pythag wins, a 57.5 win pace) and a top 10 SRS (which accounts for SOS but not injury luck) down Precious and Mitch and with Mikal Bridges playing at a sub-replacement level, I’d be pretty damn happy. To me, there’s no direction but up (barring bad injury luck or a weird and unpredictable massive regression from, say, Josh) with Precious and Mitch coming off injury and Mikal progressing to whatever his new mean is. So our floor–again modulo bad injury luck–is, by my lights, 50 wins. That’s really good for a brand new team that barely had training camp to gel!
I think what clouds this fact for many of us is that we watch the games and so fixate on the way in which this team goes about winning and losing. We haven’t really put together a complete game against a very good team outside of the win in Denver. Hence the Jekyll-and-Hyde vibe this team has had over the first quarter of the season. In committed, intelligent, and traumatized fans such as those who frequent this board, these vibes lead to thin-slicing and overanalyzing our deficiencies instead of realizing we have 2 starting-caliber players injured and a third that is playing well below his mean.
I’m reminded of my friend who is an ardent Bills fan. Decades of losing have given him Bills-PTSD, a close cousin of Knicks-PTSD. He constantly complains about Josh Allen and the Bills team, when they’re right in the mix every year for a chip. Bills-PTSD is a psychological issue with the person who suffers it–it is not an issue with the Bills. I think we’re getting to the same point here, where we’re so genuinely unused to winning that we have to start nitpicking so that we can comfortably catastrophize.
Of course, one can and should kvetch after losses–especially bad ones. But I can’t see much cause for pessimism about this team writ large. We’re going to be pretty good. Will it be enough for a chip? Who knows! But the moves have yielded a team with a good shot. If your issue is with how much we paid to get to this iteration, well, the proof will be in the pudding, but again, I think there’s reason for optimism that the pudding will be tasty and the price paid won’t feel too dear upon tasting the finished product.
Another reminder that they also gave up Immanuel Quickley in the trade.
This doesn’t include everyone, but it’s very hard to fathom people spending literally years shitting on end on KP, RJ, Frank, and other homegrown Knick draft picks and then having the … I’m not even sure what the word is — audacity?, cluelessness?, chutzpah? — to then whine and bitch incessantly about the “joylessness” and “tedium” of some marginal, entirely data-driven pushback on a not-home grown guy who much of the board insists possesses the kind of “intangibles” and “winning impact” that knowledgeable sports fans laugh out of the room when it comes to virtually anyone else.
I’d take that tradeoff right now if it gets Mikal (38mpg), Hart (37mpg), and OG (36.5mpg) down to a more palatable 32-34 mpg.
Playing Precious for Hart shouldn’t completely kill our offense during those minutes… I hope.
Man, you really do live in a fantasy world!
How about that ghastly reflection you must continually see in “mirror” that is the vast preponderance of KB posters. Is that why you are always trying to break it?
RJ still has a 95 TS+ and eFG+ this season. That is less terrible than his usual performance, but probably fairly predictable since it just seems like garden variety age based improvement. Overall his body of work this year is still not really all that dazzling. He is still an inefficient player.
Nobody could possibly be this big a fan of one traded away player. What this person is a fan of is smelling his own farts and patting himself on the back about how oh so very smart he is, that the kid had moxie all along and he just knew it, gosh darn it. In your face, thirty other nerds on a WordPress blog! RJ has been mediocre and not terrible, take that losers!
As a Jets fan I can’t even conceive of complaining about Josh Allen. That guy is amazing. Just had the bad luck to be born a year after Pat Mahomes.
Are people watching the games when it comes to OG? He mostly hangs out in the corner on offense and is usually heavily involved guarding the other team’s scorer on defense. That isn’t going to leave a lot of room for assists and rebounds for him. Josh Hart has the ball in his hands a lot and is a key offense mover for us and part of his role is to pursue defensive rebounds. This is plain to see when you watch the games.
“RJ still has a 95 TS+ and eFG+ this season.”
RJ is approaching 1,700 minutes with Toronto and taken over 800 shots including 224 3PA. That’s his most recent sample, and it is now coming up on 20% of his career.
In that not tiny and most recent sample, all with a different team and coach, he has a .587 TS% (102 TS+, if you prefer) and a .564 eFG% (or 104 eFG+). That’s on a 27.3% usage.
Glass half full or half empty? We’ll see, but for now, I’d be more comfortable taking the over.
Cam Thomas has a 106 ts+ on exactly the same number of shots per 100 as RJ.
We’re running the 2nd best offense in the history of NBA basketball. OG Anunoby has played to the back of his basketball card offensively while being the only thing that stands between us and a bottom 5 defense.
Why are we having the 3,498th debate about his offensive contribution? Who cares?
I can understand talking about Bridges, who’s fallen off a cliff on both ends, or our defense since that’s the thing separating us from the league’s elite. Why OG? IMO he is the least interesting thing going on right now.
Who cares about the offensive contribution of a player with that salary and acquisition cost?
How about … everyone?
This is just more “special rules for OG because he’s special” material. It’s becoming quite tedious.
Cam Thomas is a very good scorer. He is maddening in every other aspect of the game.
How is the discussion still focusing on RJ, is OG any good, his contract, defense overrated, etc. Over and over and over again.
There are lots of good and fun things about these Knicks. 12-8 is a pretty good start to the season with the amount of changes we had, and also some injuries. I am not sure how good the Knicks will be, but at least we are winning.
I don’t know what rehashing the same topics again and again accomplishes. From my view, it takes the joy out of being on here. As someone else said earlier.
“This is just more “special rules for OG because he’s special” material. It’s becoming quite tedious.”
Maybe if you repeat this a couple of thousand more times someone will catch on…
I’ve been loving the ‘skip the bad posters’ time here, but I just glanced at that last one and it made me happy, because confusing “me” with “How about … everyone?” is like the dictionary definition of narcissism.
17 ppg on 60% TS% is pretty good.
At least game threads are still fun.
You’re talking about two different RJs here. Last year with Toronto he was “high assisted basket rate” RJ and he was efficient. This year he has been “create his own shot” RJ and he has not been very efficient. He’s been a bit better, but is still down in the 95 zone. Seems like age related improvement to me, not a massive reinvention of the player because Tom Thibodeau was holding him down or something.
We’re at -5.5 against Orlando tomorrow. Implied no-vig odds about 70% chance to win. I’d probably take that action against the Knicks but, hey, Vegas thinks we’re going to the Cup playoffs!!!
We’re also at +550 to win the whole midseason tournament. Not bad considering we haven’t clinched and there’s only 2 teams ahead of us at +500, Orlando and OKC. (I think these odds are playing heavily into Knick fans’ egos).
Orlando has effectively clinched with a +60 point differential. We’d need to beat them by 30+ to knock them out of the Wild Card spot.
OKC has a layup matchup against the Jazz to run up the score, but could get eliminated if:
(1) Spurs beat Phoenix,
(2) Dallas beats Memphis, and
(3) They can’t catch Dallas’s point diff. DAL is ahead +42 to +18
(OKC is either a near lock to win the tourney if they make it, or Vegas is preying on people not realizing they could easily be eliminated. It’ll be fun to see them run up the score).
Unless its a blowout I’m pretty sure if the Knicks win they’ll host Atlanta in the quarterfinals with Orlando traveling to the winner of Milwaukee/Detroit.
You know what I liked about yesterday’s game (besides everything)? Mikal played with more energy. No, more urgency. It sort of felt like in previous games he was just trotting around the bases. Yesterday he was cutting hard to the basket, racing around screens to get open for threes. Even his defense seemed more urgent.
It’s really what I want to see. I don’t care if he scores 30 every game, maybe the results will be up and down for a while, but I want to see him play with urgency.
“You’re talking about two different RJs here. Last year with Toronto he was “high assisted basket rate” RJ and he was efficient. This year he has been “create his own shot” RJ and he has not been very efficient. He’s been a bit better, but is still down in the 95 zone. Seems like age related improvement to me, not a massive reinvention of the player because Tom Thibodeau was holding him down or something.”
Or conversely, due to injuries to guys like IQ and Scottie Barnes, RJ was unexpectedly forced into a role for which he is poorly suited…that of high-usage first option/distributor…the Julius Randle role, if you will. He was in that role playing with (other than maybe Poeltl and Bouchier) replacement-level players. While in that role, his usage climbed above 30%, more than 5 points higher than his Knicks average, which probably impacted his TS%. OTOH, he dramatically increased his AST% to over double what it was in his time with the Knicks. Seems like he and Scottie Barnes are developing some chemistry, and getting IQ back should help as well.
So there might actually be a big gap between “RJ has not become a significantly better shot creator” and “RJ has not become a better and more valuable overall player.”
Reasonable take, Z-Man.
It is! Per Statmuse, there are exactly 25 players doing this right now. OG is technically at 59.6% TS but he counts under the ‘OG is special because he’s special’ rule. 😉
But somehow, us missing RJ Barret’s rebounds and assists is the real problem, even as Josh Hart is doing that exact stuff for us at the 3 without RJ’s inefficiency and shitty defense.
Orlando has a very good defense. That should be a good test for our offense.
We all seen this movie before. Not sure why anyone would expect the ending to be different. RJ has had these good perfoming months in the past and then followed them up with toilet stinkers. As far his overall value and contribution to winning, – see exhibit A: January Knicks.
January Knicks, Schmanuary Schmicks! The real proof of RJ’s greatness is our good defensive performance in the 2023 playoffs in an 11-game sample against a couple of mediocre offenses.
Nice that Precious is close. If I had to guess, we will see him playing the backup 4 alongside Sims (which, yikes) before we see him playing the 5 with KAT. The wings do need a breather, but Precious at the 4 was not good last year (though this would be far fewer minutes of course).
I confess I laughed at that part. Thank you.
Fact!!! – They also play hard. Relentless energy and GRIT. I’m really looking forward to seeing if our talent and skill players can match them in this aspect. Not really worried about shots going in or rimming out. 1st meaningful game since Boston test.
Toppin plays no defense and provides no spacing. He’s an athlete that can score at the rim efficiently. There is no comparison.
I love McBride off the bench, but he’s not as efficient as OG. OG has a long history of a TS close to 60% and was well over 60% this year until this 3 game slump from 3, which of course is when you came out of the woodwork to trash him. He’ll inevitably start shooting well again and hover in that range. Deuce is playing well now, but we don’t know yet what he can sustain. He’s also not playing with the starters as much.
“Fact!!! – They also play hard. Relentless energy and GRIT. I’m really looking forward to seeing if our talent and skill players can match them in this aspect. Not really worried about wearher shots go in or rim out. 1st meaningful game since Boston test.”
I definitely care very much whether or not our shots go in or rim out, but I think I get your overall point.
@Alecto totally fair that you should be happy about our progress but I think declaring we already surpassed last year’s team is unearned.
Being on pace for 50 wins doesn’t mean we’re better than last year. Last year’s team played 2 months with RJ Barrett and was besieged by injuries to the starting lineup. That was probably a 55-57 win team if it had been assembled before the season and didn’t have monstrously bad luck.
JK47,
I share some of your frustrations, but don’t leave. Just don’t skip around and look for discussions worth having.
If somone can’t see how a guy averaging 17.1 PPG that still has TS% of .596 after 15 straight misses from 3 in a 20 game season with a huge impact on defense almost every night is worth a LOT of money and especially critical to this Knicks team because we have a surplus of scoring and not enough defense, then it’s not worth having a discussion. We can debate the 40 million, but the Knicks are at the stage where if they let OG go so they could save some money to get a better value, they’d have a worse team and a tougher path to the finals. Signing him back was a no brainer even IF you think it was a few million too much.
This is a pretty herky jerky Knicks team— #1 in ORtg, now up to 20th in DRtg, Pythag record of 14-6, which is a 57 win pace. But also we’re 26th in strength of schedule, so we’re only 8th in SRS, which seems about right. We do seem like about the 8th best team or so in the league.
I can’t imagine playing Precious and Sims together. But I’m not sure how to make the rotations work otherwise. It’ll be interesting to see what Thibs tries.
With all the supposed improvement from RJ and coming off one of the best games of his career in this small sample season, the Raptors have still been a tick better with him off the court. Again, very small sample, but his career is dominated by teams being better when he’s off the court. Now do OG.
Not sure comparing this team to last year’s team is terribly meaningful as there were something on the order of ten different teams last year.
That might be a slight exaggeration but I’m not sure. I think there might be more if you really start counting them. Just with Mitch there was no-Mitch, Mitch, no-Mitch, Mitch, and no-Mitch again, with various lineup permutations in each version.
You can do that with almost everyone who played last year.
Small offset is that we played 8 games at home and 12 on the road which is not included in SRS. That was something I incorporated into the SRS ratings for myself when I was gambling more. It’s more significant early in the season like this.
I do have to say that, if iHart wanted to go to a team where he could “shine” more and put up better numbers, he went to the right place. Two caveats, though:
1. This likely wouldn’t be the case if Chet Holmgren hadn’t gotten hurt, which likely would have kept iHart in a bench role.
2. Small sample size theatre. But so far, so good.
I suspect it’s more likely that we’ll see one of them on the court at the same time as KAT than we’ll see them together.
Plus their terrible offense should test whether our defense can put up the minimum level of cohesion needed to win.
When someone compares us to last year, I always default to the January through end-of-season team. They played at a 54 win clip despite horrendous injury luck.
I honestly think that might have been a 60 win team.
So it’s not PTSD. It’s direction. It feels like we’re going backwards. I think this team is further away from Boston now than we were last year. And we’ve gone from the 2nd best team in the East to maybe the 3rd or 4th (I think it’s probably 3rd right now, but Orlando definitely looks like they’re on pace to pass us).
Cam is a bucket, OKC should try to get him
I really don’t care about the Emirates Cup much, if at all…….but as most of you know, I *do* like to understand stuff. Here are my questions:
1. Why is Atlanta listed higher in the standings than Boston in East Group C? They both have 3-1 records, but Boston has a +23 point differential while Atlanta only has a +15 point differential.
2. Similarly, why is the order of the standings for West Group B San Antonio, then Oklahoma City, and then Phoenix? They all have 3-1 records, but Phoenix has a +19 point differential, Oklahoma City has a +18 point differential, and San Antonio only has a +14 point differential.
What’s going on there?
I think H2H is the first tiebreaker, Doogie, and Atlanta beat Boston.
Probably something similar in the West group.
Atlanta beat them head-to-head.
This is also head-to-head record. Between the 3 teams, SA is 1-0 against the other 2 while OKC is 1-1 and PHX is 0-1. Obviously this changes as soon as SA and PHX finish their game tomorrow.
Thank you, Hubert and EBW.
Hubert, nice to have a default.
Seriously though, I actually agree with you (!). I do think we’re a step back from last year, although I stand by my ‘which last year.’
If I was feeling spicy, however, I might argue that we have the biggest short-term upside in the east. By short-term I mean this season, and by upside I mean getting demonstrably better. Boston is what it is. In fact, most of the challengers are sort of what they are, for better (Cleveland) or worse (Milwaukee, Philly ha ha).
We’re still largely unformed. What form we end up taking is the question, and it’s partly unanswerable because some parts are literally unknowable (which Mitch comes back).
I think it’s easy to see us becoming the second-best team in the east, possibly tied with Cleveland, with a real puncher’s chance against Boston. Your mileage may vary, but it’s going to be a really interesting ride, I suspect.
Hey all, preparing a new stat: KNICKERBLOGGER
It takes good posts and divides by bad posts and multiplies by horrendous predictions. Then it takes into account issues the poster may have during the day, and subtracts misplaced takes which are proved wrong by the end of the game.
Knickerblogger average (like PER) is always 15. I hope by implementing this stat, we will truly achieve a more nuanced sense of posting about our favorite team. (who am I kidding)
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
https://x.com/TheStrickland/status/1863702202738508182/photo/1
Star J Barrett or Tank J ?
Post of the day. Love it.
Probably Cade
He is a guy I have sold many many shares of. Interested to see how it works out.
That’s pretty optimistic.
The only thing that would make me believe we are unformed is if we had a full season of Mitch coming up. The return of peak Mitch (and more importantly the staying power of him) could propel us past Cleveland and give us that puncher’s chance against Boston. Is that a reasonable expectation, though?
Otherwise I think we’re pretty formed. We will get better play from Mikal Bridges, I have never doubted that. But we probably won’t get 82 games of 3.2 BPM Josh Hart, so it might not net out to much.
We’ve had 100% participation from our 5 starters at very high minutes clips and a cupcake schedule. Whatever internal improvement may come will likely be offset by injuries and playing against teams that are actually good.
These cracks look very real to me. We might paper over them for a bit, but when a team shows me their thermal exhaust port, I tend to believe them.
I just saw a tweet saying the Knicks have had the fewest home games of any NBA team.
I don’t know, I still think we are a 51 win team like I did to start the season
I don’t care much about the regular season for a team in the Knicks’ place on the curve; the important thing is that they’re humming on all cylinders for the playoffs.
The next important set of data points is how Thibs incorporates Precious and Mitch and how much the offense suffers for the injection of defense that we all know Thibs is salivating for. I don’t have much of a feel for the magnitude of that, or how it’s going to go. We’ll see. That’s why they play the games.
So do I (except I said 50).
Two odd Knicks facts, courtesy of NBA.com:
Mikal is back in the league lead with 31 corner 3-pointers.
OG is one of only two players – Victor Wembanyama is the other – with at least 30 dunks and 30 3-pointers this season.
Did you work for Morton Thiokol in 1986? 🙂
hopefully it will be a case of “Negative, negative. It didn’t go in. It just impacted on the surface.” (or as i heard it when i was young, just pecking on the surface)
Frankie Smokes 😉
https://x.com/TheStrickland/status/1863638959441461676
https://www.basketball-reference.com/international/players/frank-ntilikina-1.html
I will never ever feel bad about any moments Frank gets in the sun. He gave us so much. He gave, and he gave, and he gave…
Although I swear to god he used to be taller than 6’2″…
Long time lurker. Maybe a four-time poster.
JK – don’t leave. You rock, literally and figuratively.
E – please leave.
Sometimes I feel like die hard NBA fans all are from Lake Woebegone. They expect every player to be above average and are mad when they are not. Similarly they expect every player to be paid at or below market value.
A team’s GM has to be extremely lucky and/or skilled to even come close to that. And, even if he was lucky and/or skilled, sometimes overpaying gets you a better team than you could get in any other way. Good ownership goes for the better team.
I was out on Frank the minute I saw him dribble a basketball. I will root for him forever.
Frank Ntilikina finding success for a team in Belgrade at age 26 was the result we all expected all along.
frank has really blossomed backing up sterling brown for partizan. sometimes you just have to be patient. in retrospect we really blew the 2017 draft when we could had brown at 44 but took damyean dotson instead.
Yet more proof that Impeccable and Immaculate is 100% correct.
And we never convinced Ognjen Jaramaz to come over here!
This is interesting from Katz.
Is Bron cooked?
https://x.com/fredkatz/status/1863785857410302400?s=46&t=0wqff4cNt-sCGcDs-uMExw
tedious is he kidding
The Lakers are minus 111 with Lebron on the court this year but 93 of that is in the last six games, raw plus minus just isn’t that useful. He’s averaging 22-9-8 on fairly efficient shooting he’d have to be the worst defender in NBA history by a mile to to be that bad.
He was a -28 last night. I don’t believe it either but the Bron era has to end sometime….
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