Knicks Morning News (2025.01.16)

The “skill” before and after obviously depends on the “before,” but the Knicks are certainly more skilled at the 1 and 2 of their ranking. Since the skill level of your 1 and 2 guys is outsized critical to association success, it wouldn’t necessarily be wrong to conclude that on that basis alone, the Knicks are now more skilled. That would probably be where I land, but with more reservations than I thought I’d have come January.

That said, while I thought and hoped that would be the case more broadly, i.e., a clearly more skilled roster, at this point I’m not really seeing it. He has his moments and his streaks, but I don’t consider OG a particularly skilled player (*).

The bench is not as skilled as the benches from 2022 through last season.

So we’ll see. Get healthy for the playoffs and take your best swing. A healthy Jalen Brunson and Karl Anthony-Towns should make you a tough out. Until then we’re kind of all just killing time and shooting the proverbial shit.

(*) Even the classification of someone as “3 & D” starts to at least concede that they aren’t widely skilled.

If those numbers aren’t games adjusted, it looks like OG’s on pace to shoot about 240 corner 3s, which would obliterate his personal record for corner 3s attempted. This alone could explain the drop.

As you proceed down your own personal chart of shot quality, your percentage of makes will drop. Axiomatic to basketball and why we have to look at usage, not just “efficiency.”

% of OG’s 3PA that are Open/Wide Open

Nope — you don’t get it.

Are all “Open” or “Wide Open” shots available to NBA players actually taken by NBA players? Start there and try to reason from the answer to that predicate question I’m pretty sure you’ll reach.

RJ currently shooting 32% from 3pt and 69% from FT…

His top end all around games are beyond OG’s reach and he hits that top end significantly more frequently. So are Quickley’s although not to the same degree. I’d rather shoot for that and take the risk of a stinker than lower my ceiling — particularly when OG’s perfectly capable of a stinker himself. (Not that it would change my conclusion, but OG hasn’t raised the floor or been as consistent as I expected. He’s way more capable of a stinker than I expected.)

I’d much rather be going to bat with them than OG come springtime, but who knows, maybe OG will shock. That’s why they play the games. As always, I don’t really give a shit about the floor. I’m a ceiling guy.

His elbow could be acting up. He was wearing some kind of device on it in the TO game I went to, but I haven’t seen whether he still is. I certainly don’t believe the story that all he got was a funny bone stinger when he winced that time a few games ago.

Since when have we been able to round 5.7 assists per game up to 7?

Since the day “stocks” became some phenomenal measurement of some critical thing, even though RJ Barrett is averaging more stocks/100 this year than prime Joe Dumars, and equal in their careers?

Kudos and high-fives to TNFH for Falsifying (TM) the idea that on-off NBA numbers are dependent on the players you play with and the players you play against!!

Shall he ying and yang back to mentioning another Knicks or NBA player I supposedly “love” and demonstrating how “stupid” that is?

In the most used lineup of 4 players + OG or RJ, the OG lineup was net +16.6 per 100 and the RJ lineup was -9.0.

Not the same rosters, before and after, but in any event if you want to go to net rating with the five-mans as you should it’s:

Pre-trade with OG: -0.9
Post-trade with RJ: +10.3.

Another better direct before/after comparison:

Poeltl-Barnes-OG: -2.3 net, 113.0 DRat
Poeltl-Barnes-RJ: +5.6 net, 111.1 DRat.

We might, hypothetically, find that in the 4 previous seasons OG was the 27th best defender in the league and RJ was the 807th.

Yes, that is very hypothetical.

Day off for me today, geo. Cocktails/social hour about 1.5 hours away. Believe it or not, I like talking about basketball. It probably reads like I’m doing this through gritted teeth, but in reality it’s the opposite.

You may enjoy it, but this is the equivalent of breaking into a physics lab, putting a protractor on the ground and declaring to the scientists that the Earth is flat.

I know you think that, but no it’s nothing like that. Truly, it isn’t. Not to get personal, you’re not alone, but you vastly overestimate the degree to which this basketball data measures real things accurately and in particular, the degree to which the data that isn’t readily observable and has been for decades (points, assists, rebounds, FG%) does.

To be honest, again nothing personal, but likening this basketball data to a physics lab is kind of comical.

If a person went to Rucker Park and watched LBJ play pickup with 9 D-III dudes, they’d be able to tell LBJ was the best player on the blacktop even if the teams didn’t keep score.

To really know anything, you have to know its limitations and premises and why they’re there. Most people who use this basketball data to this degree, don’t.

Like, for instance, the limits of a lineup using only a small sample of minutes to determine the defensive impact of a specific player. It’s an example of a limit that was solved by using RAPM.

It wasn’t remotely “solved” by RAPM. In terms of the lineup data, yes, it’s a small sample size but it wasn’t put out there to prove anything, but instead as a shorthand way to go “Hmm, this doesn’t seem to agree with the aggressive counter-assertion.”

RAPM doesn’t granularly accurately measure defensive caliber for the simple reason that on-off numbers don’t and can’t granularly accurately measure defensive caliber. It’s helpful, not remotely definitive.

That’s really the problem with all the defensive caliber rankings — whatever formula, algorithm, equation used to do the ranking ultimately doesn’t measure defensive caliber. It might approximate it, depending. But it does not measure it.

Compare and contrast with something like “points” which is in fact a measure of offense and can serve as a very imperfect starting place. “Points prevented” is its analogue and even better something like “effective field goal percentage lowered.” But that’s pretty much impossible to accurately measure, certainly nothing like points.

I think just having Quickley at $25M and Jaylen Wells on a rookie deal would be better than having OG.

If someone is at this late date still thinking OG is some kind of special snowflake “winner,” they’re in the religious zone and unreachable by reason or data. Many non-OG paths would have put this team in a better position.

The Knicks had the best defense in the 2023 playoffs. With a couple of their better defenders at half-health. The counter-claim essentially is, I guess, “Well, they would have been even better than that defensively with OG.”

But in the real world, that’s never actually happened with OG’s teams. Didn’t happen with the ’24 Knicks when OG got here. And if you look closely enough you can see why.

So it’s really just “just you wait and see what OG can really do” and I’m like “Ok, I’ll wait and see.” Just don’t pretend he’s actually done it before, because he hasn’t. After numerous chances. Other people have. And there’s a lot of reason for suspicion that he ever will. Those reasons are not determinitive and he has his shot.

Produce. Don’t tell me you can produce or you’re going to produce or that some obscure AIO metric says you can produce. (*) Produce.

He’s got his shot now. He’s got another purportedly good wing defender to help him and two superstars to carry the offensive load. He’s entirely free to help this team put up the elite defense they put up in the biggest games a year and a half ago.

Produce.

(*) Or (lol) that you are producing.

The Knicks were 17-15 when they made the deal. Obviously they got worse, right?

OG’s defenders have all sorts of counterfactuals they incessantly run in their heads and occasionally out loud to defend his lack of actual production and contribution, but never seem to want to run the one with IQ and RJ, without Randle, and with KAT.

Earth to Z-Man:

They also traded Immanuel Quickley for the special snowflake. (Still running a negative BPM.)

RJ + IQ gooooooood!
OG + Precious baaaaaaaad!

Exactly! Now we’re getting somewhere.

OG has his chance to convince this “flat-earther.” He can actually produce, including in the playoffs, on the non-special Ed curve. When he does that, he’ll get kudos from the flat earth contingent.

To date, he has not. He’s been mediocre offensively, negative BPM, can’t really do much on that side of the ball and the team defense that he’s supposedly helping anchor has also been mediocre even though he has Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges to help him close off the perimeter. That’s in line with his past 8 years of NBA basketball.

Can he? I frankly don’t care.

OG was playing fine for about a quarter of the season, but unfortunately being Luol Deng’d for an extended period of time caught up with him and now he can’t throw the ball into the ocean. Turning him into a 3000+ minute iron man was one of Tom Thibodeau’s dumber innovations but hey whatareyougonnado.

Yep, OG’s been failed and let down again. Everyone lets OG down. Story of his life.

Fred Van Vleet let him down, Nick Nurse let him down, Pascal Siakim let him down, Scottie Barnes let him down, the Nova boys are letting him down, Tom Thibodeau has let him down.

If only those guys haven’t let him down, his teams would have defended the perimeter well instead of poorly and wouldn’t have underachieved and disappointed year after year.

If he can produce on the non-special Ed curve, he’ll get kudos. If he can’t he won’t. Same standard as everyone else. Whether he can or not isn’t the salient question. He has his chance. We’ll see.

Oh, I forgot — all those guys have also let OG down over the years by not letting him have the bigger role on his teams’ offenses that his talents and skills clearly warrant.

Everyone lets OG down.

OG had +10.9 on/off for the Raptors and a +22.1 on/off for the Knicks.
RJ had a -6.4 on/off for the Knicks and a +1.5 on/off for the Raptors.

OG has a chance to individually contribute to a defense as good as the 2023 playoff Knicks, and actually has two good wings to help him check the perimeter and do that. Josh Hart is an excellent defender; Mikal Bridges, while not what he was, has an all-defensive team on his resume.

Last year, he did not do that. He never really has.

Will he actually do it in the spring of 2025? We shall see. Since the Knicks are at the point on the win/development curve where it doesn’t really matter, he even gets a pass for the underachieving 2024-25 regular season defense which has unfortunately apparently failed him. Story of his life.

Like the finals playoff Heat that knocked off the Celtics were really actually the 25th best offense in the NBA.

No one believes this.

The real question is why all this nonsense to defend … OG Anunoby. Never really seen anything like it. Is it really just to “win” an internet argument? Sure seems that way.

Today, Lu Dort has a .559TS% on the season — lower than OG even with his shooting slump — and Dort has a usage closer to a Mitchell Robinson season than an OG season.

The extra 15 points of TS that OG brings (at least temporarily) isn’t worth close to $25 million/year, particularly given how proven Lu is at fitting in and integrating and contributing to elite team defenses for elite teams.

OG has literally never done anything like that. OG has never 3 & D’d for elite teams and elite defenses in an integrated way like Lu has. On a fair reading, he’s done the opposite.

But OG has the chance to change the narrative and do that. We’ll see.

We’re defending OG now cause it got too easy defending Hart.

Extremely well-played.

There wasn’t even an iota of snowflaking of Hart, though. No suggestion of participation trophies. The OG material is imbued top to bottom with that.

If OG plays 35 mpg on the wing for the best playoff defense in the association, he can change the narrative. He hasn’t to date, or anything close.

We’ll see.

One thing we do know is that whether he does or not has nothing to do with RJ Barrett.

(There are literally no “innovations” involved to “prop up” RJ Barrett. Beyond being one of the assets squandered for the snowflake, RJ Barrett is irrelevant to any of this. He’s never played a single minute of basketball with OG. Which means, I guess, that he hasn’t had a chance to let OG down but then again I don’t have the creative mind for such things that some have.)

Why is “2023 playoff Knicks” in scare quotes? The Knicks did in fact play a bunch of playoff games in 2023. Did they not “really exist” because they didn’t involve OG or something?

Bizarre.

Images from space were final proof, if any were needed.

People actually saw those images, and they were tangible and real. They didn’t say, “I see a sphere, but the models say there should be a square here. It’s a square!!”

Cf. the fantasies we see re this particular player.

The models said OG was one of the best defenders in the league.

The people who saw the sphere with their eyes didn’t model it.

Yes, people are overreacting to a small sampling of mid-season games where the team got a jolt of energy in the dog days of the season and which was then completely unconfirmed and vitiated and completely changed by the signals that came out once the dog days ended and the playoffs started.

And then unconfirmed by the signals of this regular season.

This whole entire thing reduces to “January Knicks, bruh” I mean, if that’s your thing — great. Seems like a very thin reed to snowflake a dude for hours and hours on end, but it takes all types. And there’s nothing “data-based” about it. It’s cooing over and romanticizing a few random games in the dead of winter.

The 2023 Cavs had a regular season ORat of 116.1 and a playoff ORat against the Knicks of 103.4. The Heat, as we’ve seen, scored the fewest points against the Knicks than in any of their four 2023 playoff series. The Knicks were without or pretty much without two quality defenders in Grimes and Quickley.

In 2024, the Sixers had a regular season ORat of 116.4. They had a playoff ORat against the Knicks of … 116.4. OG then got hurt in the Indiana series, so we won’t hold that against him, but the Knick defense in that series stunk.

There’s nothing to the “January Knicks.” Or the “OG effect.”