Knicks Morning News (2018.07.30)

Trainer Chris Brickley on his work with Frank this summer:

“One of our main focuses after this season has been just being aggressive,” Brickley said. “If you go back to pre-draft, we’d do shooting drills, dribbling drills, he had all the skills, he just needed to keep that mindset and bring it to the court and be aggressive. I kept stressing to him the more aggressive you are, everything else will open up. We’re just working on mindset and being aggressive, his shooting, his ball-handling, basically his overall game. One thing that we worked on and he did it a few times in Summer League, we were working on when he has a guard that’s smaller than him, penetrating to the paint, those pivots, shooting over those little guards a little bit and that was great. I think he has such a great upside, especially defensively. I think coach (David) Fizdale is going to allow him to be a little more aggressive and I think he needs someone to believe in him so he gets that confidence.”

There’s a bit more in there about Frank, about him helping Kanter work on his 3-pt shot, and primarily about a new addition to the Houston Rockets with whom we are unfortunately very familiar.

What if they made scoring inside easier to de-incentivize threes? Like got rid of the 3 second rule. While also making open threes harder, maybe make picks illegal outside the three pt line? Idk just thinking out loud.

Frank had one play in SL that gave me some hope – where he bullied Trae Young and shot a short jumper over him. Of course, Trae may be the weakest player in the NBA, but still, I could envision Frank being a Shaun Livingston type with 2 knees, a 3 pt shot and great defense.

Re: the race to 100 idea, I like it, but with a shot clock.

Every other 3 a player scores is worth 2.

It’d be better than same thing for the whole team because in money time there would be intrigue around which player can get a 3 that’s actually a 3.

And JR type players would never get minutes.

And yes, Mike: that would be a great stride toward shot parity. But just like my idea to eliminate game-clock management (aka the most boring way to end any sporting event), it will never, ever happen.

@10 very interesting. I was trying to think of a “cheat” to that due to the unintended consequences thing, and I guess it would be crazy cherry picking, where one guy on offense would hang back near half court, which would then lead to one defensive guy guarding the cherry picker, leading to, in effect, 4 on 4 ball.

“First to 100 wins…” Man, you guys are hilarious. I doubt it would happen even as an experiment, even in summer league, when players like Melo can’t even adjust enough to come off the bench. The only thing that might could happen would be a return to some form of handchecking. That’s the extent of daring in the league.

Which is a shame, because to me, the Finals were nearly unwatchable. Houston’s offense is perfectly suited to their team, and perfectly awful to ensure for four quarters.

yes the triple secret vivek 5 on 4 plan could finally be effectuated. but as league dictator I would counter this by having all games played on tilting courts that see sawed toward the action.

@12, great idea for OT.

Race to 15; every game ends with a game winning shot.

It never ends on a blunder, turn over or a 40ft prayer that misses everything.

Last bucket is always the highlight of the game.

Fixing basketball is simple. Reduce the shot clock to 6 seconds, except on offensive or defensive rebounds the shot clock is set to 2 seconds. All possessions following a play stoppage must begin underneath your own basket. All made shots are worth 1 point except dunks, which are worth 9 points. There are no fouls.

Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

I reiterate my desire to move the 3pt line out about 1 foot and to eliminate the corner 3 because it’s too short.

one of my main concerns with frank this year isn’t necessarily his offensive aggressiveness, i think that will come…it’s his ball handling, decision making and care for the ball…

i was looking up his turnover ratio and saw he’s at about the bottom of the league in value there:
https://www.teamrankings.com/nba/player-stat/assist-to-turnover-ratio

granted – i ain’t exactly sure what “value” equates to – but, i’m guessing, as a primarily off the ball player right now, it’s not good…

I think The Basketball Tournament uses the OT is first to 7. I like that idea.

There was an idea running around; at the first deadball within 3 minutes left, you add 7 pts to the score of whoever is winning, and that is the score you play to. I think that’s an interesting idea.

I would to see the 3 pts line moved back a foot, and the corner 3 removed. or maybe just remove the corner 3.

Aside from parity and the Houston FT/ISO offense, yes, the game is as fun as it was when offenses were breaking fast and throwing lobs down the court to sprinting athletes. It’s a wonderful era for fans when both teams are playing motion and all players — not just the towering behemoths — are allowed to use their athletic gifts to score.

Some of us are suggesting balancing issues when it comes to watchability. I don’t think there’s a single person who thinks that hacking for the last two minutes to stop the clock is good for the aesthetics of the game. Likewise, I also think it will never happen, not even in preseason OT, because it’s an extremely lucrative media event that needs no rocking of the boat right now, despite its lulls and weak points.

Baseball is a great example of how no time limit leads to exciting game endings. Get three outs or you lose, period. Is the rest of the game a slog sometimes? Sure. But a 4-point game in basketball (a tiny edge, all things considered) can be unwatchable when teams are committing intentional fouls and chucking threes to beat the clock. A team with a three-run lead (a much larger gap, obviously) can’t rest until they execute that final half-inning.

None of these ideas carry the assumption that the league, the union or the sponsors would go for it. Again, a shame because some of the ideas in this thread (especially a point-race OT period) are damned good.

I’ve always wondered why soccer matches don’t remove a player for the first OT period and another for the second, with sudden death for each one. The game would be so much more open and attack-heavy, with dramatic endings.

Hell, chess is IMO the most beautiful game in existence and still people have tinkered with its rules (like Chess960, which is spontaneously wild and exciting) to make it more resistant to boring, game-solving strategies.

Stil

Of course. Chess players must possess a certain memory ability to be successful. But the principles of well-played chess allow a person to “discover” the chess openings because they’re logical and rational. If you taught someone the 3 “big” principles (control the center, develop your pieces {pawns are distinguished from pieces, in chess parlance} and castle as early as is prudent), they could come to many of the strongest openings themselves.

Many chess teachers promote novices studying middlegame tactics or endgame positions because they are more “real world” applicable than memorizing openings, especially in classical games where a player should have enough time to ensure he’s not walking into a trap.

At the master level, memorization is required because of the extreme volume of chess analysis endeavored by generations of geniuses for the last five hundred years.

Memorizing openings as a beginner is more about saving your ass while playing blitz games (under 10m per side) as you’re much more prone to errors under time pressure.

Sorry to hear about your diminished abilities.

Chess is an obsessive game, and I think that when the right type of person finally “sees” the beauty in its complexity, it’s much like any art in it’s impossible to unsee. I too had to stop playing — during grad school, which is when I first took it seriously. It was too much mental energy to spend on a thing so challenging and tangential to my career/educational pursuits. It can be a singular passion if a person has the means. (The famous nonfiction book about the infamous 1972 championship has an anecdote about how Marcel Duchamp, the famous artist, was so obsessed that he all but quit producing art and even brought his analysis board on his honeymoon, playing so much that his frustrated newlywed wife glued the pieces to the board! I’ve already promised Lady Jowles that our honeymoon in September will be fully chess free.)

I have been playing at the city club here in Portland and I am amazed by the older gentlemen who can sit for 2 to 4 hours and stare at a board without so much as looking away. I am sure that I have less computing power than I did in my twenties, and so look forward to the gradual decline of my already-average chess abilities. Such is life, I guess.

Blitz is under 10min per side for the whole game, not per move. Lol, big difference

Also, if we eliminate the corner 3 we kill a lot of passing since the defense doesn’t need to defend those parts of the court. We’ll see more double teams because nba players can get anywhere on the court a player would bother being.

Sounds slow, boring and ugly.

if we eliminate the corner 3 we kill a lot of passing since the defense doesn’t need to defend those parts of the court.

The three would get much easier to defend, as would drives by any team that still focused on three’s. You’d probably see winning strategies that mostly ignored the three. It’d probably look a lot like Spurs-style, focused on generating open mid-range looks. I don’t see why that’d be a more enjoyable brand of basketball.

Yeah, the Bird-Magic-Jordan Era sure was boring. All back-to-the-basket slog. Surprised the game survived to evolve into the scintillating 3-pt chuckathon it is today! Please don’t change a thing!

Some of us are suggesting balancing issues when it comes to watchability.

The last two minutes can be a grind, that’s true. It was better this year, and the changes to timeouts were positive. Playing OT to a set number seems like a pretty good idea, they should try it out in the g league.

Adjusting corner threes doesn’t improve watchability. Moving the three line, changing the size of the court, it all sounds like ways to force a certain style of play based on nostalgia and nothing else.

I hate the move where a defensive player jumps and then the offensive player jumps into that player while shooting the 3 to get the foul call. I don’t think that should be allowed. Figure out a way to cut down on hack a shaq strategies

They adjusted the rules this past season for both of these, it was definitely an improvement.

@44 well said
One of my all-time favorite Knicks games was the Game 5 win to eliminate the Celts in the first round (the Johnny Newman game.) nobody even guarded the 3-pt line but the game was an amazing display of ball movement.

Yep, the concept of making a 22 ft shot 50 percent more valuable than a 21 ft shot is weird. Seriously, it’s not like Steph or Harden would suddenly suck if you took the 3 away from them. An open Steph 20-footer is still more efficient than a contested Boogie post-up with a guard dropping off to claw at the ball.

But it’s an issue of evolution of the game.

This used to happen a lot in soccer, teams would have extremely different styles and there used to be even very long traditional play styles (English teams playing with two open wings crossing balls into the box for tall strikers, Brazil playing with high skilled midfielders and breaking defenses one on one, Netherlands playing a high tempo passing game with 3 forwards, etc), but now every top team pretty much tries to emulate the prime Messi / Guardiola Barcelona.

But why does that happen? Simply put, the ball will always travel faster than the players and with the ridiculous athletic level defenders have reached, most offensive options are straight up inferior than the Barcelona passing focused game, if you have the players to pull it off. Then it became a matter of team construction: if you’re rich enough to get the players to run this style you do, and if you don’t, well, too bad, try squeaking some wins with other strategies. The Barcelona style is also way more entertaining to watch, which is very relevant.

As long as basketball is basketball there will be a more efficient way of running a team and teams will focus on building around that style. That’s why I liked the 3 point / 4 point idea, it devalues the 3 pointer relative to the 2 pointer without changing the fundamental dynamics of how basketball works at the top level, and without taking away the excitement / what brings fans to watch games. It only makes the most effective strategy less efficient overall but still possible.

Doing away with dunks or 3 pointers altogether would limit options and not open up others.

In theory the 3-pt/4-pt makes sense. It’s clearly not gonna happen though. Eliminating the 3-pt line won’t happen either. Nor will eliminating the clock. Now will raising the rim.

Adding or moving lines on the court has happened. Changing foul call parameters has happened. Changing the FTs awarded had happened. Changing allowable defenses and techniques has happened. so these things are more practical to discuss.

It would be fun to try out some of our suggestions, though!

I think today’s game has gotten monotonous. Half the game has disappeared. When was the last time that a post-up center dominated the game? Ewing wouldn’t cut it in this NBA. Cutting the length of the arc will help bring a resurgence to that type of play. Also, to eliminate end-of-game hacking the NBA should bring back the 3 shots to make 2 when a team is over the limit in the 4th quarter.

I disagree. Watching a guy like McHale or David Robinson operate from the post was very entertaining, to me at least. But hey, times change.