Knicks Morning News (2019.01.11)

Interesting to see the NY Post have a whole column about why people should bet on the Knicks tonight.

Wow, that’s kind of depressing. Oh well, anything to keep them in business, I guess!

We neeeeeeeeeed to pick above Phoenix, and probably Chicago too. Phoenix would grab Morant in an instant and I don’t think Chicago is all in on Dunn.

We could probably get away with picking below the Hawks and Cavs because they both just took point guards.

Also, I think Ja Morant is too good for Fizdale magic to have any effect on him.

Definitely top 20. Beyond that…yeah, it’s weird.

You don’t see a defender get tea bagged very often…..

Valuing Westbrook is a mystery wrapped in an enigma for me. He clearly adds value with his rebounds and assists, but I think some of the rebounds are strategic as opposed to incremental to the team. I’m not going to call it stat stuffing. It’s more like a team strategy to allow Westbrook to get some extra rebounds so he can immediately start the break.

I can’t see how his scoring adds much value. It may add value on a team without any other scorers, but they have a few people that can put the ball in the hoop now more efficiently than he does. I think they would be way better off if he shot less from outside and became even more of a play maker and scorer off penetration.

Valuing Westbrook is a mystery wrapped in an enigma for me.

I don’t think there’s any riddle to it…

I know one thing for sure about Russell Westbrook. No matter where you rank him, he is far too reckless a basketball player to be a winner in this league. He’s exciting, he’s talented, and he’s great for the business and media coverage of the NBA. He’s also going to consistently shoot his teams out of basketball games and he’s already 30 years old. Rank him where you want to, but I’d categorize him as the most overrated player of the generation. Well probably second most overrated to the Great Wall of John.

Wow, Pop is only 113 wins away from the most coaching victories ever.

I think 2016-17 Westbrook was definitely a superstar, top 5 player in the game, but his performance this year has been very lackluster. If he can’t get his FTr back to where it was and continues to shoot so badly on 3s, he’s giving you a lot but taking away so much at the same time.

It’s sad because he’s very enjoyable to watch, but this might be what his decline looks like. I still think I’d rather pay him that much over similar contracts like Blake Griffin or John Wall, but I’d be pretty depressed about the future if I was an OKC fan.

Westbrook is a mystery wrapped in an enigma for advanced stats too. He effectively broke BBR’s box +/- stat (which did pretty well in Ben Taylor’s study posted here a few days ago) his MVP year. That was one of the trendiest and most legitimate advanced stats at the time and then Westbrook’s season blew Jordan, LeBron, and Curry out of the water and statheads collectively said “wait a minute…” That season, he was supposedly the most valuable player to any team in any season according to BBR BPM by a wide margin. And if you think about it, it might be true in a very weird sense. When Russ was off the court, the team was absolutely terrible. His +/- numbers were great. His on-court net rating was good at +4.7, but the team’s was -7.1 when he was off for a net difference of +11.8. For comparison, Harden’s (most that were outraged at Westbrook’s MVP win thought Harden deserved it instead) on-court net rating was +6.9 but when he was off, the team was still at +2.2 for a diff of +4.7. There was only one OKC 5-man lineup w/o Russ that year that played more than 50 minutes (80 total) and it’s net rating was -17.7. He also filled up the box score demonstrating the ability to “do it all” and “carry the load” while shooting relatively efficiently (and by that I mean efficiently for him). However, it was obvious to everyone that he was not bringing the best out of many of his teammates (see, Dipo & Damontis). So what BBR’s BPM showed us is that he was a historically valuable player to a team that his own style of play greatly diminished. Ultimately, I think the lesson this reiterates is that advanced stats continue to struggle to separate contribution from situation (though Taylor’s study shows BBR BPM is one of the better advanced stats to do this).

Yeah, the Spurs are really working because DeRozan took a step back and is allowing Aldridge to dominate more. He’s passing the ball a lot better and contributing elsewhere tho, so I’d say he’s playing better overall, but it is Aldridge’s team.

here we go, a real gem for us; I think Denver says “hell no” and wants to milsap but they need help in the postseason if they want to get out of the first round; this trade gets them help on defense and 3 pt shooting: sac has to agree to take on lee and would want a sweetner like our second

http://www.espn.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=ybe3xq56

the obvious lesson to learn from voluntarily paying $150 million for 30 year old Jacoby Ellsbury is to a avoid Bryce Harper at all costs

@24

IMO, most advanced stats metrics fail to understand that “value” is not some fixed number that translates equally from team to team or lineup to lineup. It’s a team sport. The idea is to maximize defense, shooting, inside and outside scoring, play making, rebounding etc.. from 5 players in a balanced way.

If you have too much of any one skill at the expense of others, you start running into diminishing returns in the areas of excess and exploitable weaknesses in other areas.

This reality does not scream at you in some studies because organizations and coaches are aware of this and are always trying to build teams and lineups that maximize the balance and output within the players available. They aren’t running tests cases to prove the point.

A player’s on/off and value to each TEAM can vary dramatically depending his own skill set, who he’s playing with, and what that team needs.

I believe that what we need to do is look at the players’s skill set in a kind of checkbox, look at boxscore stats, look at the team and teammates, and try to decipher how good that player really is. A lot of it IS in the boxscore (excluding defense), but you have to at least try to take it to the next level.

There’s so much hatred here for purveyors of specialty plumbing products

you’re really gonna walk into the world’s fair of commercial tank installations and claim plumbing bigotry

NBAdraft.net has De’Aaron Fox as a comp for Ja Morant and I actually think that makes a lot of sense.

Morant is like the anti-Ntilikina. Great handle, looks to beat everybody off the dribble, will tenaciously fight for rebounds, plays with supreme confidence.

Frank’s not the comp guys. Mudiay is. That’s who the braintrust seems to like. Besides, Frank’s a wing, but they just haven’t figured that out yet.

Strat, Mudiay can’t even create his own shot. Not well, at least. Going from “missing every lay-up and falling face-first out of bounds” to “occasionally hitting lay-ups and not always falling on his face” may be progress of a sort, but it ain’t creating his own shot, not in NBA parlance anyway. I’d start wetbandit over Mudiay any day.

The part that makes me throw my shoe at the screen is just how not-basketball he plays. I was watching, what was it, the Portland game maybe, and he kept missing the fact that Kornet was rolling unimpeded to the basket (I know, it’s Kornet, but still), or missing wide open guys in the corner(I know, it’s the Knicks, but still), and just putting his head down and flailing his way toward the basket.

I really don’t know why, but I’d rather watch Frank see the open guy, be unable to pull the trigger, and resignedly pass the ball to his right. It’s probably just the more relatable human tragedy angle – a young wisp of a man, self-aware but trapped by his own twisted demons, compared to the utterly un-self-aware young brute who actually thinks he’s doing the right thing when he’s not.