Knicks Morning News (2024.12.11)

“I have much respect for advanced stats, but would you believe if i told you that i wouldn’t trade any of OG, Hart and Mikal straight up for Dort?”

hey cyber, Dort musta heard you dissing him yesterday so he locked down Luka just to show off.

That OKC team looks unbeatable. They can just throw waves of good players at you, and SGA is just unstoppable. They are young, athletic, skilled, cohesive and well-coached. I don’t see anyone keeping them out of the Finals. That’s the NBA finals, who cares about the freakin’ Cup?

KAT’s effort level has been outstanding. I haven’t seen the problem of taking plays off on D like Julius used to. I also see a maturity to his game and his approach that is significantly better than what I remember from watching him play in the past.

It gives me hope that the combination of a thicker skin than he used to have, and a more mature approach to being coached hard as well as agility training, fitness, and nutrition, he can become a better defender over time. There seems to be so much low-hanging fruit for him to pick up, simple things like hand and foot positioning, sliding his feet to cut off angles, etc. that I think he can go from terrible to something around average.

But after watching the Thunder turn it up last night with iHart patroling the lane, I feel like we really need a Mitch-level impact defender out there against a team like that. We really need to pray for Mitch’s full recovery and good health for the rest of the season. It would make such a huge difference.

Z-Man, not sure if you were fully serious, but I liked your idea about making 3’s only count for [3] with less than 14 seconds on the clock. I also read somewhere an idea of only counting 3’s the last half of each quarter or a certain period of time. I am not sure any of these ideas are perfect, but, I like the concept.

Thanks, Nick. I’ve always felt that it’s not constructive to point out a problem without suggesting a thougtful (if misguided) solution.

For me, the problem is more 7SoL style basketball than 3’s in and of themselves. I actually like it when teams go inside out and the result is a good look from 3. I also like when the 3pt line is covered well so teams have to settle for 2’s but there’s some creativity involved. What I don’t like is when teams are encouraged to take 3’s in transition before working for a higher percentage shot, or just launching 3’s in the halfcourt before working for a higher percentage shot.

My feeling is that ideally, teams would be taking on average about 30% of their shots from 3. Right now, the Nuggets have a league-low 34% 3PAr, and league average is 42.3%. I’m not sure how to best remedy that, but to me it takes enough away from the game that it needs to be remedied.

My suggestion would be for the NBA to look at the teams in recent history who have played the most aesthetically pleasing brand of basketball, and then to adjust rules to encourage this kind of basketball. My two faves are the 2014-15 Dubs (31% 3PAr) and the 2013-14 Spurs (26% 3PAr).This has been done many times over the course of NBA history, most recently with the elimination of the transition take foul, and before that, elimination of the away-from-the-ball foul. Eliminating the transition or early-clock 3 can be accomplished by the 14 second rule, but there might be other ways that would be easier to enforce. Perhaps have sort of an “offsides” provision, where a team could not get credit for 3 points until all defensive players were in the frontcourt except in the last 2 minutes of a quarter. I don’t think that would make defenders stay back to prevent the 3 because they’d be risking a 5-on-4 situation where converting a 2 was much more probable. You could also add delay-of-game provisions for laggards. Or you could simply move the line out to bring percentages down and either widen the court of eliminate the corner 3.

The larger point is that the league should be encouraging more passing and more balanced shot distribution.

Another rule change I’d like to see is eliminating the “rolling inbound pass”. Players should be required to pick up the ball immediately, or alternatively, the clock should start when the pass in the backcourt either hits the player’s hands or the floor.

Fuck, no Huk?

Huk no

Shuks, that suks. What a schmuk!

Fuck that sucks more than Huk…