Knicks Morning News (2025.02.26)

So Draymond Green is good on defense? Do I have that right?

Yes, but he has no capacity to stop a player six feet from the rim from getting to three feet from the rim. No player does. It’s all just random.

Unless you have a “rim protector” (TM) in which case teams don’t go to three feet from the rim because they’re scared, in which case it doesn’t matter if you have Draymond Green covering the screen/roll 15 feet from the rim, or Karl-Anthony Towns.

Or something something.

wait milo, are you saying now we can’t even trust the stats because of human data collection error…

Hope the Big Kahuna burger and tasty beverage are working for your breakfast, geo.

All of these stats that rely on human observation and discretion, right down to assists have, as a result of such reliance, built in noise and flexibility. The metrics that have them as inputs are even more inherently noisy and flexible.

Now Thibs is talking like Mitch was always the starting C and this was always the plan?

In Thibs’s mind it absolutely always was the plan. Mitch has always been the “starting center” there. Which is why he never changed the game plan out of things like drop coverage by the 5. There’s no evidence he even possesses a set of defensive sets, movements, and principles that incorporate anything but that.

Thibs has never mentally been on board with the five-out, bad “rim protection” idea. Not for a single second. He’s ecstatic to be going back to “Moneyball” — my definition, which goes far beyond offensive rebounding. (There are a whole bunch of 2022-23 posts about said definition.)

This summer feels like a big organizational fork in the road.

Because it is. One look at Sportrac is a dead giveaway. They have to decide whether to extend a guy who’s been a massive disappointment and avoid the sunk cost fallacy. Tough to navigate.

“I imagine the playoffs will provide the answer.”

Pretty much, yeah.

Raw on-off numbers are stupid, but in any event Wemby and Gobert are also good at not letting people get to the rim in the first place. Neither of them play defense by standing in a semi-circle with a three-foot diameter.

This shouldn’t really surprise anyone — they’re both excellent defenders.

Moneyball is… offensive rebounds? Playing drop coverage? Related to hustlebunny-ism in some way? I feel I kind of speak fluent E and this one still has me perplexed. Moneyball. Moneyball? There’s a salary cap.

A bunch of electrons were spilled on this a couple years ago, but to try to summarize again — which probably won’t do it justice — “Moneyball” in this context is doing a bunch of things the other teams don’t really do, as opposed to just getting better players than the other teams.

It includes among other things, yes, building your team around offensive rebounds and “rim protection,” but also goes to things like squeezing out wins because the other teams don’t bother preparing for your unique tendencies in the middle of a long, cold regular season and playing every regular season game like its Game 7.

That in turn, shapes the roster and playing time decisions the coach makes — which we’re seeing again. We never really got into the purest version of the idea, which is whether players who do the “Moneyball” things are available more cheaply in the marketplace. That’s certainly possible.

Thibs is still living off his reputation as Doc’s defensive coach in 2008 and, most importantly, the Bulls’ great defenses between 2010-11 and 2013-14. The Bulls’ defense faded to 11th overall in his last year, as the three-point and anti-physical-defense revolutions really took hold, and his defenses have been meh ever since in both Minnesota and here.

Twenty-seventh in both of his full seasons in Minny and the data JK posted about his time here that isn’t really that good even with the lucky outlier empty building year.

The game has passed his defensive concepts by. He’s made a lot of bank on his reputation so he guards it very closely, but now that consists mostly of talking up defense and showily benching Kemba Walker because of defense, and making sure everyone knows how very, very importantly he takes defense and how the magic is in the work and look how very, very hard I work and you better damn right believe Tom Thibodeau thinks defense is important says Tom Thibodeau — but there’s really not much substantively there anymore.

He had the “rim protector” nonpareil in Joakim Noah and has been chasing that ever since, to little avail.

Thibs is a pusher. (Tennis, not drugs.)