After a brief period of semi-relevancy in the East, the Knicks have once again sunk to the lottery cellar despite a bloated budget. They’re a prime example of the dangers of short-term thinking and how you shouldn’t overpay for your second options (Amar’e after failing to bring in LeBron) just because you have the resources. Those decisions set the ceiling low on the potential of the ballclub, and they peaked as a second round out in the worse conference.
2014 in review
Although the Knicks surprised some people in how far they fell in wins — losing 17 more than in 2013 — in some respects a fall from grace was inevitable. As so happens with poor organizations, they didn’t understand why they found the success they had had, and made moves to dissolve their strengths. The Knicks, after blitzing the league with three-pointers, shipped out Novak, possibly the highest volume long-range bomber ever, for Bargnani and pushing Carmelo back out to small forward. Carmelo did play more at power forward than expected, but this was caused by heavy injuries in the frontcourt. The worst hit was to Tyson Chandler, and the concerns that Dallas had about his health rang true as he only totaled 1662 minutes and played visibly worse defense. The Knicks, thus, missed the playoffs by one game and their consolation prize, their lottery pick, had already been given away and turned into a Philadelphia pick for Dario Saric.
Changes
Exit: Raymond Felton, Tyson Chandler, Kenyon Martin, Beno Udrih, Jeremy Tyler, Metta World Peace, Toure’ Murry, Shannon Brown, Earl Clark, Chris Smith.
Enter: Jose Calderon, Samuel Dalembert, Quincy Acy, Jason Smith, Shane Larkin, Cleanthony Early.
The Knicks are essentially just swapping pairs of point guards and centers. Chandler’s injury problems are frustrating, but he’s still a better player than Dalembert. A switch of Felton and Calderon is basically a “grass is greener on the other side” trade where both sides were frustrated with their point guards and don’t understand the limitations of the other guy yet. Quincy Acy is replacing Kenyon Martin as the physical, tough player in the frontcourt. By most accounts, Early will not be a significant NBA player, and he could play sparingly few minutes. New York also lost Metta World Peace, who’s moved on to China and become a political representative of panda bears professional basketball player in their league.
Player spotlight
As the oldest rookie we’ve ever had in NBA history, Prigioni’s been one of the bright spots for the team the past two seasons. He’s a veteran Spanish guard who came over in the twilight of his career, but we should be glad he did since he’s a unique and skilled player. Like his Spanish peer Jose Calderon, he’s a fantastic shooter and ranked as one of the most efficient shooters in the league.
From the bar chart below, one can scarcely see the bar for usage. He had the second lowest usage rate in the league among players with at least 1000 minutes, only ahead of Greg Stiemsma. Despite his shooting talents, he took less shots than guys like Perkins and Biyombo. His free-throw rate is also the second lowest in the league with a mere 11 total free throw attempts; Diante Garrett was the only who took less per field goal attempt. Helpfully, he’s a great passer and racked up a sizable amount of assists despite infrequently driving to the basket for a point guard. No point guard with at least 1000 minutes, in fact, drove less per 100 poss: the average was 9.6 drives and Pablo was 2.8.
When Prigioni does shoot, it’s probably a jump shot: half his field goals were catch-and-shoot attempts and three-quarters of his shots were three-pointers. He had only 25 shots within three feet — a rate of one shot every 52 minutes. Pablo Prigioni is the purest grade of point guard, taking pass-first to an extreme and only shooting open three’s or when he absolutely has to. His turnovers seem high, but it’s only because his absurdly low usage rate distorts the value: he had only 60 turnovers to 228 assists.
Defensively, Prigioni is a bit of an enigma. He comes up with a lot of steals, but his fouls are high for a guard and blocked a mere two shots all year. He’s not a rebounder either, and eFG% defense seems him as significantly below average. But from a macro-level, he appears to be a good defender for his position. Adjusted plus/minus models like him, and my expanded box score metric does too. They were a good defensive team when he was on the court, closer to league average, and they were better on defense when he was out there instead of Felton, Smith, or Hardaway. He’s one of the least athletic players in the league at his age, but he’s smart and has good hands, and the Knicks use him in the right match-ups.
Via the shot chart below, Pablo takes few midrange shots but hits three’s from every angle possible and was hot from every angle possible. Despite his hesitation inside, he’s not a poor finisher and he was above average in 2013. In few attempts, he’s also at 89% from the free throw line, but his stats from Europe suggest the high-80’s too. He’s an outstanding shooter and should be shooting more often for the benefit of the team.
Below is the only time where he hit four (or more) field goals (link’s also here) with a game against Atlanta. Three of his four shots are three-pointers — a typical rate for him — and two of those are super deep three-pointers. He has a smooth release with a low arc, but he obviously has enough strength for long distance. The fourth is, incredibly, a fast break lay-up that helps in securing a win.
Pablo collected four steals versus Chicago in the videos below (link’s also here) where he pressured their motion offense. He forces Hinrich in the corner by trapping him in the first clip, and strips a pass on a pick-and-roll in the second. He shows his help defense in the next two videos, stopping a drive in the third one and stripping Taj Gibson in the post.
Despite being 37 years-old, Prigioni is a good defender overall with great instincts and fundamentals, explaining why the Knicks defended better when he was on the court. He’s an extreme pass-first point guard and rarely shoots even if he’s an outstanding shooter. With him nearing 40 it’s a shame he could be out of the playoffs again; he’d be a perfect fit on a contending team as a veteran point guard.
2015 projected
Most predictions I’ve seen so far have given the Knicks around a 41 win season, surprising considering how they won fewer games last season and appear to be worse. No one would consider Chandler at even half his strength to be worse than Dalembert, and the Felton-Calderon swap is at least a wash.
We can break this down component by component. First of all, a weighted-sum of their ages by projected minutes played shows their average age around 27.5 — basically, they will not improve because of their age. Shumpert and Hardaway are young, but their other core players they retained are in their late 20’s and early 30’s. Importantly, Carmelo is 30 years-old now and played 2982 minutes last season. He is unlikely to produce more for the team this season.
The change at center is even more telling. Chandler had a down season and played over 1600 minutes. Yet Dalembert has averaged those minutes for a season (prorating the lockout season) over the past four seasons, and he’s in his mid-30’s. No offense to Dalembert, but he was never the player Chandler was — the biggest difference, oddly enough, is offense, where Tyson’s a historic high-percentage finisher and a dangerous threat in the pick and roll. And New York won’t even have peak Dalembert. He’s a player who displayed a lot of potential for years but never put things together due to a poor awareness (he might have a few unofficial records for goaltending) and low skills on offense.
Calderon is certainly a great shooter and is an upgrade over Felton in that respect, but unlike Prigioni he’s a terrible defender. When he shares the backcourt with Smith this could be a glaring issue. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Dallas was almost as bad as New York on defense, and they actually tried. Besides the rarely used Wayne Ellington, Dallas was at its worst defensively when Calderon was on the court. About every respectable defensive metric I could find suggested he was a very bad defender. And his offense doesn’t even make up the ground, as I found that looking at several years Toronto was not appreciably much better off when he was in the game. Felton’s not perfect, but Calderon isn’t a major upgrade either — if he’s an upgrade at all.
The minor pieces don’t point to an improvement either. Kenyon Martin’s hard-nosed defense will be missed, and Quincy Acy and Jason Smith are unlikely to make up a few wins when replacing him. New York’s defense was actually excellent when he played — they were four points better than average, roughly speaking, when he was on the court, and they were better on offense too. Shane Larkin is still young and unproved, and won’t contribute too much. The amnesty provision was used on Outlaw years ago, and it’s clear why. This is not a bench group that will gift them with a few more wins.
Add it all up, and it’s confusing why projections have them improving and making the playoffs, even reaching a winning record. An argument that “Carmelo is too good” to miss the playoffs is perplexing because plenty of more talented players have done so including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kevin Garnett, and Kobe Bryant, and Carmelo himself just missed the playoffs: why can’t he do it again?
The other large change that I can figure out is that some think Bargnani will be healthier and log more minutes. The counter to that is that he hasn’t played more than 1300 minutes in four years and regularly misses games, and age isn’t going to fix that. Another counter is that, simply put, Bargnani is an aggressively negative force for his team and makes them much worse. In a game last season, Dwight Howard got stuffed by Bargnani, but he played into the only strength Bargnani had on defense: the low-post. He’s terrible everywhere else — some of the worst defensive awareness among starters and he’s in the conversation for the worst rebounding center (when he plays there) ever. His rebounding was so poor that it turned Bosh into a 10 rebound player because there were so many more to grab and made people erroneously think Bohs was a great rebounder for a year. He’s an awkward offensive player too, and he’s somehow bad for modern NBA offenses despite being a stretch 4 or 5. Overall, the Knicks were 8 points per 100 possessions worse when he was on the court, and this is supported by years of evidence in Toronto. More Bargnani is not the solution.
Stoudemire isn’t the solution either. His glory days are long gone, and he can’t log heavy minutes anymore. He’s in the running with Bargnani as one of the worst defenders in recent history among starters, and he also can’t rebound. He’s still an efficient scorer, however, and that will endear him with some people. Per 36 minutes, he can still score at a rate of 20 points on some of the best shooting efficiency in the league. In fact, going back to 2001, he has the highest “points over league average” scoring mark among players with at least 1000 minutes and a few of the other highest too. (This is computed as the difference in points you’d receive from a player with league average true-shooting percentage with the same number of shots per 100 possessions.)
At shooting guard, the Knicks have amassed a bit of a logjam. Shumpert is a fine defender and should be fully recovered from his knee injury; he deserves a starting role. JR Smith is coming off a season that was nearly derailed by a shooting slump, and the Knicks do not appear to be willing to reduce him to a smaller role. Then there’s Tim Hardaway Jr. who showed a lot of promise offensively but was a mess on defense. If Carmelo plays more at small forward, the battle here will be interesting even if the solution is obvious in my eyes: with Calderon starting, you need Shumpert starting for his defense, and Smith works well as a sixth man scorer.
Finally, this is still Carmelo’s team, and while he’s far from a strong MVP-caliber player due to his defense and lack of playmaking skills, he’s made strides in his catch-and-shoot ability from the top of the key and is still an underrated rebounder. He can’t drag a team to the playoffs by himself, sure, but no one can: it’s a five-person game.
Summary
The Knicks in no way improved on their previous season when they missed the playoffs, and will in all likelihood get worse. I have their defense rated as the worst in the league by a hair under the Jazz. If that’s surprising consider that the frontcourt consists of Carmelo, Bargnani, Dalembert, and Stoudemire, and the backcourt will play a lot of JR Smith and Calderon. This is what happens when a bad defensive team loses Tyson Chandler.
Wins: 35
Losses: 47
Conference rank: 10th
League offense rank: 12th
League defense rank: 30th
Edited 10/27/14
