You could see the story playing out in advance before Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni re-inserted Carmelo Anthony and Jeremy Lin for Josh Harrellson and Baron Davis with 3:57 left Tuesday in Dallas after a motley mix of bench players and one starter (Amar’e Stoudemire) had cut the Mavericks’ 14-point fourth-quarter lead to two. You knew that when Dallas made its run, almost mathematically inevitable, a pseudo-controversy would spring up over whether D’Antoni should have left “the bench” in, and whether the Anthony/Lin pairing is doomed.You knew this would be so even though the hero of the bench, Steve Novak, remained on the court for another 90 seconds as the Mavs scored eight straight points to basically clinch the game. You knew the ensuing controversy, fueled by Anthony’s postgame comments about his changing role, would (in some corners) be devoid of the complicated context within which it actually exists.
Some of that context:
• The Knicks’ blissful Linsanity stretch — eight games in which Anthony essentially didn’t play because of injury — featured a schedule filled with lottery teams and home games. The schedule has gotten slightly more challenging and road-heavy since then, and New York has predictably struggled.
• During the non-Anthony portion of Linsanity, the Knicks scored 100.85 points per 100 possessions, according to Hoopdata. That would rank about 14th in the NBA. The Knicks, in other words, played average offense against a weak schedule with Lin as the offensive centerpiece.
During those same eight games, against that same weak schedule and with the same depleted roster, New York allowed 93.7 points per 100 possessions. That would be the stingiest mark in the league over the full season.
In simple terms: The Knicks’ defense was the driving force of their success during Lin’s emergence. This is not ground-breaking. I’ve written it more than once, as have other NBA analysts. If you think New York played 2006-07 Suns-level offense while Anthony and Stoudemire sat and Lin became a star, you are ignoring reality.
• Since Anthony’s return on Feb. 20, the Knicks have averaged 99.2 points per 100 possessions in six games, a tiny sample size, per Hoopdata. That is below the league’s average, about 1.5 points per 100 possessions worse than what New York did with Lin/without Anthony. The offense has indeed regressed, but that gap is the equivalent of dropping about four or five spots in the points-per-possession rankings. It’s meaningful, but not huge, and it’s not unexpected given the more difficult recent schedule and — this is important — how crummy New York’s offense was before Lin’s breakout.
The Knicks ranked about 25th in points per possession before forces aligned to unleash Lin. They were average with Lin against a poor schedule. It should not be surprising that they are struggling now to instantly integrate all the disparate and new pieces and produce a decent offense.
• The defense has allowed 99.6 points per 100 possessions since Carmelo’s return, a better-than-average mark that nonetheless constitutes a major drop-off from the stingy number (93.7) that they allowed with Lin/without Anthony. In the long run, it’s probably a good sign, or at least not a bad one, that New York has been slightly better than average on defense in a relatively tough six-game stretch while re-integrating two subpar defenders in Anthony and Stoudemire.
There is no question that the Knicks are flailing a bit in trying to fit a high-usage point guard with two of the highest-usage scorers in recent league history. They’ve had only six games to work at it so far! But the lineup numbers via an NBA.com stats database that the league has allowed a few writers to access show that the issues run much deeper than one player (Anthony) or one player pair (Anthony/Lin). What also becomes clear is the degree to which Lin has relied on Novak to succeed in running an above-average offense.
The Knicks are indeed pretty bad with the Lin/Anthony pairing on the floor, according to NBA.com. New York has averaged 97.9 points per 100 possessions with Lin and Anthony together and allowed 102.4, both worse than its season averages. (Note: NBA.com uses a slightly different formula than Hoopdata to calculate the number of possessions in game, leading to lower points-per-possessions numbers. New York’s season average is 98.3 by this scale, so the Anthony/Lin mark of 97.9 is fairly close to that average.)
With Lin and without Anthony, New York’s scoring jumps way up to 105 points per 100 possessions. That’s a bad sign.
But the Knicks have scored at an even worse rate (97.2 points per 100 possessions) with the Lin/Stoudemire pairing, per NBA.com. Before you begin shouting about how Lin plays heavy minutes together with both players, take a look at New York’s full five-man lineup data. You’ll notice the lineups featuring Lin and Stoudemire, but not Anthony, that have played a decent number of minutes have all struggled offensively.
Even the Lin/Tyson Chandler pairing comes out with scoring numbers (98.4 points per 100 possessions) right around New York’s average, something that might surprise you, given the obvious success of the pick-and-roll between those two players.
The Lin/Anthony/Stoudemire trio has indeed been a disaster in 154 minutes. The Knicks have been outscored by nearly nine points per 100 possessions with those three on the floor, the worst scoring margin of any of the team’s 30 trios that have logged at least 130 minutes together, per NBA.com. The offense with these three has scored at a slightly worse rate than when Lin is on the floor with Anthony or Stoudemire but not the other. That is another bad sign.
A revealing little nugget that speaks to this trio’s issues: The Knicks have taken three-pointers on only 12 percent of their shot attempts with Lin, Anthony and Stoudemire on the floor. Only three trios among the hundreds that New York has played this season have relied less on three-pointers, and two of those trios have logged only 33 minutes combined. This speaks to a floor-spacing issue, which brings us to Novak.
The Knicks are scoring an off-the-charts 116.9 points per 100 possessions with Lin and Novak on the floor together, and the only Lin lineups that have logged a decent chunk of minutes together and scored at an above-average rate all include Novak. Having an elite long-range shooter at power forward (or small forward, when two big men are in the game) obviously opens up the middle of floor more when New York runs the pick-and-roll. Anthony is a below-average three-point shooter for his career, and Stoudemire’s mid-range game has suffered this season. Both prefer receiving the ball near the elbows or on the wings, places from which it is easier for their defenders to sag down and clog the lane. This is why you often see one of them stationed in one of the corners on Lin/Chandler pick-and-roll plays.
Having a scorer such as Stoudemire or Anthony standing in a corner is obviously not ideal. Everyone paying any attention at all knew it would take time for the Lin Knicks to jell once they reached full strength. Lin’s emergence as a heavy-minutes starter who dominated the ball amounted to a total remake of the team in the middle of a compressed schedule. Anthony and Stoudemire would have to find ways to work actively on the weak side — screening for each other or cutting backdoor along the baseline — as Lin and Chandler ran pick-and-rolls. New York would have to pick spots for Anthony to isolate in the post, and Lin and Stoudemire would have to discover at least a little pick-and-roll chemistry of their own. The Knicks would have to figure out how to keep the ball moving and the floor spaced.
All of this is happening already, but the commitment, repetition and results have been inconsistent. The stars are feeling their way.
Sometimes you have to point out the obvious: This is an enormous challenge. When the three-pointers are falling, it’s going to look so easy, as if the Knicks could thrive playing Novak 40 minutes per night and never using Anthony and Stoudemire together with Lin again. It would be a fascinating basketball experiment to see them try that, by the way. But in a conference topped by two superpowers, the Knicks must try to make the Lin/Chandler/Stoudemire/Anthony quartet work.
That will take time, and it’s possible New York just won’t have enough of it this season because of the lack of practice. If you expected instant elite offense, you missed how the Knicks were winning during the height of Linsanity, and you underestimated the challenges that players and coaches face going forward.
3/7/2012 2:58 PM