fishmike wrote:

loweyecue wrote:

GodSaveTheKnicks wrote:Something from Kevin Pelton at BP. Progress baby!

Trending team: New York Knicks

To their arsenal of 3-pointers and pick-and-rolls, the Knicks have added a new weapon: the blocked shot. New York leads the league in rejections, averaging eight a night over the season's first six games. That's a major change, given that the Knicks blocked a lower percentage of opponents' two-point attempts than any other team in the NBA during 2009-10. But it is a change that could have been predicted.

SCHOENE, Basketball Prospectus' system for projecting player and team performance, indicated before the season that New York would rank second in the league in block percentage. The improvement can be explained by the Knicks adding two shot-blockers (Ronny Turiaf and Amar'e Stoudemire) who were better at swatting attempts than anyone who saw regular minutes in New York last season. New York already had one of the league's top shot-blockers from the wing in Wilson Chandler, but playing bigger lineups figured to enhance the Knicks' prowess in that area overall. Chandler and Turiaf both rank in the NBA's top 10, with better than two blocks per game, and Stoudemire is not far behind.

More importantly, the blocks have translated into an improved Knicks defense. Stopping opponents at the rim was a major problem for New York last season. Opposing teams made 63.5 percent of their tries at the rim in 2009-10, according to Hoopdata.com, which was the league's sixth-worst mark. Before Sunday's loss to Philadelphia, the Knicks' 55.3 percent accuracy allowed on layups and dunks was good for third in the NBA.

New York's overall defense has made equally notable strides. The Knicks have gone from 27th in the league in defensive rating to seventh before Sunday's game. In fact, through the first five games of the season, New York was actually better on defense than offense on a per-possession basis.

Not too shabby for a coach who never coaches or mentions defense.

yea... quite happy to not have to hear that junk anymore

Its an awesome sign of things to come Now if we could just get more comfortable with the PnR. Moxgov just getting more comfortable, period. Randolf needs to watch some tape. Just not Jared Jeffries. Actually, forget it , go ahead and watch some JJ tape. There are lessons to be learned, young jedi.And other things as well(like passing the ball even more), we'd be set.

OldFan wrote:This team is much improved defensively but...

I think we've been tainted by how bad they've been in the past. This is still not a good defensive team. Even with all the blocks they give up a lot of points in the paint. Their defensive efficiency (points allowed per 100 possessions) is in the lower half of the league.

They're moving in the right direction but against better teams their defense is going to have to improve for them to win. The current rotation is a weak rebounding team and blocks shots but still manages not to play great interior defense. Love, Griffin and others have shown that.

Without a trade I think either Mozgov or Randolph will have to take a big leap for this team to be a good defensive team.

agreed that Moz and Randolph will have to step up and play better for the Knicks to get better defensively.

Are the Knicks a weak rebounding team? I know they aren't dominating but didn't think they were weak.

martin wrote:

OldFan wrote:This team is much improved defensively but...

I think we've been tainted by how bad they've been in the past. This is still not a good defensive team. Even with all the blocks they give up a lot of points in the paint. Their defensive efficiency (points allowed per 100 possessions) is in the lower half of the league.

They're moving in the right direction but against better teams their defense is going to have to improve for them to win. The current rotation is a weak rebounding team and blocks shots but still manages not to play great interior defense. Love, Griffin and others have shown that.

Without a trade I think either Mozgov or Randolph will have to take a big leap for this team to be a good defensive team.

agreed that Moz and Randolph will have to step up and play better for the Knicks to get better defensively.

Are the Knicks a weak rebounding team? I know they aren't dominating but didn't think they were weak.

As a team, we're tenth in the league in rebounding.

tj23 wrote:

OldFan wrote:That stat doesn't take into account pace of the game. We're tenth in the league because there are more shots in Knicks games then the average game.

Our rebounding percentage is below 50% and only 5 teams have a lower rebounding percentage in the league.

Hey I'll still take 10th!

Yup! It's funny how being 10th isn't good enough or something. This team is just now starting to click a bit, so I think the prospects are pretty good. Just keep working on the D and I expect that this team is gonna be a Serious threat at the end of the year. The best thing that could happen is for this team to start off giving effort on D and relying on that more than the O, which was not working early on.

OldFan wrote:

nixluva wrote:

tj23 wrote:

OldFan wrote:That stat doesn't take into account pace of the game. We're tenth in the league because there are more shots in Knicks games then the average game.

Our rebounding percentage is below 50% and only 5 teams have a lower rebounding percentage in the league.

Hey I'll still take 10th!

Yup! It's funny how being 10th isn't good enough or something. This team is just now starting to click a bit, so I think the prospects are pretty good. Just keep working on the D and I expect that this team is gonna be a Serious threat at the end of the year. The best thing that could happen is for this team to start off giving effort on D and relying on that more than the O, which was not working early on.

This is simple to understand. If there are more shots there are more rebounds. But we're still getting less then 1/2 those rebounds and the percentage of rebounds we're getting per games is worse then all but 5 teams.

Rebounds per game is an almost meaningless statistic without accounting for shots per game. Would you rather have a team that get 45% of 100 rebounds per game or 55% of 80 rebounds per game. The first team would average more rebounds per game the second team would clearly be the better rebounding team.

We get "a lot" of rebounds because our games have more shots - not because we're a good rebounding team.

None of us think the Knicks are a good rebounding team, but it's a far cry from the embarrassing rebounding difference we saw in preseason. They tightened that up despite not really being a good rebounding team. That means that there was an increase in effort and it's not a huge disparity as we may have feared. There's room for improvement, so let's hope that we get better.

OldFan wrote:

nixluva wrote:

tj23 wrote:

OldFan wrote:That stat doesn't take into account pace of the game. We're tenth in the league because there are more shots in Knicks games then the average game.

Our rebounding percentage is below 50% and only 5 teams have a lower rebounding percentage in the league.

Hey I'll still take 10th!

Yup! It's funny how being 10th isn't good enough or something. This team is just now starting to click a bit, so I think the prospects are pretty good. Just keep working on the D and I expect that this team is gonna be a Serious threat at the end of the year. The best thing that could happen is for this team to start off giving effort on D and relying on that more than the O, which was not working early on.

This is simple to understand. If there are more shots there are more rebounds. But we're still getting less then 1/2 those rebounds and the percentage of rebounds we're getting per games is worse then all but 5 teams.

Rebounds per game is an almost meaningless statistic without accounting for shots per game. Would you rather have a team that get 45% of 100 rebounds per game or 55% of 80 rebounds per game. The first team would average more rebounds per game the second team would clearly be the better rebounding team.

We get "a lot" of rebounds because our games have more shots - not because we're a good rebounding team.

Another way to look at rebounding that might help some folks here- differential- we give up 2.13 more boards to our opponents- and there are only six teams worse:

Denver
Memphis
Washington
Detroit
Utah
Phoenix

http://www.nba.com/statistics/sortable_team_statistics/sortable2.html?cnf=1&prd=1#top

I'm honestly shocked to see Utah there. I've looked at this stat before, and its always seemed to be a good indicator of where a team was going to finish.

franco12 wrote:

OldFan wrote:

nixluva wrote:

tj23 wrote:

OldFan wrote:That stat doesn't take into account pace of the game. We're tenth in the league because there are more shots in Knicks games then the average game.

Our rebounding percentage is below 50% and only 5 teams have a lower rebounding percentage in the league.

Hey I'll still take 10th!

Yup! It's funny how being 10th isn't good enough or something. This team is just now starting to click a bit, so I think the prospects are pretty good. Just keep working on the D and I expect that this team is gonna be a Serious threat at the end of the year. The best thing that could happen is for this team to start off giving effort on D and relying on that more than the O, which was not working early on.

This is simple to understand. If there are more shots there are more rebounds. But we're still getting less then 1/2 those rebounds and the percentage of rebounds we're getting per games is worse then all but 5 teams.

Rebounds per game is an almost meaningless statistic without accounting for shots per game. Would you rather have a team that get 45% of 100 rebounds per game or 55% of 80 rebounds per game. The first team would average more rebounds per game the second team would clearly be the better rebounding team.

We get "a lot" of rebounds because our games have more shots - not because we're a good rebounding team.

Another way to look at rebounding that might help some folks here- differential- we give up 2.13 more boards to our opponents- and there are only six teams worse:

Denver
Memphis
Washington
Detroit
Utah
Phoenix

http://www.nba.com/statistics/sortable_team_statistics/sortable2.html?cnf=1&prd=1#top

I'm honestly shocked to see Utah there. I've looked at this stat before, and its always seemed to be a good indicator of where a team was going to finish.

This shot blocking has started with the guards. The keep their man in front of them and when they down they push them into help. Its much easier to protect the basket when the wings are playing their guys tight.

These are two great ingredients for a playoff caliber team.