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eViL
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Joined: 1/21/2004
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Offense at fault for Knicks’ struggles
The Knicks are in another alleged crisis after Wednesday’s loss to Phoenix dropped them to 6-8 and extended their skid to four games.
Everyone wants to know what’s wrong with the Knicks, who have been worse since Carmelo Anthony’s celebrated arrival last February. Fans boo at Madison Square Garden, chant for coach Mike D’Antoni’s dismissal and Phil Jackson’s arrival, and generally howl the sort of panic that comes with false expectations of championship contention.
Bradford Doolittle, writing at ESPN.com on Wednesday, detailed what ails the Knicks, so I’ll go with some quick bullet-point thoughts here after watching New York three times in person over the last two weeks and a couple of other times on television:
• The Knicks have no consistent plan, no foundational philosophy. I mean that in the kindest way possible, especially when it comes to the coaching staff. No roster has undergone more turmoil over the last 36 months, a process that culminated with the sudden release, via the amnesty provision, of the only viable point guard on the roster at the time (Chauncey Billups).
And guess what? The offense is a mess. You might not know it amid the rancor over New York’s endless switching on defense — a rancor to which I have contributed — but the Knicks have been a perfectly fine defensive team. They are improvising like mad, changing their basic principles on a night-to-night and sometimes quarter-to-quarter basis, but it’s working. New York is 10th in points allowed per possession, a monster improvement from 23rd last season. They rank second in defensive rebounding rate after finishing 26th last season. Tyson Chandler has a lot to do with that, but New York is getting nice work on the boards from Amar’e Stoudemire (by his standards), Anthony (always a good rebounder), Landry Fields, Iman Shumpert and others.
Chandler needs that help because New York has had him switch onto the perimeter so often, including against Steve Nash on Wednesday. Still, the defense is working.
• What’s wrong with the offense? Lots of things, but if there’s one set of numbers that gets at the problem, this is it: The Knicks have finished 16.2 percent of their possessions with isolation plays. That is the highest number in the league, edging the iso-tastic Kings, according to Synergy Sports. New York has scored 0.65 points per possession on those plays, the second-worst mark. Put simply: The Knicks are devoting a giant portion of their offense to something at which they are horrible — at least so far. New York has shot an incredibly low 29 percent on isolation plays, per Synergy. That is very hard to manage.
Anthony is an isolation machine, and just as he did last season, he’s going the isolation route on about one-third of the possessions he finishes via a shot, turnover or drawn foul. The difference: He’s shooting 27 percent on those plays, down from about 40 percent last season, per Synergy. Anthony draws so many fouls that he can still be productive working this way, but he’s approaching the break-even point now after miserable shooting performances in five of his last six games — including going 14-of-49 (28.6 percent) from the field in the two games since spraining his left wrist at Memphis last Thursday.
Stoudemire isn’t helping, either, even if he’s isolating a bit less than last season. He’s just 13-of-50 (26 percent) in such chances.
This reflects a broken roster more than any problems with the actual players or coaches, and injured point guard Baron Davis (who is said to be nearing his return from a back injury) appears to be the only available answer. Anthony deserves a lot of credit for embracing a hybrid point forward role, running more high pick-and-rolls and posting a career-best assist rate without a corresponding increase in turnovers. But make a change like this in a compressed season, and there will be growing pains. Anthony is unaccustomed to running constant high pick-and-rolls, and he and Stoudemire — one of the league’s great pick-and-roll big men — have had a hard time working together. Stoudemire has taken just nine shots all season out of pick-and-roll plays, a number so unthinkable as to appear impossible.
For all of his brilliance, Anthony isn’t a point guard. As a distributor, he’s still most comfortable making the easiest passes out of the pick-and-roll, where the ball-handler picks up his dribble after one or two bounces and tosses the ball through a clear passing lane to a spot-up perimeter shooter. The other stuff is trickier — slick interior passes in a crowded lane, or keeping a dribble alive in a patient Chris Paul/Nash style, circling under the rim until something opens up.
That’s not Anthony’s game, and it’s never going to be. He is doing his best, but this team badly needs an organizer, a creator to fit everything together and space the floor. This is one instance in which the conventional wisdom is absolutely right: The Knicks isolate a lot and rank near the bottom in assist rate, producing an offense on par with Milwaukee’s.
• The Knicks also have shot just 31 percent from three-point range, the sixth-worst mark. It bears repeating that Billups was the best long-range shooter on the roster. Anthony’s mark (34.5 percent) is predictably more on par with his career numbers rather than the 46 percent he shot over 27 games as a Knick last season. This is especially troublesome when just two teams (Orlando and New Jersey) average more three-point attempts per game.
• Stoudemire’s play is increasingly worrisome, and not because the 29-year-old forward and Anthony are (predictably) struggling to mesh. He is shooting an Antoine Walker-esque 40.8 percent after four straight seasons of at least 50 percent, and he looks creakier and more flat-footed than ever on defense. He missed two games earlier this season with an ankle injury, and I hope for New York’s sake that the ankle is still bothering him. If it’s not, there is either an undisclosed injury, or Stoudemire’s play is declining unexpectedly fast for some reason.
Stoudemire has never been even an average defender, but he has also never been this bad. Big men and guards alike are blowing by him on the perimeter with no resistance, and the Knicks are switching so often on pick-and-rolls in part to cover for his limitations defending the play far from the hoop.
He looked explosive Wednesday on a chase-down block of Sebastian Telfair, a play on which Stoudemire ran in a long, straight line and gathered a head of steam. But Stoudemire has really struggled when it comes to quick cuts and changes of direction.
• Back to the notion that the Knicks have no plan on defense, at the macro level: It’s true, but if it’s working, who cares? The Knicks’ switching, the level of which varies depending on opponent, leaves them facing what appear to be untenable mismatches. Chandler is guarding Nash! Marcin Gortat is posting up Shumpert! New York is daring opponents to step away from their normal game plan and exploit those mismatches, and they are doing so with confidence in two things:
1. Those opponents might not be comfortable working with their back to the basket, even against smaller defenders.
2. New York can make up for the size mismatches with quick hands, well-timed double teams and unpredictable swarming. In this way, the Knicks remind me a bit of the U.S. team that won the 2010 FIBA World Championships. The Americans often played Lamar Odom at center against much bigger opponents. They invited big men to slow down and post up, confident that they could force turnovers by swiping at the ball and jumping into passing lanes.
Only Miami has forced more turnovers per possession than New York, and that high turnover rate is the biggest reason for the Knicks’ stinginess. But a stingy defense can only take you so far. http://nba-point-forward.si.com/2012/01/19/offense-at-fault-for-knicks-struggles/ check out my latest hip hop project: https://soundcloud.com/michaelcro http://youtu.be/scNXshrpyZo
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1/19/2012 5:37 PM