as of today, november 7 (courtesy of sporstline.com)

the new york knicks are 2nd in the league in rebounding with 50.3 rebs per game. (utah is 1st with 51 rebs per game)
the new york knicks LEAD the league with 52 offensive rebounds.
the new york knicks are 10th in the league in giving up 94.3 points per game.

Now all we have to figure out is how to maintain stats like those and WIN.

Take those stats with a grain of salt. Rebounds per game is not the best measure of a team's rebounding ability, nor is ppg allowed per game the best measure of defense. Both of those measures fail to adjust for team possessions. Rebounds per game also fails to adjust for rebounding opportunities (teams that play games with more missed shots due to superior defense or inferior offense will have more opportunities to pad the rebound per game stat, even if we adjust for possessions). knickerblogger.net usually has the really useful stats in this respect as opposed to the flawed per game stats, but the stats page there has not yet been updated from last season.

yes, and early on it makes sense that the coaches that are the most demanding start out right away high in those stat categories, maximizing personel while they are still on their sides and have fresh legs...the fundamentally sound categories

[Edited by - rvhoss on 11-07-2005 10:16 PM]

We are shooting 39% of course we are leading the league in offensive boards!

Even LB said the offensive rebounds meant nothing because we still missed all the putbacks. What good is a rebound if it doesn't translate into points?

Posted by djsunyc:

as of today, november 7 (courtesy of sporstline.com)

the new york knicks are 2nd in the league in rebounding with 50.3 rebs per game. (utah is 1st with 51 rebs per game)
the new york knicks LEAD the league with 52 offensive rebounds.
the new york knicks are 10th in the league in giving up 94.3 points per game.

OK, so knickerblogger.net doesn't have the 05/06 stats running yet, but they're available on 82games.com for each team (though not in a convenient table where you can see how teams rank comparatively). After a bit of work, here's a better version of the above team stats and their rankings (hopefully these stats are self-explanatory):

offensive rebounding %: 36% (ranks 5th)
defensive rebounding %: 73% (ranks 6th)

points allowed per 100 possessions: 98 (ranks 8th)
eFG% allowed: .468 (ranks 15th)
t/o forced %: 17% (ranks 11th)

So, looks pretty good (certainly better than last year). BUT, again, these numbers do not mean much of anything right now because of small sample sizes and heavy biases. For instance, right now the Knicks rank better than the Pacers in points allowed per 100 possessions and eFG% allowed, but we shouldn't expect that to last. (Conversely, we should expect that some teams that currently rank ahead of the Knicks should fall behind them over time.)

Also, note how curious it is that NY ranks 8th in pts allowed per 100 possessions, but only 15th in eFG% allowed. The reason for this anomoly is that opposing teams are shooting a pretty healthy 31.3 FTA against us, but only converting them at a 66% clip. That 66% FT% is a fluke due to small sample size; expect it to eventually rise to league averages (~75%), thus raising our pts allowed over time as well. We are probably closer to a middle of the pack defensive team right now than an upper echelon defensive team, though again, not much of substance can be concluded from the current set of stats we have available.