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PhilinLA
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Hollinger's Team Forecast: New York KnicksBy John Hollinger
ESPN Insider
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Go to: Offseason moves | Biggest strength | Biggest weakness | Outlook
The amazing thing about the Knicks' 2005-06 season was the totality of the disaster. It was a perfect storm of organizational incompetence, with bad trades and worse coaching leading to a miserable 23-59 finish despite what was easily the league's most expensive roster.
Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty Images
Starbury has yet to shine bright as a member of the Knicks.
It's hard to remember now how much optimism greeted the Knicks heading into the season. With a new head coach in Larry Brown, the acquisition of center Eddy Curry and a talented backcourt of Stephon Marbury and Jamal Crawford, many thought the Knicks might be able to return to the playoffs.
The Knicks struggled out of the gate, but nobody was too concerned -- Brown's teams had a history of slow starts. Besides, he had already improved the defense. The Knicks held Utah to just 62 points on Nov. 14, breaking the team record for fewest points allowed in the shot-clock era. However, things started going off the rails soon after, as the Knicks struggled through a 2-12 December while Brown kept shuffling through starting lineups and rotations at a dizzying rate.
A six-game win streak briefly brought hope, but Brown couldn't stop swapping out players -- for instance, rookie David Lee started all six games in that streak but was getting DNPs within two weeks. Rookie Channing Frye was also on the playing time yo-yo, as were several other Knicks. The season went from bad to worse when Marbury hurt his shoulder a week after the win streak ended, missing 11 games and playing ineffectively in five others. The Knicks went 2-14 in that stretch and pretty much quit on the season at that point.
Meanwhile, Brown continued his game of lineup roulette. He ended up using 42 different starting lineups on the season, including the bizarre tactic of starting players during games in their hometown. (In retrospect, I wish I had grilled Larry more about this -- would it mean, Marbury, a native New Yorker, had to start every home game? And what of poor David Lee, who is from St. Louis. When does he get to start?) Ultimately the players quit on him, which is why the Knicks' defensive numbers for the season were awful even though they defended very well in the first month.
In retrospect, it's clear what Brown was doing. He hated the roster he inherited, which was full of tepid defenders with shoot-first mentalities, and more or less decided to sabotage the season to show off how inadequate it was. The gamble here was that he could win a power struggle with general manager Isiah Thomas to get the roster reshaped the way he wanted. Brown was wrong on two counts -- first, Thomas had owner James Dolan's ear so Brown was never going to win this fight; second, it wouldn't have mattered if he did, because the Knicks had already painted themselves into a corner with all their bad contracts.
AP Photo/Frank Franklin II
Steve Francis and Isiah Thomas are still in the Knicks' picture, but Larry Brown is not.
Thomas saved his worst moves for the summer of 2005, making a series of inexplicable decisions that set the franchise back several years. The most critical was the sign-and-trade deal for Curry, with the Knicks giving him a six-year, $60 million deal despite an alleged heart condition that had other teams running in the other direction. That wasn't even the worst part. The deal required the Knicks to give up their first-round pick with no conditions -- in other words, even if the Knicks' season was a total failure and they got one of the top two picks, they had to turn it over to Chicago. Normally teams include "protection" on these picks to insure against that kind of situation, but the Knicks didn't.
And guess what? The Knicks' season was a total failure, and they got the second overall pick, and they had to turn it over to the Bulls. Moreover, the Bulls also have the right to switch first-round picks with New York in 2007, so this scenario could play out two years in a row. And for all that, the Knicks got the right to overpay Curry for his middling production and fret about an uninsurable long-term contract for a guy who can't stay in shape.
Thomas made other gargantuan mistakes. He paid the full midlevel exception for center Jerome James, who to the surprise of absolutely nobody turned out to be a colossal flop. He traded Kurt Thomas to the Suns for Quentin Richardson, not realizing Richardson's back troubles were serious enough to limit him all season. He engineered a midseason trade for Orlando's Steve Francis that cost one of his best young players (Trevor Ariza) and added a player who had no chance of meshing successfully with New York's two other ball-dominating guards, Marbury and Crawford.
Worst turnover rate, 2005-06
Team % of possessions with turnover
New York 18.7
Boston 17.3
Atlanta 16.7
Indiana 16.5
Utah 16.5
NBA avg 15.3
Off the court, the circus continued. Thomas was named in a sexual harassment suit by a Knicks employee that remains ongoing as 2006-07 tips off, while Antonio Davis earned a five-game suspension for racing into the crowd in a weird incident in Chicago.
On the court, Brown's tactics seemed almost perfectly designed to play to his team's weaknesses. He ran little of the pick-and-roll action that's a staple of Marbury's game, and as a result the Knicks' best player had what was easily his worst season. The Knicks instead focused on pounding the ball inside all game. But with no shooters to space the floor and little cohesiveness due to the daily lineup changes, New York committed a whopping 18.7 turnovers per 100 possessions. It was easily the highest rate in the league, and one that by itself made the Knicks one of the league's worst offensive teams (they ranked 25th in offensive efficiency).
New York was actually pretty good in the other elements of offense. The Knicks were the league's fourth-best offensive rebounding team, rebounding 31.2 percent of their missed shots, and the positive side of going inside so much was that the Knicks had the highest rate of free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt at .417 (Curry was huge here, with the fourth-best rate in the league). The Knicks had very few 3-point attempts, a Brown staple -- only 14.2 percent of their shots were from downtown, the second-lowest rate in the league -- but with Richardson struggling, this was as much a case of lacking shooters as it was a strategic move.
Most free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt, 2005-06
Team FTA/FGA
New York .417
Utah .397
Washington .375
Orlando .369
Dallas .364
NBA avg .333
Defensively, the Knicks mailed it in after midseason and ended up 27th in defensive efficiency. They gave up a ton of 3-pointers, ranking second-worst in both the frequency and accuracy of opponent's 3-point attempts, and they also ranked second-worst in opponent's free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt. The Knicks didn't have good defensive talent, but much of this horrible effort was just that: effort. They weren't about to play hard for a coach who jerked them around all year, and it showed in the results.
The lone bright spot to New York's season was the play of the rookies. Despite his gross incompetence in other areas, Thomas has drafted very well and did so again in 2005, using his three first-round picks to tab Frye, Lee and Nate Robinson. All three look like long-term rotation players, and the first two could be starters for several years.
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OFFSEASON MOVES
One move the Knicks made after the season that even Thomas' harshest critics can agree on was the decision to fire Brown. However, the Knicks handled it about as unprofessionally as possible, making him conduct draft workouts even as they knew he was a dead man walking. But there's no question that Brown lost the team with all his shenanigans and had to be replaced.
Thomas
The replacement caused some shudders, as Thomas moves down to the sideline. While some cynics in New York argue that having him coach may distract him from making ruinous moves as the GM, it's hard to get excited about this guy getting more power when he's already visited such ruin on the franchise.
But in the short term, Knicks fans win no matter what happens. If Thomas fails to coax more victories out of the team, he'll almost certainly be fired. And if he succeeds, well at least the team won't be so bad this year. Thomas brought in nearly every player on the roster, so they'll be more loyal to him and hopefully play harder than a year ago.
Jeffries
• Signed Jared Jeffries. The Knicks gave the Wizards' forward a five-year deal for the midlevel exception, and he'll provide a bit of improvement since small forward has bedeviled the Knicks the past two years. He'll be the team's primary defensive stopper, but he's a very poor offensive player and the Knicks certainly overpaid here.
• Failed to match offer sheet to Jackie Butler. This was Isiah Thomas' colossal blunder for 2006. Ironically, this move was made under the logic of fiscal prudence -- the Knicks didn't want to pay luxury tax to keep another center when they've already committed nearly a $100 million-plus meal per diem to James and Curry. Of course, Butler is 10 times the player James is already, and at 21 he could be a lot better very soon, but the Knicks don't trifle with concerns like these.
• Drafted Renaldo Balkman and Mardy Collins. Thomas took relentless heat for taking Balkman in the first round, and while it seemed a reach, we should remember the draft is the one area where Zeke seems to know what he's doing. Balkman's defensive ability may be a nice fit on a team full of offensive players. I'm much less excited about his other first-rounder, Collins, who seems to fit the profile of other recent big-guard busts like Reece Gaines and Jeryl Sasser.
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BIGGEST STRENGTH
Depth. The one thing the Knicks have going for them is they have a lot of bodies. In the grind of an 82-game season, few teams are better positioned to withstand injuries and foul trouble than this one. New York goes at least two deep at every position, with the only iffy spot being shooting guard -- they're basically playing two converted point guards at that spot.
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BIGGEST WEAKNESS
Perimeter shooting. New York's undoing offensively may be its lack of shooters, which should allow opponents to collapse into zones and sagging man-to-man looks with impunity. New York's backcourt players are all drivers, including the probable starting backcourt of Marbury and Francis, but they need complementary shooters to help give them space.
However, the Knicks' best 3-point shooters are Richardson, who had back problems all last year, and Jalen Rose, who may not play that much because his defense is so porous. Besides, both players are primarily small forwards -- the position non-shooter Jeffries was brought in to fill.
Exacerbating the lack of shooting is the fact that nearly all the Knicks are poor passers, especially the guards, so finding open men for jumpers doesn't come easily to these guys.
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2006-07 OUTLOOK
With a small, quick backcourt of Marbury and Francis, there's a lot of talk that the Knicks will run and push the ball like the Phoenix Suns. But anyone who has seen those two play knows this is impossible, because neither of them seek to push the ball up court. They're quick and they're great drivers, but they're mostly half-court guys.
While the style may not be what some expect, one thing I can pretty much guarantee is that the Knicks will win a lot more games. That's to be expected -- the nice thing about hitting rock bottom is that you can't go down any further -- but a number of factors favor the Knicks to make a double-digit improvement in wins. First and foremost, they'll play for Thomas, rather than last year's white-flag routine. That alone should improve the defense several notches.
Second, the result of Brown's lineup switches was that the Knicks' worst players were on the court for large stretches of time. Maurice Taylor, Qyntel Woods and Malik Rose all played over 1,000 minutes last season; that playing time will be going to guys like Jeffries, Frye and Lee this time around. Frye is perhaps the most egregious example -- he only played 1,571 minutes even though he led the team in player efficiency rating. He should come close to doubling that total this year as the opening-day power forward.
As a result, I expect New York to generate some genuine excitement this year -- hanging out on the fringes of the playoff race and getting increased production from the younger players. They'll still massively underachieve compared to what they're spending, and it may not be enough to save Thomas' job, but the Knicks will at least look like a real NBA team again.
http://amonthhoffundays.blogspot.com/
We got a ringer.
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10/3/2006 6:27 PM
