Watching tonight's game was pretty depressing and just like everyone else I also had the feeling that with this particular group of players it may not work out this season. In particular with Melo, Amare and Lin.
However, after flipping through channels and stumbling upon the Grizz/Warriors game it dawned on me... The Grizz have massive success with basically the same type of personnel and there is absolutely NO reason we can't eventually have at least their level of success.
Mike Conley, Tony Allen, Rudy Gay, Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol.
Compare that to...
Lin, Shump, Melo, Amare and Tyson.
Grizz are pretty good on defense almost ENTIRELY because they force a boatload of turnovers. Conley and Allen are real ballhawks and compare very favorably to Lin and Shump. They can afford to gamble because Gasol is so good downlow defensively. Tyson is probably even better than him if you include his defense on the pick n roll. This bares out in the stats as the Knicks and Grizz are 8th and 9th in defensive efficiency respectively and rank 2nd and 1st in forcing turnovers. On defense these teams are mirror images of each other.
On the offensive side of the ball, they also share a lot of similarities. But it's really the differences that is separating a team like the Grizz from a team like us and those differences are 3s and turnovers. The Grizz shoot the least 3s in the league while the Knicks shoot the 3rd most and I think everyone can agree that we just do not make enough of them on a regular basis. These two teams are fairly close in offensive efficiency, Knicks 23rd and Grizz 20th, so it's not a huge difference but it matters. With Novak and JR in tow, hopefully we start making more. The Grizz also run a lot of high/low post with lots of off the ball motion. Melo would be good in this situation and would be much better than iso'ing and dribbling into a horde of guys as he can see the double a lot better. The bad news is Melo is our only post threat and we have to do a lot of drive and kicks which result in.....
Turnovers. Knicks are 2nd to last in turnover rate while the Grizz are middle of the pack at 15. This is going to be entirely predicated on the main ballhandlers on this team and mostly on Lin and Davis. If they can cut down on their turnovers while also not losing their ability to create open shots then we can make some real progress and a lot of these turnovers are just dumb and preventable. A lot of times it's a poor shot attempt at the basket, a large majority of the time it's jumping in the air without knowing what you're doing, other times it's just a poorly timed pass or someone just loses the ball. These things are preventable and come with time as Lin and Davis figure out what they can and can't do within the offense. More low post offense also cuts down on turnovers but really the only guy who is able is Melo.
The main takeaway here is that you have a team with Zach Randolph who we all know is a blackhole on offense but is really damn good in the low post and you have a guy like Rudy Gay who's a nice player in his own right but also not what you could call a great passer and doesn't have the greatest shot selection and you also have a center in Marc Gasol who's a bit limited offensively but knows his limitations and converts his opportunities at a very good rate. The Grizz also have a backcourt that's a bit range deficient. They also took a long time to develop and didn't really hit their stride until Conley took a big step forward and Zachey turned into an unstoppable force.
So to put things in perspective, I do think it is just a matter of time before we hit a good level of success as the pieces are there and it IS possible. There's no reason to believe that this thing can't work eventually.
3/8/2012 12:34 AM