Pick and Roll

The Knicks defend the pick and roll well…

The New Knicks’ opponents love the pick and roll. They’re top 10 in possessions using both the ball handler and roll man in these sets, so the Knicks constantly have to defend against it. In a testament to the team’s defensive potential, they’ve stopped the pick and roll with above-average effectiveness thus far, allowing less than a point per possession on both roll man and ball handler plays.

The Knicks have faced pick and roll heavy opposition in a pick and roll heavy league, and have managed to mostly succeed in defending it.

and execute it efficiently on offense…

The Knicks rarely utilize the pick and roll, but when they do, they’ve scored at an above-average rate when Derrick Rose slashes off a ball screen and finishes at the rim, and even more so when Kristaps Porzingis sets the screen and Rose or Brandon Jennings find KP rolling to the basket for a dunk or layup.

Here, Rose is patient and remains aware of KP’s location throughout his drives and finds him for a pair of easy baskets. Porzingis is lethal in these situations. He scores 1.27 points per possession as the roll man, which puts him in the 82.8th percentile league-wide.

Even when Rose keeps the ball in these scenarios, he manages to score at a high rate. His 0.95 points per possession as the ball handler in pick and roll sets places him in the 77.8th percentile.

He doesn’t draw many fouls, but his 49.5 percent shooting is the highest amongst players who have attempted as many or more shots as the pick and roll ball handler.

Jeff came into the year and wanted to run more Pick and Roll and shoot more 3's and it seems that for some reason that hasn't really happened to the degree we expected. My personal view is that Phil may have had something to do with that. Mostly because I know it's not really in Jeff's nature to play that way. Nothing he's done or said about offense would suggest that he'd want to play more ISO Heavy offense than uptempo, spread, PnR and 3 point offense.

We have to hope that this will change and that Jeff will get the team back to ball and player movement and more PnR.

But as discuss in our recent game day thread, the knicks miss so many easy baskets playing hero ball on some possessions.

arkrud wrote:It comes with personal.
We have the greatest ISO player of all time in Melo and another one in Rose.
If we want to use them we have to play to their strength.
They will not change so I do not see this trend changing with them on the court.

We possibly have the most ISO heavy player of all time in Melo.

If we had an ISO player of Jordan or Kobe's caliber, there would be a much more positive light on this forum about isolation play.

knicks1248 wrote:I think the Iso's come when the triangle goes bad midway though them trying to run it..either someone didn't cut hard enough, or the defense interrupts it.

But as discuss in our recent game day thread, the knicks miss so many easy baskets playing hero ball on some possessions.

When I watch them run the triangle, I see them half ass it and not understand the reads... usually, they just send the guy on Melo's side through the triangle and then they stop running it, so Melo has an ISO.

I can see that being an effective way to get him an 18 footer at the end of a game but the point is to get everyone moving without the ball, not just the one guy

nyknickzingis wrote:Could be just me, but I've seen teams adjust to KP on screens. He is no longer being left to pop, they've kept a man close to him. This has allowed Rose to go to the basket with much more freedom.

The pick and roll offense is the easiest to run and insert in the league. I'm sure we will see it with higher dosages later on in the season.

When we don't isolate Melo, I like our offense a lot. I just don't think we have the talent or team to score 110 a night. We are good at pushing tempo but not supremely athletic like OKC or Sota. We are shooting more 3s but we don't have shooting like Cavs or Warriors.

I think Jeff has done fantastic on offense outside of the heavy ISO Melo stuff. He's put in some Triangle, lots of pushing the tempo, and quite of a bit of what we saw in Pheonix. Ultimately you have to look at the Knicks and see this team won't do anything in the playoffs unless they defend much more. With defensive talent like Noah, KP, Holiday, Lee, Kuz and our point guards are above average defensively this team can progress much more if they play better team defence.

Our offense rating is 12th in the league. Our defensive rating? 28th. We get leads against almost every team, but when our offense gets cold we allow our opponents to take control. Why? No consistent team defense. If we even became average on defense, we would move into top 5 of the East easily.

Minny was the first team that I saw really do this, but I anticipate that more teams will follow suit, as you cannot leave KP open. I think that Wally or Clyde made the good observation that the knicks should have KP shot the corner three more, as it is an easier shot. Our offense still has a long way to go before it reaches its potential, but if these guys play smarter, we have the same offensive position of a team like Cleveland. The team just needs to keep working on developing chemistry and learning what to do when teams counter our primary options.