Good morning. Let’s end the week strong…
Game Night
TONIGHT: Knicks at Suns, 10 pm - ESPN
TOMORROW: Knicks at Clippers, 10:30 pm - MSG
Injury Report: Life without Mitchell Robinson continues. For Phoenix, Josh Okogie, Eric Gordon and Grayson Allen all missed the Suns loss to Brooklyn on Wednesday night. Paul George is dealing with a groin issue for LA but should be good to go.
Halftime Zoom: Here’s the link for tonight; I’m off tomorrow.
What to watch for: Can the Knicks steal a win after having one stolen from them in Utah? Or maybe the better question is whether we can see them play a solid game from start to finish, win or lose? The Suns have actually lost five of their last seven, but I shouldn’t have to tell anyone how dangerous they are. As for the Clippers, they’ve won five straight and their new starting five is humming. In terms of matchups, it’ll be interesting to see which of Julius or RJ gets the KD assignment. I’d give it to Randle, for whatever that’s worth. It’ll keep him engaged on defense, at the very least.
Friday Mailbag
We start off a 14-question mailbag with two questions about a player whose season is suddenly spiraling out of control…
Christopher Coco says… RJ....you need to start worrying about him more than anyone. Because there’s a chance that not withstanding a hot start over a very small sample size, this is this just who he is. A marginal athlete who makes bad decisions, is a below average 3-point shooter, and who can’t really finish at the rim at the NBA level.
Lee says…RJ being 0-for-7 from three is different than Brunson being 0-for-6 from three. RJ’s threes are WIDE open set shots. Like, couldn’t be more wide open. At least Brunson’s misses are mostly off movement or off the dribble. The truth is that a an actual capable 3-point shooter would be at 50% on the looks that RJ gets. It’s just really hard to win this way. Is there a point where we stop trying to make RJ a 3-point shooter? Maybe let him shoot 2-4 of them per game like Hart?
I’m going to work backwards here and say that, no, for as long as RJ is on the team, you don’t have him stop shooting threes, because if he becomes essentially a non-shooter, it’s hard to argue he’s a viable NBA starter. At $27 million a year moving forward, that’s a negative asset, if not a toxic one.
The reason Hart can get away with a hesitant trigger finger is because he can do so much more that positively impacts a game. Elite positional rebounding. Unpredictable movement that juices play at both ends. Top notch connector. Fairly versatile, solid on-ball defense. Good off-ball as well. And on top of all that, he’s a 37 percent 3-point shooter over his last 100 games and has a higher career conversion rate than RJ.
Perimeter players who are non-shooters don’t really exist anymore. We’re only a dozen years removed from Tony Parker taking about one 3-pointer per game and finishing 5th in MVP voting, but it might as well be 52 years ago. It’s a different sport. Plus, Parker is a top 100 player ever, who like Hart (but obviously to a much greater degree), did all sorts of things that helped his team win.
Barrett has had one plus skill since entering the league: getting to the rim almost at will. This year, even amidst his recent struggles, his defense has also been a plus. How far can those two skills take you?
That depends. If the playmaking and decision making we saw early on this season comes back, it makes a big difference in the regular season. When the playoffs come around though, teams will play so far off Barrett that not shooting will become untenable on a team that employs a traditional five.
Is the free throw shooting a big reason for encouragement, as Jonas P wondered in a question yesterday? Barrett is up to 82.8 percent but based on how often he gets to the line, that’s only good for a 0.7 point difference per 36 minutes over last season, when he shot 74 percent from the stripe.
What if he’s only effective from the corners? RJ is hitting 41 percent from the corners this season, but is only 7-for-23 post-migraines after starting 9-of-16. He’s hit 32 and 31 percent from the corners in the previous two seasons. We’ll see where it goes from here.
But even if he’s viable from the corners, if he’s viable only from the corners, where does that get you? There are a few players in the league whose offensive role is basically limited to corner 3-point shooting, but they’re usually elite multi-positional defenders (think PJ Tucker and Jarred Vanderbilt, and Vandy lost his rotation spot for LA in the postseason). More than that, slotting Barrett in the corner really limits the overall offense and takes away his ability to drive. His defense, while improved, also doesn’t quite justify this sort of role.
Which brings us back to the above-the-break shooting, and Lee really nails it. If you want to be a good team in the NBA, let alone a contender, an offensive possession that generates a wide open catch & shoot opportunity for a perimeter player has to feel like a win. If it doesn’t, it’s like trying to run offense 4-on-5. That’s why RJ’s wide open misses feel so deflating. Him getting those looks should mean you’ve done your job on the possession. Often, it feels like a win for the defense.
The trend for Barrett’s above the break 3-point shooting is decisively poor, going from 37.3 percent in ‘20-21 (mostly in open gyms), to 35.0 percent in ‘21-22, to 30.3 percent last season, to 31.6 percent now. It has resulted in a 48.2 effective field goal percentage that is now lower than last year’s 48.5.
The notion of dealing Barrett for a player with less shot-creation upside but a higher floor as a supporting piece is a tricky one, mostly because the sorts of names you might bring up (De'Andre Hunter always comes to mind for me) are uninspiring to put it politely. Teams are not going to put anything better on the table, not with this recent track record of shooting. Does a 34-year-old Bojan Bogdanovic tickle your fancy?
And that’s how you end up with perhaps my most inflammatory tweet to date:
If the Knicks ever move RJ, I maintain it’ll be as part of a larger deal, where New York is getting a star, and the team acquiring Barrett views him as a perfectly fine placeholder contract who can eat innings until they figure out what to do next - i.e., matching salary.
Or maybe these last 11 games will be the blip on the radar, and starting tonight in Phoenix, he will once again make me look ridiculous.
As usual, I’m hoping to be very, very wrong.
Next up…
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