Five Things With Frank | ‘24-’25 #3 |
How the Knicks can straighten out their offense, clean up the defense, tidy up the rotation & glow up the optimism — after beating the dirty rotten Joel Embiid
After a brief hiatus, we’re back and better than ever. A lot has happened in the 384 hours since the last FTWF, so let’s dive in.
1) Fixing the offense
Some people will read this and hesitate. The Knicks are second in the NBA in offensive rating, scoring 119.5 points per 100 possessions (All stats as of Tuesday). What is there to fix?
Diving deeper, the Knicks are also sixth in opponent turnover rate and 18th in offensive rebounding rate. This tells us the Knicks are hardly relying on gimmicky hacks to artificially elevate their effectiveness, as they have in the past. They’re undoubtedly scoring in the halfcourt, and at an elite clip. The question revolves around sustainability.
When you hone in on the types of shots the Knicks are getting, some of the indicators are a bit worrying. The Knicks are second-to-last in location-based effective field goal percentage (eFG%), which assigns a league-average efficiency to every shot based on where it was taken – a way to evaluate a team’s shot quality. New York’s low rating makes sense given the shots they’re taking: they’re 22nd in 3-point attempts per game, while Karl-Anthony Towns is the only player in their entire rotation getting to the rim at an elite rate (93rd percentile).
Meanwhile, four of the Knicks’ five starters are shooting midrange attempts at an above-average rate. To go along with that, their efficiency from the midrange is 5% higher than any in the league in recent memory. The Knicks are shooting the shots defenses want them to shoot and making them at an astronomical clip. So what do we take from this?
We have to be open to the idea that the Knicks are just good from these locations. NBA players aren’t robot clones; they’re human beings with differing strengths and weaknesses. There isn’t a Knick starter you’d expect to struggle from the midrange, especially if the defense is actively funneling them to take those shots. Towns and Jalen Brunson are elite, while all of Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart and Deuce McBride have proven themselves to be at the very least competent. The Knicks are constructed to thrive in the midrange.
Still, 5% higher than any team in this era is significant. It’s tough to predict such an extreme outlier with any confidence. I think the Knicks’ best bet is to make a pointed effort to shoot more favorable shots. Even with the massive influx of 3-pointers, the best shots are still at the rim. Creating them requires space to leverage the defense into feeling conflicted about sending help into the paint, for fear of allowing the second-best shot, an open three. So long as the defense has somebody they’re willing to ignore, creating the best looks will remain a challenge.
But you can’t always play five shooters; no team aside from Boston and Oklahoma City can. Which means solutions have to lie elsewhere within the scheme – whether that’s more creativity, placing a bigger burden on their best advantage creator (Brunson) or finding funky ways to mitigate their biggest spacing weakness (Hart), all hands should be on deck. This team was built to win a championship, and it’s unlikely they’ll do so on the back of their defense (more on that later). To be a title contender, this team must be a consistently elite offense. I believe they will be.
2) Fixing the defense
Hopefully you remember everything you just read, because, shockingly, many of the issues on this end of the court are the inverse of what we discussed regarding the offense. Remember how I said the Knicks are shooting a lot of the lowest-efficiency shots? They’re also allowing a lot of relatively high-efficiency shots, near the bottom of the league in opponent 3-point rate and woeful protecting the rim, leading to an overall defensive rating that’s 21st.
The good news is that opponents are actually shooting better than expected based on that same location-based eFG%. Assuming the Knicks figure out the offense, the threshold for a passable defense isn’t as high as it may be for other teams. The Knicks didn’t expect, nor do they need to be, much better than average on that end. And they’re not far off.
But how will this team defend in the biggest moments? We’ve seen so far that Tom Thibodeau appears to want to fall back into old habits. He seems afraid of overburdening Brunson and also appears uncomfortable with the idea of switching Towns onto smaller guards. This results in a lot of drop coverage and early rotating, with help defenders prepared to stunt and recover at any moment. Not only is this brand of defense taxing on a paper-thin rotation, it leaves them more prone to making mistakes the offense can exploit.
When analysts discuss the Knick offense, one question is often repeated: how do they create more good shots when opponents switch across the board? It’s a good question, one I merely delved into above and will likely dissect further in future columns. In this context, it exposes a direct contradiction for the Knicks on the other end of the floor. If drop coverage is so easily beatable, while switching makes it more difficult to create an advantage, why do the Knicks default to drop? We know the answer. Brunson and Towns.
Thibodeau’s concerns (Brunson’s size, Towns’ lateral quickness) prevent him from switching as liberally as other teams with similar roster profiles do. To be clear, these concerns are reasonable. But the Knicks have to find a balance less weighted towards drop coverage than what we saw against Indiana. Bridges, brought in to play a defensive role emphasizing his length and versatility, is being exposed as a poor screen navigator. This is almost completely tanking his defensive impact. He’s been great in isolation against almost any opponent. But, as we saw against Indiana, he is prone to dying on screen. Switch more regularly and this wart becomes less pronounced.
Do you want Jayson Tatum getting a clean switch onto Brunson and going one-on-one at him consistently? Probably not (though players do tend to settle for bad shots when they have a “mismatch,” and I’d probably make Tatum prove he’s going to take Brunson into the paint first – a conversation for another day). But in order for the Knicks to have the requisite defense to compete, they need to give their players a better chance at maximizing their defensive impact and do a better job forcing opponents into the types of shots opponents are currently forcing the Knicks into.
3) The depth and minutes conundrums, 2.0
I talked about in Five Things #2 and I even vented about it after the Pacer game.
At a certain point, the conversation gets old. We know who this coach is. We know his strengths and weaknesses. What good does continuing to talk about this do?
The Knicks have title aspirations. By definition, this season was meant to be different than previous ones. Thibodeau always asks his players to sacrifice, but at what point does the team ask him to sacrifice for the greater good? At what point is it on Thibodeau to say, “I really want to win this game, but I need to prioritize the bigger picture”? How has that moment not arrived?
The Knicks’ most recent lost came a team in a near-identical situation. The Pacers, fresh off a Conference Finals birth and hoping to prove themselves as legitimate contenders this year, were down four rotation players. Yet Rick Carlisle still managed to play 10 players, three of whom had never played a meaningful NBA minute in their entire lives. Carlisle understands the bigger picture.
We can debate the short-term merit of these strategies (are we even 100% sure guys like Hart and Bridges in minute 43 are as effective as worse but fresher players?). What is not debatable are the long-term ramifications of this rotation strategy. Even if the Knicks get through the season healthy, they’ll likely be overtaxed. The goal is to peak in the postseason. This is very much still an obtainable goal, but every time Thibodeau over-extends his top-six, the odds of them peaking in six months decrease slightly.
4) Maintaining optimism
So, the offensive efficiency may not be sustainable, the defense stinks, and the players are gonna collapse soon. Where’s the optimism?
Good news! There’s plenty. The Knicks remain third in championship betting odds, which means the market remains bullish on their chances, comfortably ahead of the 12-0 Cleveland Cavaliers. How can that be?
The Knicks have played a really tough schedule (ninth-toughest in adjusted strength of schedule, per dunksandthrees). That gauntlet softens tremendously in the near future, with a four-game homestand featuring the Bulls and Wizards sandwiching two straight against the Nets. Under Thibodeau, the Knicks have been extremely efficient taking care of business against lesser teams. Beyond that, it’s important to remember the Knicks are still a new team. Brunson is trying to acclimate a new, different type of co-star. Bridges is trying to blend the profile of the player the Knicks want him to be with the one he’d gotten used to in Brooklyn.
Help is on the way. Cam Payne, who Thibodeau has shown he trusts more than rookie Tyler Kolek, should return any day now. Precious Achiuwa isn’t far behind. Eventually they’ll have Landry Shamet and Mitchell Robinson as options off the bench as well. The Knicks even added sharpshooter Matt Ryan, who is currently learning the system outside of the games.
Thibodeau has proven adept at building a tenable rotation when he trusts his bench. Look at any game with Hart, Immanuel Quickley, Quentin Grimes and Isaiah Hartenstein off the bench last season – the minutes were mostly reasonable. As the Knicks’ starters (currently rocking a negative net rating) continue to build chemistry, the schedule softens and more options become available to Thibodeau, it’s possible many of these qualms will be tranquilized.
5) A rivalry renewed
Joel Embiid returned to action last night for the first time since last spring. In case you forgot, here’s what he did to Mitchell Robinson then.
Since then the Knicks acquired Bridges and Towns while the 76ers made a splash of their own obtaining Paul George. These two teams don’t like each other and happen to be coached by two men who ask a lot of their players on top of a physical, demanding style. No better way for the Knicks to start turning things around than beating their rival on their alleged homecourt – the same place they ended Philadelphia’s season last year. We know Sixers fans haven’t forgotten.
