Previewing the Knicks-Cavs series in depth: Can the Knicks use their formula for victory?
A wild regular season for the Knicks has given way to a huge first-round tilt with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Can the Knicks utilize what got them here to come out on top in the first round?
173 days.
4,152 hours.
249,120 minutes.
On May 27, 2018, LeBron James led his undermanned Cleveland Cavaliers into Boston for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals and capped off what Jeff Van Gundy referred to as “the greatest accomplishment of his career” by playing all 48 minutes, scoring 35 points, while tacking on 15 rebounds as well as nine assists and leading his team to the NBA Finals. It was the Cavaliers’ fourth (and final) consecutive Finals appearance, as well as James’ eighth individually. Afterwards, Celtics’ head coach Brad Stevens, awestruck and defeated, was unusually forthcoming in detailing what exactly James’ achievement meant, and what about it was most impressive:
“He’s unbelievable. We’ve played now until May 25 and May 27 the last two years. And we started on Sep. 25. And that’s every day. Like every day. That you’re totally focused on this…”
As a fan, seasons can tend to blend together. No, the NBA is not the MLB, but the regular season can perpetuate almost as much. This season felt different, though. There was a shared aura throughout most of the league that had been missing since James took his talents to South Beach in the summer of 2010. That aura represented hope. As the player talent pool has gotten deeper and teams have gotten smarter, parity has risen. All of a sudden, it feels like over a third of the league can make a run. Thus, the regular season did not drag on or run out of steam. Each night was a battle. And after 173 days, the dust has settled and it’s finally time to play for it all.
How we got here
It’s easy to forget, but the Knicks were not considered by many, including some of their own faithful, to be one of those potentially contending teams. Coming into the season, sportsbooks had their over/under for wins on the season at a lowly 39.5. This never made much sense. While the 2021-22 Knicks won just 37 games, their pythagorean win-loss record (an adjusted record that attempts to project what their win-loss record should have been with some of the luck removed) was 41-41. To go along with that, the Knicks could reasonably expect improvement from young players such as RJ Barrett, Quentin Grimes, Immanuel Quickley, Obi Toppin and Mitchell Robinson. It was also fair to assume that Julius Randle could not be much worse than he was in 2021-22. Last, but certainly not least, they replaced Nerlens Noel with Isaiah Hartenstein and Alec Burks with Jalen Brunson.
The X-factor for this season was always going to be head coach Tom Thibodeau. With the expected progression and abundance of talent, the floor was reasonably high, but to approach the teams’ ceiling, Thibodeau was going to have to shed the cobwebs of last season and approach this one differently. As I mentioned above, the Knicks finished last season four games worse than their expected win-loss record. A big part of that was Thibodeau’s stubbornness, which almost cost him his job. Whether it was spamming unsuccessful lineups (for the second straight season, the Knicks deployed the most-used lineup with a negative net rating in the league), or favoring veteran players in crunch time minutes regardless of what was happening on the floor, Thibodeau had his hands all over the Knicks’ disappointing season.
For 23 games, this season looked to be following a similar script. Sitting at 10-13, the trends were remarkably (frustratingly) alike. Highlighting this was Quickley, who just so happened to carry that mantle the previous season. In ‘21-22, Quickley was one of the lone bright spots. The Knicks finished the season a gargantuan 13.1 points per 100 possessions better when Quickley was on the floor than when he sat on the bench. Across his final 24 games of the season, Quickley averaged 16 points, 5.3 rebounds and 4.8 assists per game with a 60.66% true shooting percentage (TS%) and 39.3% from long distance. He was immaculate. Yet, Thibodeau refused to throw him even the smallest bone, a trend that carried over into the start of this season. Through 23 games, Quickley eclipsed the 30-minute mark just once while playing fewer than 20 minutes eight times. Trade rumors began to swirl. Thibodeau was on the hot seat. The franchise was in a bad place.
And then a funny thing happened: Thibodeau flipped a switch. We often talk about players developing or making a leap, but coaches get much less credit for evolving. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe Thibodeau felt his back against the wall and threw a Hail Mary. Maybe the Front Office forced him to make certain changes. Maybe he got lucky. Whatever the reason was, Thibodeau shed his stubbornness like Django unshackling himself and went on probably the best 59-game coaching stretch of his life. Consider that this is almost certainly the youngest rotation Thibodeau has ever coached. He never wavered. He embraced the challenge. He emphasized the depth and versatility of the roster. When Brunson went down he elevated Quickley, trusting him to carry the torch home.
Right behind Thibodeau was Randle, whose Knick career may very well be tethered to Thibodeau’s. It feels fitting that just as the two struggled in lockstep, they found redemption together as well. After a slow start to the season that, like Thibodeau, saw him mirroring habits from last season (one that saw him give his own fan base an angry thumbs down), Randle went on an absolute rampage, which was highlighted by two aspects: first, until he turned his ankle in the 77th game of the season, Randle did not miss a single game. To go along with that, Randle had the most intelligent shot mapping of his entire career. Consider this, on the season Randle was less effective from three (41% to 34%) and long two (43% to 41.7%) than he was in his All-NBA season, yet his TS% actually increased from 56.7% to 58.1%.
I could go on. Once Thibodeau made the changes he made on that fateful Sunday afternoon in December, the team never looked back. Over the final four months of the season, the Knicks had the fifth-best net rating in the entire NBA and played at a 52-win pace. They have the third-best offense in the NBA. Yes, you read that right. THIRD. Some readers may be asking themselves how that is possible. The Knicks run as unimaginative an offense as there is and don’t have a Level 1 superstar. The answer, as James “Sawyer” Ford once said on Lost, lies in the details.
The Knicks essentially view each game as a math equation. It almost doesn’t matter if the shots go in, as long as they’re attempting meaningfully more shots than their opponents, they believe they’ll win more often than not. So how do they do that? Well, the Knicks are top five in both offensive rebounds and turnovers per 100 possessions. Unsurprisingly, they are also near the top of the league in field goal attempts per 100 possessions as well.
The defense has been less stellar. Some of that has been adapting to increasing the pace of the game. Some (more?) of it lies in their roster construction. The Knicks start two wonderful defenders in Robinson and Grimes. Robinson is a one-man wrecking crew at the rim. It’s a joy to watch him drop into the paint and navigate 1v2’s using his length and athleticism to negate whatever the offense throws at him. And Grimes, considering his age and relative lack of NBA experience, is an absolute wunderkind. He is one of the best screen navigators you’ll see in the entire league, he has the quickness to stay with guards and the strength to guard up. Whoever the opposition’s best player is (unless it’s a big), you can bet your bottom dollar that Grimes will spend his time on the court matched up against them.
Unfortunately, there’s only so much two guys can do. And while Brunson, Randle and Barrett have showcased positives, very few have come on the defensive side of the ball. You can live with one weak link on the defensive end. Maybe two. But having three guys who are liable to be exposed share the court as frequently as Brunson, Barrett and Randle do is not a recipe for defensive success. Of Knicks rotation players the team defense performed the worst when those three players were on the court. All three performed better when paired with some of the bench (specifically Quickley and/or Hart).
So here we are. Eighty-two games down and at least four left. The Knicks spent over two-thirds of the season performing like a top-five team. Can they carry that over into the playoffs?
The matchup
Don’t forget, there are two teams in this series! And while the Knicks were very good this season, the Cleveland Cavaliers were elite. Knicks fans have been clamoring for this matchup. Part of it is due to how good the top of the East (Philadelphia, Boston, Milwaukee) is. But I’m not sure the fanbase fully knows what they’re in for. They may have ended up as the No. 4 seed, but the Cavs finished the season second in net rating and first in defensive rating by a sizable margin.
As a team, the Cavs could not be more different than the Knicks. The Cavaliers are top heavy, with four players ranging from very good (Jarrett Allen) to a fringe MVP candidate (Donovan Mitchell). The rest of their team is a collective hodgepodge of guys who’ll likely be viewed as interchangeable, depending on who has it going on a particular night. One exception is third-year pro Isaac Okoro, whose defensive acumen could play a huge role in this series matching up against Jalen Brunson. Despite their size (Allen and Mobley are a two-headed monster), the Cavaliers struggle mightily corralling rebounds, while the Knicks are an elite rebounding team. The Cavaliers will match the Knicks’ third-ranked offense with the league’s most stout defense. Lastly, the Cavaliers are last in the league in pace, while the Knicks, who ended the season towards the bottom, made a pointed effort to increase their pace as the season went on.
Matchups are everything in the playoffs. “You can throw the regular season out the window” is a cliche, and a bad one. The regular season is almost like character exposition in a novel — it informs us on each team’s strengths and weaknesses. What makes the playoffs different is how much more context-based each series is. Matchups are everything. No matter how much the Clippers made it appear that way in 2021, prime Rudy Gobert was not unplayable. But certain teams were always going to give him fits. Some players are matchup-proof. Heck, even some teams are. But for the most part, teams are capable of performing multiple standard deviations above or below their expectation in the playoffs, and a large part of that is who you play against.
So is this a good matchup for the Knicks? At first glance, the answer appears to be a resounding no. The Knicks do much of their damage in isolation. Brunson is one of the most talented 1v1 scorers in the entire league. Quickley has taken a major leap initiating from the perimeter. But the Cavaliers have an elite wing defender in Okoro and two behemoths waiting in the paint behind him. To go along with that, they’re prepared to take a bite out of a big part of the Knicks’ math equation as they allow the fewest open 3-pointers in the league. The Knicks have an abundance of small guys who play bigger than their size and the Cavaliers will be daring them to foray into the paint. That’s slightly terrifying.
On the other side of the ball they are equipped with something that gives the Knicks fits: two elite initiators. It is no secret that the Knicks will have Grimes shadow Mitchell every second they share the court together. They will also likely try to hide Brunson on Okoro or whoever the Cavs’ fifth man is. This leaves Barrett to guard former All-Star Darius Garland. Historically, Barrett struggles with quick, smaller guards. He also has more than proven himself to be capable of stepping up in the biggest moments. Could a playoff atmosphere lock him in defensively in a way that was a rarity throughout the ‘22-23 regular season?
I haven’t even mentioned the Julius Randle of it all. Randle, who has not played a second of NBA basketball since turning his left ankle, is very much up in the air for Game 1. If he’s out, what do the Knicks do about Evan Mobley? Do they trust Obi Toppin (who has been wonderful in Randle’s absence) for big minutes? Or do they go small and play a mix of Barrett and Hart at the 4? Against a team as good as the Cavaliers, margins are razor-thin. You’re always giving something up. Could going small unlock space and pace offensively that works to the Knicks’ overall advantage?
The biggest key for the Knicks will be rebounding. If Robinson and Hartenstein can create enough extra opportunities for the Knicks they will be in most games. The Cavaliers also force a ton of turnovers, while a big part of the Knicks’ scheme is built around valuing the basketball. Their two point guards, Brunson and Quickley, ended the season with turnover percentages (TOV%) of 7.4% and 7.1%, respectively. For reference, Chris Paul, nicknamed the Point God for his unprecedented efficiency, has a career-low TOV% of 10.8%. Basketball is played on a court, not a spreadsheet, but this series could very well come down to the same math equation the Knicks have been pressing all season: How many more possessions can they create than their opponent?
RJ Barrett and Tom Thibodeau
I’ve barely said his name, but just as Thibodeau was the X-factor for the regular season, Barrett could very well be the X-factor for this series. To be blunt, Barrett was disappointing in the regular season, his worst campaign since he was a rookie. Whether you were watching the tape or diving into the data, very little of what you saw was kind to Barrett.
On film, Barrett moved as slow as we’ve seen him in his Knick career. He struggled beating just about anyone off the bounce, often being forced to circle back to the perimeter and reset the possession. His lack of burst was even more detrimental on the other side of the court, where Barrett spent much of the season putting up the resistance of a traffic cone. His close-out technique regressed while being shockingly ill-prepared to fight around any screen set on him. Over his last 30 games, he shot 25% on 3-pointers. Add all of this up, and the analytics grading his impact this season make a ton of sense. Barrett was 237th in the league in RAPTOR and a matching 237th in WAR. EPM was even lower on him, ranking his impact 255th this season. Every player in the Knicks’ rotation had a positive net rating when on the court. Every player except one. The Knicks were -1.2 per 100 possessions in the 2475 minutes Barrett played. Even worse for Barrett, the Knicks were a whopping +9.2 per 100 possessions in the 1516 minutes he sat, a number that removes him so far from his teammates it is almost a statistical improbability that he wasn’t the root cause of the issue.
The good news is that these numbers are not predictive. They aren’t telling us what he is going to do tomorrow, only informing us what he did yesterday. And while this season was certainly discouraging, if you believed in Barrett before it, I don’t see why that hope should dissipate. After all, amidst the chaos lay small, albeit meaningful, individual improvements. His efficiency inside five feet rose to a career-high 57.6%. Even better (and perhaps more relevant to this upcoming series), his FG% from 5-9 feet (some call this floater range) went up almost 10 percentage points. Similar to Randle, the fact that his TS% is around what it was in 2020-2021, despite shooting far worse from three, points to an improved shot diet.
Whether Randle plays or not, Barrett is going to get his chance to shine. With Okoro on Brunson and Allen on Randle, with Mobley lingering around the paint, Barrett (and Grimes) will be faced with an opportunity to have their handprints all over this series. Barrett represents a misunderstanding of what basketball impact truly is. You’ve seen the discussions before. They’re so prevalent in Knicks discourse that I’m sure you could recite them yourself without a conversation partner. The discussion always comes back to his scoring. His defenders point to volume points scored, his detractors rip apart his efficiency. The answers, per usual, probably lie in the middle.
But with Barrett it has always been about the process. The absolute results may dictate the outcome of the series, but Barrett needs to get to a place where his impact isn’t so tied to the volatility of shooting (especially his!). Outside of Okoro, the Cavaliers are relatively weak at the point of attack but excellent at the rim. Barrett will get downhill and into the paint relentlessly. Even this version of Barrett creates advantages unlike any other Knick. His overall impact will be determined by the rate at which he makes the correct rim reads.
As I mentioned earlier, the Cavaliers don’t allow a ton of open threes. While they struggle at the point of attack, they are excellent at recovering. Why? Because they trust Allen and Mobley to clean up any mistakes. They don’t overhelp. Barrett will have a chance to put a dent in that wall. His ability to get into the paint combined with his size makes him uniquely equipped to put the Cavaliers in a spot where head coach JB Bickerstaff adjusts and starts sending help into the paint. At that point it will be on Barrett to make the correct kick-outs. If he doesn’t, there could be consequences related to his playing time.
Which brings us to Thibodeau. I have spent way too much time in my life discussing the coaching acumen of a man who has forgotten more about NBA basketball than I’ll ever know. Anything I say should be taken with a grain of salt, if only because there is only so much information at my disposal. With that being said, this is an enormous series for Thibodeau.
It is rarely talked about, but Thibodeau has been pretty terrible in the postseason. He has won just four postseason series in his entire coaching career. Sure, there has been some bad luck (Derrick Rose injury), but a lot of it comes back to the things we’ve been discussing for three seasons. Thibodeau treats every game like a playoff game and demands as much from his players, which gives his teams a pretty sizable edge in the regular season. But that edge disappears once the playoffs start, when every team is giving maximum effort. Other teams play their best players more, but since Thibodeau already plays his guys a ton of minutes, their minutes simply stagnate.
Lastly, many other teams enter the playoffs prepared to adjust on the fly after taking a first punch. But Thibodeau has, historically, seen things one way. When his teams take a punch and are forced to adjust they are often doing so in ways they are woefully unprepared for. Look no further than the 2021 playoffs, when the Hawks took ignoring Elfrid Payton to a whole new level, forcing Thibodeau to make the world’s most obvious decision (remove Payton from the rotation). Only, because Thibodeau forced Payton into every starting lineup for the entire season, the Knicks spent 3.5 playoff games deploying rotations they had not used all season long.
But this season has been different. At the margin, Thibodeau has increased his flexibility. He’s tried Randle at the 5 (something that likely won’t matter this series) in crunch time, and tried Hart or Barrett at power forward even more. The Knicks are far more prepared to take a punch this time around. But that does not mean Thibodeau’s job is done. The Cavaliers will throw multiple punches. They’re going to blitz pick & rolls Brunson is involved in and force the ball out of his hands. They’re going to ignore Robinson both in the dunker’s spot and as a screener. If Randle is out, they’re going to attack both Brunson and Toppin defensively.
Thibodeau has to match Bickerstaff move for move. If the Knicks are to win this series, Thibodeau has to be the better coach. He needs to adjust to what’s happening in front of him and make quick decisions based on the available information. There are going to be a lot of them at his disposal. Playoff series are won and lost on the tiniest of details. I don’t expect this series to be any different.
(Also, could somebody let him know that challenges do not, in fact, carry over from game to game?)
Head vs. heart: A constant tug-of-war
Predictions are difficult. I recognize in today’s world that is a huge part of writing a playoff preview. But a series like this can go so many different ways it’s almost impossible to narrow down. And then there’s the added contextual element of the fact that I am a Knicks fan writing an article for, largely, Knicks fans. Who picks against their own team? I can make sense of the Cavaliers winning in my head, but my heart is having none of that.
The Knicks have as good and deep a team we’ve seen in quite some time. Their home court advantage should be massive, as the Garden will be rocking from the opening tip of Game 3. Most importantly, after everything the Knicks have been through this season, all the ups and downs, it just feels too anticlimactic for them to bow out in the first round. Brunson will perform like the star he is, and someone will step up next to him. Grimes, who I haven’t mentioned much, seems primed to have a breakout series. The Knicks will win their math equation by enough to move on to the second round.
Knicks in six.
A potential farewell
While I do believe the words I wrote, it is not lost on me that every event has a range of outcomes. The Knicks could very well lose this series, and these could be some of the last words I write for y’all this season. With that in mind, I wanted to extend a genuine thank you to all of our readers. None of this would exist without you. This season has been an absolute blast, and regardless of whether this season ends in a week or two months, it makes me excited for all that’s yet to come.
