The Strickland February Mailbag, Part 2: Ranking backcourts, what-if players, and those ugly new jerseys

How do RJ and Elfrid stand up against starting backcourts in the league? Could Myles Turner make more sense than Mitch? What if the Knicks got Seth Curry instead of DSJ in the KP trade? All that and more in this installment of the mailbag!

In Part 1 of this mailbag we talked about whether to trade Julius Randle (no), trade for Zach LaVine (no) and random favorite Knicks over the years. Welcome to Part 2. 

1) [It’d] be nice to get a net rating ranking for Reggie Bullock and Elfrid Payton versus the rest of the league’s starting backcourts. 

@StrandedYobbo

Bullock has played 93% of his minutes this year at small foward, while RJ Barrett’s spent three-fourths of his at the two-guard. So let’s look at where Elfrid and RJ compare to other backcourts.  

Before Wednesday’s games, New York’s backcourt has played the most minutes together of any starting duo (all numbers from Basketball-Reference.com except for Boston, Miami, Orlando and Houston’s backcourts, who haven’t played enough minutes to track at B-Ref; those stats are from NBA.com).  

Payton and Barrett’s net rating is absolute middle-of-the-pack: 15 backcourts have a better rating, 14 are lower. I’ve listed each pair in the same order as the first chart to highlight something interesting: there’s an A/B/A/B pattern as far as minutes and ratings.

The backcourts that play the most all have negative ratings; the pairings with the highest play the least. But the middle two areas that create the undulation — what’s that about? What do you make of it? Just because it’s my mailbag doesn’t mean I don’t get to ask questions.

 2) Considering how well Randle and RJ are playing right now, would it make sense to replace Mitchell Robinson with Myles Turner?

@FarOffTheMarc

For this question I consulted Mark Schindler, who covers the Pacers for Indy Cornrows, is the co-creator of Premium Hoops, and knows more about Myles Turner than I ever will. Here’s his take:

“From the Knicks' perspective, I think it would make a ton of sense for them to find a way to replace Mitch with Myles. Myles is a better player on both ends. That's not a slight to Mitch, but Myles has just been that good. This could honestly be fantastic for RJ, however I have liked the PnR lob chemistry he seemed to be building with Mitch.

Mitch has been really good defensively, I like his screening, he's probably a top-5 lob threat in the NBA right now. (There's a “but”…)

Myles is a viable Defensive Player of the Year candidate who has offensive tools that make him more than serviceable as an offensive player. I look at Mitch and see quite a bit of potential, but I look at Myles and see him as already better than the majority of outcomes Mitch might have in his future. Myles is barely three years older than Mitch, is on a cost-controlled deal for a lengthy amount of time, and isn't in his prime yet. I think it would be a fairly simple decision for the Knicks.

For the Pacers, barring some severe turbulence to close the second half of the year, I don't think they're going to break up the Turner/Domantas Sabonis tandem. My speculation is that they want to get a playoff run with the two together to see what they look like in the highest setting and make decisions from there.

Ultimately, while Mitch/cap filler and draft assets could net Turner in terms of raw value, I think if the Pacers do decide to move on from him it will be for a forward/wing who fits the team’s timeline and is of a similar caliber of player to Myles.

If Sabonis weren't on the team, this would be a very different discussion. But Turner and Sabonis already have some wonkiness offensively. Mitch and Sabonis would remove a lot of spacing while also relegating someone to the dunker's spot more often than not.

TL;DR: No, I don't think there's anything that would suffice in terms of a Turner/Robinson swap, because if the Pacers are moving on from a big, it's not to bring another big back.”

3) What would be different if we just asked for Seth Curry in the KP trade rather than Dennis Smith Jr.?
@andypuggles

For around $8 million a year, the Knicks would have employed a straight-up sniper. I mean that in a few ways. 

Curry is one of the league’s true marksman, as are/were his brother and father. This is the fourth season in the past five he’s shooting 45% from three; the one year he didn’t, he made 43%. His career 3PAr (the percentage of his shot attempts that are 3-pointers) is 51%. All he does is take and make 3-pointers. Given that the Knicks have been near the bottom of the league in 3-point attempts, makes, and percentage for years, Curry would have been a much-needed floor spacer. Given how little the Knicks got out of DSJ last season and this one, the Curry’s Billy Baldwin would in retrospect seem like a better trade target.

But I doubt many would have felt that way in 2019. Despite his lineage, Curry has not generally appeared on most hardcourt hitmakers’ radar. He played his first year of college basketball at Liberty University before transferring to Duke, went undrafted in 2013, and played a total of 21 minutes in his first two years in the NBA. The bloom is off DSJ’s rose after he was traded for Derrick Rose, but at the time of the KP deal, Smith Jr. was only two years removed from being a top-20 recruit out of high school and a lottery pick after one year at N.C. State. His first two years in the pros he was a starter averaging about 15 points and five assists. In 2021, it’s clear the tortoise came out ahead of the hare, but anyone who caught the early days of that race knows how it began.

Plus, while Curry is a brilliant, brilliant shooter, that’s mostly it. At 6-foot-2, he isn’t a presence on the glass. His career assist rate is somewhere around Alec Burks territory. He gets to the line about as much as Frank Ntilikina, a real blue-moon event. He’s not a plus defender, and he’s 30 — what you see is what you get.

Other questions arise with any imagined Knicks/Curry universe. He’s spent the past three seasons on good teams, sometimes very good teams — the 2019 Portland Trail Blazers reached the Conference Finals; the bubble Mavericks fell in a thrilling first-round series to the L.A. Clippers; this year’s Philadelphia 76ers sport the best record in the East. Would he have been as productive on bad Knicks teams? Even if his efficiency is foolproof, would he have had enough opportunities to make a difference? Would the presence of Curry have led the Knicks to pass on drafting Immanuel Quickley, a similarly-sized guard? One thing would not have changed: the Knicks, with DSJ or Curry, win that trade. 

4) Start one, bench one, hire one to replace Tom Thibodeau as head coach: Elfrid Payton, Emmanuel Mudiay, Dennis Smith Jr.

@cologneloring

I’d start Mudiay because I love Mudiay. DSJ comes off the bench, because honestly I think their spacing is better suited to his game than the starters (especially with Mudiay starting). Payton as head coach works for me! I can see him being a good coach for some reason. So many of the most successful coaches were meh players — Pat Riley; Phil Jackson; Rick Carlisle; Steve Kerr; Tyronn Lue; Luke Walton (kidding). Why not Elf?

5) Are you having second thoughts about the City Never Sleeps jerseys?

@chiniqua

I’m still on my first thought, which is unprintable for a family website like The Strickland. I hate the new jerseys. I honestly preferred the all-orange kits from a few years ago to the CNS dreck.

There are an infinitude of visually-arresting sights associated with New York City. The skyline. The bridges. An apple. Yellow taxis. Bodega cats. Graffiti. Dimebags. Times Square. The subways. Madison Square Garden’s pinwheel roof. How the Knicks end up with a jersey that features black and orange plus prose but NO image is a betrayal of a place that is literally heaven for the eyeballs.

That’s all for the February mailbag. See you in March, peoples.