Welcome to Thibs-Ball: How free throws could define the 2020-21 Knicks
Jack Huntley shows you why 1>2(0-3)>3>2(3-22), and why free throws could be the defining characteristic of the 2020-21 New York Knicks, in a league where 3-pointers are much more posh.
Three-pointers are pretty full of it these days, aren’t they? Always checking themselves out in vaguely reflective surfaces to make sure their dead crown of expensive scalp fluff is in its proper position. Harping on and on about NBA feng shui like an annoyingly happy 20-something-year-old backpacker with a mysterious ankle tattoo, just back from a year in Thailand. Strolling around wearing t-shirts that loudly proclaim the gospel of 3>2, the type who chooses to wear clothes that proudly promote the glory of their own grinning face, like an advert for counting from a needy and insecure calculator.
Enough already, threes. You’re not actually all that. How about this for a t-shirt slogan?
1>2(0-3)>3>2(3-22)
Not so smug now, are you, threes? Your hair looks like crap and your tattoo says “radiator” and your calculator’s broken.
Last season, per Basketball-Reference, the efficiency pecking order of shot values based on the league average percentages from each spot was as follows:
So triples take the bronze medal, then. That’s a bit awkward, for those who mistakenly equate analytics with threes and only threes. Most fans know that offensive efficiency has a few analytical deities; free throws, layups, and threes. But this triumvirate of commandments are far from created equally. Last year, long balls were closer to being the worst shot in basketball than the best. A pair of average NBA foul shots are almost 50% more valuable than an average NBA 3-pointer. Or, framed another way, a 61.5% (1.23PPP) foul shooter — like RJ Barrett — at the line for two is a more valuable outcome than a 40% (1.2PPP) 3-point shooter — like Jayson Tatum, Damian Lillard or Joe Ingles — launching from deep. Yeah, let’s go with that RJ example, that feels nice.
Like all things in life, the value of freebies and threes is relative, primarily because of their influence on each other. Elite 3-point shooting makes it easier to get shots at the rim, where you’re most likely to get fouled. At the same time, putting pressure on the rim collapses the defense, making 3’s more open, easier to make, and more valuable.
Beyond raw efficiency, each outcome leaks into other areas of the game, some of which are well known. Getting to the foul line allows you to set up your defense. Missed threes can lead to longer rebounds, leading to high value opponent transition opportunities. Shots at the rim are more likely to lead to offensive rebounds that lead to immediate high-value second shots at the rim. Elite 3-point shooting exists as a constant threat, off the ball, every second of a possession, whereas the 3-second rule prevents players from standing under the rim and statically warping a defense like players do around the arc. These are just a few of the more primitive fortune-cookie examples of strategic spillage between the perimeter and the paint, upon which the Jeff Van Gundys of the world could no doubt layer nuance after nuance, turning a brain like mine into soup.
The relative value of non-rim, 2-point attempts (short, mid, and long) matters too. Although short mid-rangers from 3-10 feet offer the worst raw per-possession return, they are essentially failed 0-3 feet attempts, which offer the second best value, and the best chance of getting fouled. Long twos, on the other hand, can be considered failed 3-point attempts, in that all players have to do is step back and they get more per possession bang for their buck, with no deterrent or 7-foot behemoths in their way.
So it’s not quite as simple as 1>2(0-3)>3>2(3-22), and definitely not as simple 3>2.
Simplifications aside, though, there are a few conclusions we can safely come to:
Free throws are NBA diamonds. It’s why Jimmy Butler — a certified shooting foul-drawing god, going to the line on a whopping 25% of his field goal attempts last season — is so damn good. It’s also sneakily why James Harden is so deadly, much more so than the Texas-10-step step-backs. Harden got to the line on 18.5% of his FGA last season, which is an exceptional number considering his size, and right up there with physical titans like Giannis Antetokounmpo (20.9%), Zion Williamson (20.2%) and Joel Embiid (19.1%) (per Cleaning the Glass).
The best defenses in the NBA know that, when stacked up against free throws and shots at the rim, 3-pointers are fool’s gold. The Milwaukee Bucks and Toronto Raptors were first and second in defensive rating last season, they also allowed the first- and third-most 3-pointers as a percentage of opponents’ shot attempts. Why did they do this? Because they wanted to protect the rim, allowing the first and third lowest opponent FG% from 0-3 feet, and the first and eighth fewest shots from 0-3 feet as a percentage of opponent shot attempts (per Basketball-Reference).
More threes aren’t always better. The Minnesota Timberwolves and Brooklyn Nets took the third- and fifth-most 3-pointers per game in the league last season, and finished 22nd and 24th in offensive rating. By all means, turn would-be long twos into threes, but indiscriminately launching more and more long balls, if you don’t have good shooters, is not a great plan.
What’s this got to do with the Knicks?
Much has been made of first year Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau’s tepid enthusiasm for the 3-point revolution, and the roster for the fast approaching 2020-21 season seemingly reflects coach Thibs’ curmudgeonly shrug to shooting’s stranglehold on the NBA, with many of the roster additions being average to good floor spacers at best. Compared to last season, good could be seen as an upgrade, but despite the mildly encouraging career 3-point percentages of Alec Burks (36%), Austin Rivers (35%), and Omari Spellman (37%); the new acquisitions don’t exactly scream feng shui. Besides, like last season, the problem the Knicks face this year is getting the guys who can shoot on the floor together.
The team’s two rookies, Immanuel Quickley and Obi Toppin, might walk in the door as the roster’s two best shooters alongside veteran holdover Reggie Bullock (a career 38% 3-point shooter). Quickley shot 43% on 4.8 3PA per game last season at Kentucky. Obi shot 39% on 2.6 3PA per game at Dayton. Impressive and encouraging numbers, respectively, but it would be expecting a lot to bank on this collegiate marksmanship immediately translating to the NBA game.
If there is a through line in this Knicks roster, it’s the ability to get to the rim and get to the free throw line. If there’s an offensive tenet we can reasonably expect, and be happy with Thibodeau building around, it’s this:
All stats in the table are percentiles, relative to a player’s position, for how often they got to the rim and how often they drew shooting fouls as a percentage of total field goal attempts last season, except for Kidd-Gilchrist’s numbers, which are from the 2018-19 season — the last time he played big minutes.
This single season snapshot of a roster with a nose for the line is a conservative one in terms of SFLD%. Burks, in 12 seasons, has never finished below the 81st percentile. In his two seasons before getting to the Knicks, Randle finished in the 93rd and 88th percentile, playing over 2,000 minutes per year with the Los Angeles Lakers and New Orleans Pelicans, respectively, before leaning into his midrange game on arriving in New York. From 2013-14 to 2017-18, Kidd-Gilchrist finished in the 99th, 96th, 100th, 89th, and 90th percentiles playing mostly starter’s minutes. If he makes the roster and gets minutes, his offensive strength is unequivocally getting to the rim and getting to the line.
Although Toppin didn’t get to the free throw line at some miraculous rate in college, he did live at the rim and was devastatingly efficient, mostly because of his dunks, which aren’t your run-of-the-mill, garden variety dunks. Oh no. Obi’s dunks are of the seismic variety, routinely registering on confused Richter scales. A tsunami in sneakers. Uncontested yams aside, he will have to get a little more comfortable finishing through contact in the NBA, where he’ll no longer be the biggest body in the bouncy castle on a nightly basis. Adjusting to this physicality will be key for him getting to the line in the pros, as will surrounding him with NBA-grade spacing — you know, at some point, hopefully.
The Knicks were 25th in the league in free throw rate last season, despite the numbers in the table above from last year’s holdovers. It wouldn’t be surprising for Thibs to choose his starting point guard based on who can get into the paint and put pressure on the rim, which sounds — scary as it seems, after last year’s mulligan — like it could be Dennis Smith Jr.’s music. He hardly played last season, but with both the front office and Dennis himself surely aligned in looking to haul his value off the bottom of the Hudson river — with extension talks looming after next season — the 23-year-old has all the incentive in the world to bounce back in the 2020-21 campaign.
Looking for NBA strengths that will actually translate to wins with this Knick roster is like looking for a combine harvester in a needle factory. But Thibs will need something to hang his hat on, and for guys like RJ Barrett, whose prowess getting to the stripe was disproportionately overshadowed by what he couldn’t do when he got there, there are worse calling cards to develop than the by-far best outcome in basketball. Sleep on sophomore RJ at your peril, given he’s had eight months off to hone his aim from 15 feet. In reality, RJ’s ability to get to the foul line at a genuinely elite rate — as a rookie — should be more encouraging than his free throw woes are concerning, for now.
Of course, shooting would be nice too. Lots of it, please. Elite spacing, if we’re putting in orders, and none of that one-way sale-rack stuff. Something like they’ve got down in Miami — #Culture capital of the cosmos — with Jimmy Freebies flanked by snipers. That’s a pretty dreamy dynamic of paint and perimeter. But we don’t have that yet, so it’s no use turning to volume long-balls as some kind of 1-800-EFFICIENCY-NOW! panacea in and of itself. Not with this roster. If you haven’t got the horses — as many teams not graced with the presence of Steph Curry and Klay Thompson have found in various moments of post and regular season failure recently — you can’t run that kind of race.
What has Thibs got to lose? He’s not exactly spoiled for choice with this fine collection of NBA spare parts, is he? Here’s what I’m looking for on the first day of team practice: Thibs digs out footage from his personal stash of practice tape, previously unseen by civilian eyes, where he had a rookie Jimmy Buckets repeatedly run through brick walls on his way to the rim, an analytically inclined two-way Terminator, and introduces the entire Knick roster to their new way of being, in a boot-camp style indoctrination to the primacy of the paint, and the sole analytical deity: The Foul Line. Short training camp? No problem. We’re keeping it simple. Just build walls on one end and run through them on the other. Wall-to-wall wall drills. Remembering to at all times to channel the inner Jimmy that lives in all of us, like a softly percolating volcano, ready to rain down mathematically-righteous magma on the NBA masses.
Welcome to Thibs-Ball: an old-fashioned offensive hammer in a league full of snazzy carbon-fiber long-bows. Where RJ gets to the line 10 times a game and shoots 70% (1.4 PPP) when he gets there, which is still quite bad, but doesn’t matter, because doing that is more valuable — in a delightfully cozy, for our purposes, cocoon of a vacuum — than George Hill’s league-leading 46% (1.38 PPP) from downtown last season. How’s it goink now, threes? We don’t even need you. So there.
That sounds like a reasonable plan. All we need now is a slogan. How about:
“Your 2020-21 New York Knicks, where 1>2(0-3)>3>2(3-22) makes us vaguely competitive, but we still lose enough games to get Cade.”
Perfect. Stick it on a t-shirt. Let’s play some Thibs-Ball.
