What is the Knicks’ perfect pace? On the slow Knicks, definitional rabbit holes, and baby hippos

Two things are abundantly clear if you watch even a handful of Knicks games this year: they play great defense, and they play at a glacial pace on offense. Could that glacier afford to melt a little bit, though?

Tom Thibodeau’s New York Knicks — second in the league in defensive efficiency and last in pace — are clearly embracing the strategic ethos of the AM pre-coffee snail by design, right? As in, the grimier the better, the muddier the better, the slower the better? The assumption being that part of the Knicks’ defensive pedigree comes because they purposely play in the mud, like some platoon of warrior sloths, urged on from the sidelines by their warrior sloth king, in the gravelly tones of a man who has spent a solid month on a karaoke machine, without sleep, or water, and endless 30-second intervals between songs where he literally gargles gravel.

The slog-and-clog Knicks grind games into a fine possessional dust, to choke and strangle and suffocate a victory into the win column, with both the scoreboard and the stylistic lineage of a contest rooted firmly in the ’90s.

A slow pace is the cost of doing defensive business for this plucky and often out-talented Knicks bunch, right?

Wrong. Oddly enough, a surprising trend this season has been that the Knicks win playing faster and lose playing slower, relatively speaking. That 30th-ranked pace number measures the average number of possessions per 48 Knick minutes, and sits at a glacial 96.53 possessions a night 37 games into the season, just over halfway. 

In the 16 games where the pace has been faster than 96.5, the Knicks are 11-5. 

In the 21 games where the pace has been slower than 96.5, the Knicks are 8-13.

And of these especially mud-splattered 21, in the slowest 13 games of the season (with a pace 94.5 or lower): the Knicks are 3-10.

That settles it, then — we’re clearly a new-age offensive titan masquerading as a slow-poke defensive has-been. Let them run Thibs! Pace is having a party and the Knicks are invited! Defensive dominos be damned! 

Not so fast. There is a perception of pace as an offensive stat, in that it is seen as a result of a choice made when a team has the ball, and on the back of a napkin this is true. But the line between offense and defense, the transition between not having the ball and having the ball, and the situational starting point of the choice to “play fast” or “play slow,” is a slippery one.

It’s easier to score after a defensive stop, and it’s easier to defend after scoring. Meaning, in a way, defense starts on offense, and offense starts on defense. Or as the cliche goes, “the best offense is a good defense,” and vice versa. The value of an offensive possession is defined by how the preceding defensive possession ended. In order of value: a steal (live ball turnover), a defensive rebound, a free throw attempt, or a dead ball. And as the ball changes hands, the inverse kicks in, and the offensive possession yields higher percentage shots at the start of the possession (in transition), percentages that drop in tandem with the seconds on the shot clock and the reorganization of the defense.

It’s a positive (or negative) feedback loop: defend well (or badly) and you make scoring easier (or harder).

The strategic sparks fly in each team’s battle to enforce their own feedback loop. Defensive teams, like the Knicks, will use their defense as a weapon to create an easier offensive starting point: attacking a bent defense. A strength to mitigate a weakness. Whereas offensive teams will use their offense to create an easier defensive starting point: a set defense. An opposing strength to mitigate an opposing weakness.

In the month of January, the Knicks went 7-9, played at a 94.84 pace, and had the ninth-ranked defense in the league with a defensive rating of 109 on the nose. In February, they went 9-5, played at a 97.82 pace, and had the second-ranked defense in the league at 106.7. They played faster, defended better, and won more. 

How much faster? 2.98 possessions per game faster, the difference between the currently 29th-ranked slow and steady Phoenix Suns and 11th-ranked speed demon Sacramento Kings. How much stingier was the defense? It was 2.3 points per 100 possessions stingier, the difference between the Suns’ third-best defense in the league and the Indiana Pacers’ 13th-best. In both months, the Knicks’ pace would have been the slowest in the league, but there’s a big difference between slowest in the league and s-l-o-w-e-s-t in the league.

Part of the difference may be the acquisition of Derrick Rose, who arrived on Feb. 8. With Rose on the floor, the Knicks play at a pace of 99.87, the second fastest on/off mark for any Knick rotation player, trailing only the ageless Taj Gibson. This is a big jump from Elfrid Payton’s pace of 96.53 — exactly the team’s speed this season — and the third-slowest number among Knick rotation players, behind only Mitchell Robinson and Austin Rivers. Curiously, the Knicks’ defense with Rose on the court, in 246 minutes, has been absurd — allowing just 96.7 points per possession, compared to Elf’s 110.1 in 932 minutes, the worst number on the roster outside of Rivers.

Now, before we grab our favorite Payton-shaped pitchfork, there is a bunch of noise in these numbers. Payton has defended the likes of Steph Curry and Damian Lillard while Rose has played mostly bench mobs, and defensive efficiency is not an individual stat. But they’re not all noise, and Rose’s offense may do more for the Knicks team defense than his individual defensive reputation suggests it should.

When it comes to pace, the offense/defense definitional tango is a chicken and egg situation, and attempts to distinguish between “play faster!” and “defend better!” in a way that misses the point: that maybe the Knicks’ — unequivocally a defense-first team — best way to prop up the ceiling of an apparently unsustainable defense (see: The Great Regression) is to raise the floor of a lethargic half court offense. 

As always, the devil is in the dance between details, a dance my brain’s two left feet can’t keep pace with. A sweeping takeaway my dad-dancing brain can cope with, though: there is such a thing as too slow for Thibodeau’s Knicks. We like the mud, for sure. But we’re more frolickers than wallowers. More boisterous pre-walk labrador than muck-loving baby hippo on the animal mud enthusiasm scale.

To summarize: the Knicks are warrior-sloths with a disposition more labrador than baby hippo. Simple. I bet you’re glad you read all the way to the disappointing end now. See what happens when the Knicks don’t play for 168 tortuous hours in the middle of a plague? A sad amount of Netflix, a surprising amount of David Attenborough, and a casually-expanding Immanuel Quickley-shaped emotional sinkhole.

The slow-but-not-too-slow Knickerbockers of New York — angels of soothing pandemic escapism — can’t come back quick enough.