Freelance Friday: Breaking Down The Knicks

Dec 10, 2014; San Antonio, TX, USA; New York Knicks power forward Amar

Freelance Friday is a project that lets us share our platform with the multitude of talented writers and basketball analysts who aren’t part of our regular staff of contributors. As part of that series we’re proud to present this guest post from Eric Goodman. Eric works in technology consulting and is a basketball data enthusiast. You can follow him on twitter @ericdgoodman36 and on his blog, databallgoodman.blogspot.com/

It does not take a man with a spreadsheet to conclude that the Knicks are not having a good year. While the metrics for evaluating both individual and team performances have evolved over time, the most important metric in basketball remains the almighty win – and the Knicks, well, they only had four of them through 20 games – their worst start in franchise history.

To put this in historical context, the Knicks have gone through their first 20 games at or under 0.500 in 13 of the 25 seasons since 1990-91. Of those 13 seasons, they made the playoffs in four of them. Suffice to say, doing well through 20 games is a good indicator of your ability to make the playoffs[1. For you stat-heads, the correlation between winning percentage in the first 20 games and winning percentage in the remaining games, for this set of data, is r=.598, so there is a moderate to strong correlation there as well].

It was only two years ago that the Knicks had a 54 win season. That team actually had two win streaks of five or more games by their 18th game. Meanwhile, the 2014-15 Knicks failed to win five games in total through their first 20.

While New York sports teams are always under a national and local microscope, I cannot remember a Knicks team prior to this year that had so many “hot button” concerns heading into the season, specifically with regards to (a) the use of the triangle offense (b) a head coach in Derek Fisher with no prior professional coaching experience and (c) the re-signing of Carmelo Anthony to a maximum 5-year, $125 million contract.

The Triangle Offense

From the time of Phil Jackson’s hiring as President of the Knicks in March, 2014, it’s been no secret that he intended for this team to run the triangle offense. For those unfamiliar, the Triangle Offense is a set of schemes which emphasize floor spacing and strategically placed screening – an offense which when flowing well allows players to make quick decisions with the ball that generate a wide variety of open shots. Here is a great video on the triangle for those inclined.

The Michael Jordan-led Bulls and the Kobe/Shaq and Kobe/Pau-led Lakers won a combined eleven championships using the Triangle Offense under Jackson as a coach, although it is widely debated whether it was the offense or the personnel on the court that were more responsible for the successes. Regardless, if the Triangle had any sort of negative impact, it was not enough of an impediment to prevent these teams from the rarity that is winning consecutive NBA championships.

I decided to explore the impact of the triangle offense by attempting to answer two key questions:

Question 1: Is the group of players that comprise the 2014-15 Knicks playing better statistically than in prior seasons?

In the absence of certain constants (only 8 of 14 players on the Knicks opening day roster were on the 2013-14 roster), it becomes difficult to analyze how much of an improvement the Triangle has had on the Knicks aggregate year-over-year performance. To counter this, I looked for any improvements in what I like to call “controllable offensive statistics” for the players on the Knicks roster compared to their performances in seasons past.

I define “controllable offensive statistics” as those that are:

(a) Related to the offense scheme itself (so not free throw percentage, which is not related to the offensive scheme)

(b) Highly controllable by an individual (meaning that a player has a high percentage of control over the outcome, such as individual shooting percentage, and as opposed to assists – which involve a teammate being able to make a shot).

(c) Based on rates, not based on raw numbers (due to variability in volume of minutes/usage per player, that are not necessarily in the players’ control)

In terms of the statistics you can find on Basketball-Reference or the NBA’s stats site, I believe these “controllable offensive statistics” to be the following:

•       Two-point field goal percentage
•       Three-point field goal percentage
•       Free-throw rate (Free-throw attempts per field-goal attempt)
•       Turnover Rate (turnovers per 100 possessions)
•       Offensive Rebounding Rate (offensive rebounds per offensive rebounding opportunities)

I scraped Basketball-Reference to gather the stats for every current Knicks player over their past three seasons (three seasons in order to get a recent baseline) regardless of which team they played for, and compared that data to those player’s statistics during the 2014-15 (current) season.

*If player played less than three seasons, his statistics for the seasons he did play are included here

** I excluded Travis Wear and Cleanthony Early, who are both rookies thus had no NBA statistics prior to 2014-15

** and * – Excludes players on the Knicks roster who have not yet played thus far (Andrea Bargnani)

In four of the five categories the Knicks players on aggregate are performing worse than the prior year. From a statistical standpoint, however, none of the results are “significant” in a sense that the positive or negative deltas are more attributed to chance than as a result of the Triangle Offense. Thus it can be somewhat safely stated that the triangle, as is being run at present, has had a neutral impact on the controllable offensive statistics of the players on its roster.

Question 2: Is the Triangle Offense maximizing its players’ strengths and minimizing its players weaknesses?

Another interesting metric I pulled out of this data set is that the percentage of three-point attempts as a percentage of total field goals for this group had a percent decrease of 12.8% (from 28.23% to 24.62%). Lots of pundits have pointed out that the current team’s percentage is too low (here’s a good article on this). However, that data point is just a piece of information, and in order to properly analyze it one needs to take into account, among other factors (a) how well the team shoots from 3 pt range and (b) how good the team is at drawing fouls (for example, as of 12/7 the Grizzlies are 28th league with 18.2% of field goals from 3-pt range, yet are eighth overall in offensive rating).

I built a model which attempts to project scoring (irrespective of turnover rates and offensive rebounding rates) for teams per 100 scoring opportunities (a scoring opportunity could be a shot that results in a foul, a foul on a made shot, a made shot, a missed shot) given the makeup of their roster in terms of shooting percentages from two-points and three-point range, free-throw shooting rates and free-throw attempt rates. My hypothesis was that perhaps for some teams, those that are really good at drawing fouls and free-throw shooting and perhaps relatively weak at three-point shooting, it might be more beneficial to try scoring less from beyond the arc. And, in fact, for 18 teams, this was the case. But the Knicks were not one of those teams – in fact, given their roster make-up, the Knicks stand to gain the most from shooting a high percentage of three-pointers!

As it relates to this, one player in particular who seems to be totally flummoxed by his role in this offense is everyone’s favorite lightning-rod, J.R. Smith. As you can see in the chart below, his shot locations have changed considerably this season (labels are shooting percentages)

It’s interesting to see that while his shooting percentage has increased by nearly 10% on pull-up two-pointers (and he’s taking a greater percentage of them relative to other shots), his shooting percentages have plummeted on not only any type of shot from three-point range, but also on all catch and shoot opportunities. Perhaps it is a mental lapse in terms of his inability to adjust to the types of shots he is expected to take in his new role. This may be one personnel issue the Knicks look into as they continue to put the pieces in place to execute this offense.

Coaching

Assessing the performance of a coach in the NBA is very difficult because so much of a coach’s ability to win games is tied to his personnel – the best tactician likely couldn’t win mush with the current Philadelphia 76ers roster, and a poor tactician likely would have still won a lot with the Jordan-era Bulls.

A lot of qualities of good coaching are rooted in intangibles that are not necessarily measurable (does he have control of his locker room, are his players well prepared in terms of scouting reports, etc.) Ultimately, when one looks back on history, coaches are judged in terms of championships and wins. Thus, in my mind, a rookie head coach should strive to not only win as many games as possible, even if it might not be many (likely a new coach is in place due to a poor output from the prior year, which could be due to poor personnel), but also to try outperform the guy who was manning the helm before him.

For this reason, I first put Fisher’s record as well as the differential between his team’s prior year record and his current record up against those of the first-time head coaches since 2000-01 (looking at coaches who started at the beginning of a season rather than taking over mid-way through a season). That group consists of 42 coaches including this season’s rookies.

And, to add insult to injury, the Knicks have had the second easiest strength of schedule in terms of opponents winning percentage thus far this season.

Looking at Fisher’s lineup combinations reveal some interesting tidbits about his coaching strategies thus far:

Tidbit 1: Out of all NBA teams, the Knicks have the fewest minutes per game played by their most used lineup (lineups must have a minimum of five games played)

When I first ran this query, the results were so extreme I thought there was an error. The most used Knicks lineup in terms of minutes per game has only played 36 minutes / 6 games = 6 minutes per game thus far this season (that lineup is Acy, Anthony, Dalmebert, Calderon, Shumpert). It is not entirely surprising to me that some of the lower performing teams in this league (MIN, NYK, PHI, MIL) are at the bottom of this list, since these are likely the teams that are using lots of trial and error in lineup combinations to find one that can give them the best chance to win. And the fact that some of the better performing teams in the NBA appear near the bottom of this list are likely due to injuries to key players (HOU) or teams with exceptionally strong rotations (SAS). That said, the longer this trend keeps up, the less time Fisher’s lineups have to gel, which, in my opinion, will adversely impact the team’s performance.

Tidbit 2: Knicks use a high percentage of their lower performing lineups relative to winning teams

This was something I have been curious to investigate for a while. Because this data was not easy to gather, I was not able to do an analysis for every team – so I did it for several winning teams, and the Knicks. I looked at the top 24 lineups in terms of minutes played, and grouped those lineups into three buckets (top 8, middle 8, bottom 8) in terms of +/- per minute. What I found was that the Knicks allocate a higher portion of minutes to the “bottom 8” bucket than their winning counterparts.

While a larger and more thorough examination of this is needed, when you take this together with Tidbit 1, it appears that Fisher needs to (a) keep track of which lineups are doing better over an extended period of time and (b) make sure he is giving those lineups adequate minutes to gel. I think what is especially concerning to me is given how many close games the Knicks have played (league leaders in games decided by five or fewer points with nine, they have won two of those), these lineup strategies could be the difference in a win versus a loss if strategized correctly.

Carmelo Anthony

I do not believe the Knicks re-signed Carmelo Anthony to the contract they did because they felt he was going to lead them to the playoffs this year, or even next year. I believe the rationale was some combination of the following:

1) With Anthony, they would not be so bad as to drive away fans

Without Anthony, this roster would be horrendous, and the Knicks likely hoped that having Anthony on the team would ensure that this season would not be a calamity (so much for that). As a team that stands to lose a ton of money if fans are not coming to the games, and as a team with a new neighbor one borough over, the Knicks needed to make sure they were a step above mediocre.

Statistically speaking, if this is true, the Knicks perhaps got what they paid for. This chart may be a bit difficult to read, but it is meant to show the difference between the “net rating” (point differential per 100 possessions) of players when they are on the court versus when they are off the court (a net of net, if you will). I also split up that rating into an offensive segment and a defensive segment.

Here are some notes from this chart:

• The Knicks are 9.0 points better per 100 possessions when Melo is in the game (13.9 points better offensively, 4.9 points worse defensively).
• The 9.0 is third highest on the team behind Travis Wear and Tim Hardaway Jr.
• The offensive impact is the highest on the team. The next closest is Amare at less than half the impact of Melo at 6.8 points per 100 possessions
• A good player comparison outside of the Knicks for Anthony here is Joe Johnson (9.3 points better offensively when in game, 3.2 points worse defensively when in game)
• The biggest difference between forwards who are earning similar paychecks (LeBron, Rudy Gay) – and Melo is that those players have much better defensive differentials than Melo
• The Cavs give up 8.3 fewer points per 100 possessions when LeBron is on the court, Kings give up 8.4 fewer points per 100 possessions when Gay is on the court. This as opposed to the Knicks who give up 4.9 more points per 100 possessions when Melo is on the court.

2) He’s the face of the franchise:

Whether a Knicks poster at a bar, the video billboard above MSG, or the jerseys that you see out and about in Manhattan – it’s all Carmelo Anthony, with a smidge of Amar’e. The fact that my girlfriend knows who Carmelo Anthony is makes the positive marketing impact of his presence statistically significant. Losing Melo would hurt the Knicks brand tremendously in NYC, even if, as a team, they are not doing well.

To try to quantify this, I took to Twitter. As you can see in the chart below, Melo is one of 27 players in the NBA who have more followers on Twitter than their entire team has followers. Here are some other notes

• Melo has 5.6 times as many followers as the next closest player on the Knicks (Amar’e Stoudemire)
• Melo has twice as many followers as the rest of the Knicks combined

NBA Players with More Twitter Followers than their Respective Teams

Knicks Roster Twitter Followers

Improvement is a gradual process with many short, mid and long term components.

Short Term:

If it has to start somewhere, I vote for Fisher to begin practicing triangle sets, if they are glued to the triangle, that can result in more three point attempts. With this particular roster, as it is designed, I believe this is the most effective strategy. This is a much easier fix than teaching players how to hit a mid-range jump shot (which seems ridiculous as I read that last part back to myself).

Short to Mid Term:

From there, I would encourage Fisher to begin really studying his lineups in an attempt to understand what is working and what is not working from a sheer production perspective.  A good offensive system should cater to its personnel, not the other way around. If there are certain lineups that Fisher is not playing because they are not running the triangle well, but that do other things well, then determine if this is really the right place and time to be teaching this offense. Maybe it is – this season will very likely not result in a playoff berth, so perhaps it is a good period for sandbox development. But regardless, there should be some strategy around this.

Mid to Long Term

The Knicks in this coming offseason need to sign a player who can at the very least guarantee the team about eight to ten extra wins (think LaMarcus Aldridge, Kawhi Leonard, or Marc Gasol). This is critical or the team will continue to be mired in this slump with Melo helping the team stay afloat but not getting past the 30 win mark.

Long Term

Finally, and this is much longer term (think four years or so), but the Knicks need some homegrown talent. The last player the Knicks drafted that made an All-Star team in a Knicks uniform was David Lee in 2009-10, and prior to that, Patrick Ewing. For a team that is likely going to be in the lottery this year and next, it is important to ramp up on scouting and draft a guy or guys who will hopefully be enough of a basketball presence to be the face of Knicks basketball once Melo retires. While it would be great to sign a free agent of Kevin Durant’s caliber, I think it’s unrealistic at this point. I’m working on more research which preliminarily shows that teams are much more likely to become a contender through the draft than free agency.

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