New York Knicks: Flipped Script For Shumpert And Hardaway Jr.
It’s been tough to find many bright spots with the way things have been going for the New York Knicks the past two seasons.
This year, the greatly improved play of fourth-year guard Iman Shumpert has been the best takeaway for a team that through Saturday, Nov. 29, had played just .414 ball (41-58) since winning 54 games and its first Atlantic Division title in 19 years, two seasons ago.
One of the worst teams in the NBA’s Eastern Conference this year, the Knicks are looking toward the future. And while that primarily means adding some impactful free agent help for franchise forward Carmelo Anthony and starting point guard Jose Calderon next summer and beyond, the plan is also to build around New York’s young draftees.
Due to past draft misses, such commodities have been extremely rare for the Knicks. But with Shumpert’s emergence this year, New York seems to have something of value in the 24-year-old guard selected out of Georgia Tech with the 17th pick in the 2011 draft.
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Last season’s breakout rookie campaign for guard Tim Hardaway Jr. offered similar hope that if Shumpert could turn his career following a dismal 2013-14 season (which he certainly has, so far this year), the Knicks might have a pair of talented and productive home grown players which could be a significant part of their core, or at least a couple of nice chips which could be dangled for that aforementioned supplementary help to put alongside Anthony and Calderon.
However, putting a crimp in that design thus far, has been the regression of Hardaway’s development.
The 22-year-old former Michigan star, taken 24th overall by New York in 2013, showed the kind of promise that had Knicks fans buzzing last season in the same way they did after Shumpert’s impressive rookie year.
In fact, the prevailing view (rightfully so) was that Hardaway (as a rookie) was already well on his way to passing Shumpert in terms of the growth of each player, especially after Shumpert’s debilitating knee injury at the end of his first season, and friction with former head coach Mike Woodson last year, had set him back.
Since then, the script has flipped.
Shumpert is scoring 11.2 points per game (up drastically from the 6.8 and 6.7 points, he averaged in each of his two prior seasons). He’s also shooting a career high 44.5 percent from the field after declining each year, from 40.1 percent as a rookie, to 39.6 percent the following year, to just 37.8 percent last season. From three-point range, Shumpert is at 40 percent, back to where he was two years ago (40.2 percent) after he dipped to 33.3 percent last season.
He also scored in double figures in 10 of the Knicks’ first 17 games this season, something he did only 19 times in 74 games last season.
Meanwhile, prior to Shumpert excelling this year, Hardaway saw less time in preseason as he struggled to learn New York’s new triangle offense under rookie head coach Derek Fisher. And after earlier reports during the summer that Hardaway was improving on the poor defense he showed last season, he has been even worse in that regard this year.
While Hardaway’s offensive rating (the points per 100 possessions a player’s team scores while he’s on the court) has remained relatively constant (going from 103.3 last season to 103.5 this year), his already deficient defensive rating (the points per 100 possessions a player’s team allows while he’s on the floor) has declined since last year (from 109.2 a to 110.2 this season), yielding an even worse negative net rating this season (-6.7) than last season (-5.9).
Offensively, Hardaway has shown the ability to hit three-pointers and excel in transition. But he’s been too inconsistent. Since his defense is lacking, he doesn’t rebound (he had only 1.5 boards per game last year, and has just one per contest this season) and doesn’t hand out assists much (he recorded 0.8 per game last season and has only 1.2 per contest this year), he’s seeing the floor less (logging just 17.8 minutes per game this year after averaging 23.1 minutes last season) in Fisher’s system.
When he’s seen time this year, his production has gone down. Partly due to playing fewer minutes, Hardaway’s scoring average has dropped from 10.2 points per game last year to 8.9 this season. More troubling are his worsened shooting percentages between last year and this year. After shooting 42.8 percent overall and 36.3 percent from three-point range last year, Hardaway is shooting just 41 percent overall and 33.9 percent from behind the arc this season.
So far, that’s the opposite trend of what the Knicks had hoped for with Hardaway, who they thought could build off of a largely solid first year in the league.
It’s ironic that with Hardaway regressing and Shumpert improving greatly, it was Shumpert who was recently told to wait on a contract extension while Hardaway’s third year option was picked up by New York days before the season began.
With Shumpert, that seems to have paid off for the Knicks thus far, as the previously underachieving guard has found his game while stating that he’s not worried about his contract status, and that he believes any contract negotiations will take care of themselves as long as he continues to have a good season.
Hardaway, however, is beginning to take the type of wrong turn that Shumpert did last season.
For New York to successfully execute its eventual plan of bringing in help for Anthony and Calderon, to mix with reliable young pieces (or to trade them for other valuable veterans), in building an Eastern Conference contender, the Knicks will need Hardaway and Shumpert to finally shine at the same time.