After assembling a group of stars past their primes (and one yet to enter into his), the New York Knicks are struggling. Just as NBA Twitter predicted.
It’s not often that people on Twitter are right about anything. For any bad take you can imagine, there’s somebody on Twitter who earnestly and honestly believes it. NBA Twitter, as great as it is, often becomes an echo chamber more focused on narrative than truth.
Examples of this are endless–after how many consecutive seasons should the Los Angeles Clippers have blown it up? I think I’ve lost count–but sometimes, gloriously, NBA Twitter gets it right.
The New York Knicks had a bizarre summer. They traded a bunch of spare parts, including starting center Robin Lopez, in exchange for Chicago’s former hometown hero, Derrick Rose.
Then, to fill that hole in the middle of their lineup, the Knicks spent $72 million on Joakim Noah. Tweets panned both moves–both players are injury prone and likely will never return to a level near their primes.
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Paired with Carmelo Anthony, the Knicks formed a big three that would’ve been unstoppable, had they assembled five years earlier. All three have played exactly to expectations placed on them.
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Anthony continues to score, but although he’s been red-hot from within the arc, his three-point percentage has actually dropped this year. Part of that could be due to his new fellow starters in Rose and Noah, neither of whom can stretch the floor.
Rose will never again be the explosive MVP he once was, but he too has been able to score. It’s tantalizing watching him at times, because there will be brief flashes of that player that emerge from the overall decline he’s faced.
Still, he’s shot 21.4 percent from three-point territory, the worst mark he’s posted since his rookie season. His 1.5 attempted threes per 36 minutes is the lowest he’s attempted since his sophomore year.
Noah, too, has been the player expected when the Knicks paid far too much for him.
He’s providing nothing on offense and scoring 4.5 points per game, but he’s still a more than capable rebounder and passer at the center position who has been one of the Knicks best defenders as per defensive box plus minus, defensive rating and wins added on defense.
All that has gone right for the Knicks, and they’re still at 5-6 after 11 games. Their schedule hasn’t been especially easy, but New York has stayed healthy and still been worse than .500 in the early part of the season.
The general consensus on this team was that they’d look good while at full health, but that injuries would ruin the Knicks.
They’ve been healthy–no member of the starting five has missed a game yet. The wins still aren’t rolling in.
The light at the end of the tunnel is still here, preventing Knicks fans from hating life as much as usual. Kristaps Porzingis has been excellent, hitting 40 percent of his threes and scoring more per 36 than last season.
His other statistics have taken a dive, mostly because the old guard in New York is around to do things on the basketball court now. That’s mostly OK, as long as he’s getting shots.
That’s where things get a bit cloudy. Melo leads the Knicks in bulk field goal attempts, and Porzingis is just ahead of Rose in field goal attempts per 36.
The problem there is that Porzingis is shooting 49.7 percent from the field, 40.0 percent from three-point range and 53.4 percent from within the arc, while Rose is making 44.2 percent of his shots, 21.4 percent of his threes and 46.5 percent of his twos.
Guards typically sport lower field goal percentages than big men, but Rose shouldn’t be shooting almost as often as Porzingis when he’s clearly worse in each area. That might be the one silver lining of the Knicks’ likely incoming injury problems–at least Porzingis will see his usage increase.
There are other fun pieces on this team. Kyle O’Quinn is averaging a double-double per 36 minutes, with a surprising 2.5 assists thrown in there as well.
Mindaugas Kuzminskas and Willy Hernangomez are both looking like real NBA players in limited minutes, and Justin Holiday and Courtney Lee are each hitting better than 41 percent of their threes.
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There’s the framework of a functioning, modern NBA team in New York. It’s clouded by relics of an era that’s ending quickly who refuse to go away (or to stop taking shots), but the Knicks can run out a lot of shooters and sport Porzingis as a legit stretch-5 in small lineups.
The problem is Noah and Carmelo are owed a combined $132,026,280 over the next three years, and Noah will make more than $19 million in the season after that, as per The Vertical.
If the Knicks get lucky, Melo could opt out of the last year of his deal, but New York has no way to avoid paying those two aside from trading them–and Melo holds a no-trade clause.
That’s a lot of cap space going to two players who aren’t top-tier any more. And as the New Orleans Pelicans are currently learning, you only get so long to provide top-tier talent with fellow players on that level.
Anthony Davis has no such teammates, and he’s racking up a ton of losses already this season despite being one of the NBA’s very best players.
There’s plenty of talk of the possibility of The Brow leaving New Orleans at the end of his deal, if not sooner, because of the lack of a team around him.
Karl-Anthony Towns and the Minnesota Timberwolves have no such problems floating around, because Towns has Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine, Ricky Rubio and Kris Dunn around him.
That’s a hell of a young core, and there’s little doubt the baby Wolves will be good someday soon.
The Knicks are somewhere between both camps. They’re not completely awful like New Orleans, but Porzingis has no young teammates on or near his level like Towns has in Minnesota.
When Noah, Rose and Melo move on (or can’t play anymore), New York will face one of those two situations.
If the Knicks continue to add and develop young talent, they could morph from a relic into a fresh, young playoff contender pretty quickly. If they keep taking shots at aging veterans and trying to win now, ironically it will cost them a few years on their rebuild.
It might cost them even more than that. As the Timberwolves learned through both Kevin Garnett and Kevin Love and the Pelicans are realizing quickly with Davis, one great big man is not enough to guarantee a winning team.
As good as Porzingis is, he can’t win alone. He needs help, in the form of teammates who aren’t nine years older than he is (the average difference in age between Porzingis and the triumvirate of Rose, Melo and Noah.)
The Knicks aren’t great now, just as NBA Twitter expected. Porzingis has continued to progress and grow, which is the reason he’s been a darling among the same group that mocked New York’s offseason.
Nobody knows, though, where the Knicks will go from here. There are two paths available for Jackson to steer the Knicks down. One contains runs at players like Andre Iguodala, Deron Williams, and current Knick Rose.
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The other involves shedding old players with big contracts in favor of gambles on young players. Only time will tell which path the Knicks follow, but for Porzingis’ sake hopefully no 30-year-old players get inked to max deals with New York this coming summer.