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alphaorange · 07-01-2007, 11:15 AM

While he has never been accused of being a follower, he is bucking a league wide trend in acquiring Zach Randolph. Most teams are moving toward more versatile and more athletic teams, trying to get up and down the court finding easier shots, and also pleasing the fans with the high energy offense. GM Thomas has gone the other way. He has gotten bulkier, slower, and also more powerful, and will depend on a aging point guard to orchestrate the few breaks that are likely to come. There is no question the Knicks will be perhaps the most dangerous team in the paint. However,there is also no question that the 4 and 5 will be among the slowest and poorest to defend the quicker front courts. This is the year we find out if Thomas is as smart as he says he is, or that he is not so bright in assembling a team. Get ready for the bad boyz II.

**USSKittyHawk** · 07-01-2007, 04:25 PM

Hi Dog, this is what Isiah had to say about the possible defensive problems this team may face.

Quote:

Though the Knicks could field five starters capable of scoring 30 points in a game, defense is a big concern, especially with a frontline of Eddy Curry and Randolph, who are not intimidators or shot-blockers.
However, Thomas said he's not concerned with interior defense. "We do a good job of defending the paint," Thomas said. "We were not as good defending the 3-point line. We will be better at that. I take the blame."

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07012007...arc_berman.htm

alphaorange · 07-01-2007, 04:33 PM

He must have been watching different games than I was. Sure, they were bad on the perimeter but they were even worse when they were supposed to be helping. I guess he knows there won't be much help coming so the outside guys better tighten up. I see us as a bottom 5 team in defensive efficiency.

**Da Grinch** · 07-01-2007, 07:21 PM

I blame the guards more for the defensive woes, they allow the opposing offenses to penetrate and break down the defenses and the group on the interior (lee , frye and curry) are weak help defenders ...those 3 do a much better job on their own men than helping on others .

and with the league's growing trend of perimter based offense its just more important now to be good defensively on the perimeter.

the guards get in , then the whole defense collapses and there are open 3's when the ball is kicked out.

marbury JC Qrich and co. are not really very good at doubling the post , not that they do it much anyway, Curry only gets double team help on 2 players (shaq and Yao) its really the PF spot that the team generally doubles on , and it wasn't nearly as much as teams double curry.

the lack of D on P & R's is the main culprit of the defense last season.

I dont think quickness is even all that important in the post , the teams Zeke won titles with started plodders James edwards and lambeer, curry and randolph are much quicker than they were...but they have to put in the effort to rotate when needed and get some boards to make it work.

to be a successful power team you have to be able to punish every team , not just some and now they finally have the players to do that with the ability to punish teams at all spots on the floor . they could be starting Curry zach randolph , jeffries Q, and marbury ...in physical strength and size there are very few teams that can match that and then they can come with energy, size and quickness off the bench with JC , Lee, Balkman and Collins....as a power team there is real potential there ....on the boards the knicks should crush virtually every1....its not that same points but its a good start.

alphaorange · 07-02-2007, 05:06 AM

that starting line up. It could happen, but if it does, they will be absolutely scorched on defense. I still believe they will simply have to be that much better on offense than their opponents. Going to be a boring offense too. Sloooowwww pace.

**Da Grinch** · 07-03-2007, 03:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alphaorange

that starting line up. It could happen, but if it does, they will be absolutely scorched on defense. I still believe they will simply have to be that much better on offense than their opponents. Going to be a boring offense too. Sloooowwww pace.

slow isn't always bad .

the 5 sowest paced teams were , dallas(28) . miami(26), detriot(30), spurs(27) & blazers(29).

generally teams are slow paced for 3 reasons ...1.they cant score , 2.they are a low post team or 3. their game plan is based on exausting the other team's patience in a well scripted offense...the knicks will fall under reason 2

and with the exception of the blazers those 5 teams were ranked in the top 8 on defense, if they play well it wont be boring , good basketball is rarely boring ...at least to me.

i personally hope jeffries starts instead of crawford if he is productive but if not , its not really a problem if JC starts because of his scoring and passing ability....either way jamal is going to get his minutes just like lee.

alphaorange · 07-03-2007, 05:20 PM

Please tell me how you defined slow pace. Do you mean scoring? The type of offense? I tend to think that very good defensive teams will score less because they will make the opponent use more time indicating less possessions and less shot opportunities. I am referring to an offense that is very deliberate in its pace. I'm not sure the Pistons nor Dallas fall into that category. Miami does WITH Shaq. Not so much without him. I also think SA is a bad example. They try to get out and run but are equally comfortable in the half court set. My opinion is that the Knicks will not make much of an effort to play at a fast offensive pace, preferring to pound it inside as much as they can. I think it will be effective but boring.

**Da Grinch** · 07-03-2007, 09:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alphaorange

Please tell me how you defined slow pace. Do you mean scoring? The type of offense? I tend to think that very good defensive teams will score less because they will make the opponent use more time indicating less possessions and less shot opportunities. I am referring to an offense that is very deliberate in its pace. I'm not sure the Pistons nor Dallas fall into that category. Miami does WITH Shaq. Not so much without him. I also think SA is a bad example. They try to get out and run but are equally comfortable in the half court set. My opinion is that the Knicks will not make much of an effort to play at a fast offensive pace, preferring to pound it inside as much as they can. I think it will be effective but boring.

slow paced teams are defined as the ones who dont have as many possessions as most others .

i took the stat right off of knickerblogger.net's stat page

http://www.knickerblogger.net/stats/2007/

there are plenty of ways to play god defense helped by pace , the pistons slow things down because their pg is excellent at all forms of tempo....most pg's aren't used to having to slow down off of their normal pace ....just like the suns like to quicken the pace to induce mistakes from players not able to handle that pace....most PG's like to play at their own pace.

the pistons in particular play that way because thats just the way Flip saunders likes to run his offense it was like that in minny and its like that in detriot ...it works very well for him...the moment he became coach they became one of the better offensive teams in the league.in his 2 seasons they ranked 8th and 6th in off. efficiency ....they were 17th when he became their coach....in his last 3 full seasons as head coach of the t'wolves his team ranked 5th overall each time.

avery has taken to a style to maximize his defense so he slowed the game down i agree, and when the pace was forcibly quickened on him against G.S. his team was eliminated...because his team was ill equipped to adapt despite being a fast paced team only a few years ago.

**Da Grinch** · 07-07-2007, 02:00 PM

http://www.knickerblogger.net/?p=556

Quote:

The Knicks are a poor defensive team (24th out of 30 in points allowed per 100 possessions in ‘07; 26th in ‘06 with more or less the same roster). Conventional wisdom has it that New York’s defensive ineptitude is due in large part to a porous interior defense, where Eddy Curry is a poor rebounder and shotblocker, David Lee is slow to rotate, and the departing Channing Frye was soft. Many worry that the interior D is only going to get worse with Zach Randolph and his poor defensive reputation joining Curry, portending an even weaker defensive squad in 2008.

With all that in mind, the following quote from Isiah Thomas regarding the Randolph trade is more than a little surprising, even though by and large it seems to have gone unnoticed:

Quote:

I think Zach is a prideful defender right now and I think, as a team, we’ll get better as a defensive unit. Again, because I think we’ll defend the three-point line better than last year. We don’t necessarily give up a tremendous amount of points in the paint. We usually outscore teams in the paint, but we got hurt last year defensively because of the three point line. I’m not necessarily looking to improve our interior defense as much as I am trying to improve the defense on the three-point line. We have to get better on the perimeter. That’s where we had problems last year.

No Knicks fan is going to argue that New York did a poor job defending the perimeter last season. But curiously, Thomas contends that the interior defense is not a key area of concern. But that can’t be right, can it?

This matter bears a closer investigation. Fortunately, we can get a pretty decent picture of how well the Knicks defend different regions of the court using data from 82games.com. (Not all of the stats mentioned here are directly available at 82games.com, but they can be calculated from stats available at 82games.com and basketball-reference.com.) In particular, we can look at how well the Knicks defend shots in the paint, 2 point jumpers, and 3 point attempts. There are a couple of different components we can look at for each portion of the court: how often the opponent tends to shoot there and how well the Knicks defend field goals attempted there. Combining those two components, we can figure out how many points the average Knicks opponent gets from each region of the court per 100 field goal attempts. These data for the 2006/07 season are plotted in the graph below in standardized form, in order to give a side-by-side comparison of how the Knicks’ performance on each measure stacked up against the rest of the league.

The data seems to support Thomas’s claim. It seems the Knicks actually did do a good job of defending the paint in ‘07. In actual fact, New York was not very good at preventing opponents from scoring once they got in position to get a shot up in the paint. However, this weakness was more than compensated for by the sheer paucity of field goal attempts in the paint by Knicks opponents. Only the Rockets allowed a lower proportion of inside field goal attempts than the Knicks. And in terms of points in the paint per 100 FGA, only the Rockets (3rd in overall defensive efficiency), Bulls (1st), Heat (8th), and Spurs (2nd) were stingier. That is impressive company.

Still, something doesn’t seem quite right. The 4 teams that allowed fewer points in the paint per 100 FGA were all strong defensive teams overall with strong shot blocking presences. Neither of those things can be said for the ‘07 Knicks. All 4 of those teams were also in the top 7 in eFG% allowed in the paint, which makes for a natural story: these teams were very good at defending field goal attempts in the paint, thus dissuading the opposition from attempting shots in the paint to begin with. Such a natural explanation for why the opposition attempted so few shots in the paint is not on offer for the Knicks, since they were among the worst at guarding inside shot attempts. This raises one’s suspicion that perhaps the Knicks allowed so few shot attempts in the paint for some reason other than good interior defense.

For instance, perhaps the Knicks just fouled the opposition a lot whenever they got near the rim. This would be poor defensive practice, but it would also have the effect of reducing inside FGA by the opponent. But this excessive fouling in the paint hypothesis doesn’t seem tenable. The Knicks were right at the league average in terms of opponent free throw attempts per 100 possessions, and at the center / power forward positions they accumulated only 0.4 fouls per 100 possessions more than the league average.

Another possibility is that the Knicks did a lot of switching, doubling, and rotating to try to compensate for their poor interior defensive eFG%. Such a tactic could have the effect of limiting interior FGA while leaving the perimeter vulnerable. But is this consistent with the data? The Knicks certainly got crushed from the 3 point line. But they actually did a pretty good job at defending the 2 point jumper, holding opponents’ eFG% below the league average and allowing them to shoot a higher proportion of 2 point jumpers than the league average. (Allowing more 2 point jumpers is actually a good defensive tactic on the whole, since they are the lowest percentage shots available on the court.)

It turns out that this pattern of data is consistent with league trends for the ‘07 season. For the league as a whole, defensive eFG% in the paint was significantly correlated with opponent 3 point attempts (r = .42, p = .02), opponent 3 point eFG% (r = .53, p = .003), and opponent points per 100 FGA coming from 3 pointers (r = .52, p = .003). In other words, the teams that defended the paint better also tended to defend the 3 point shot better. However, the correlations between interior defensive eFG% and 2 point jumper attempts and eFG% fail to reach statistical significance. That is, at least in ‘07, there was no relationship between how well teams defended the paint and how well they defended the 2 point jump shot.

On the other hand, on a league-wide scale, the proportion of interior FGA allowed was not correlated with interior defensive eFG% and also was not correlated with opponent % FGA and eFG% for 2 and 3 point jumpers. This does not fit so nicely with the hypothesis that the Knicks surrendered so few interior FGA because of a swarming, scrambling interior D that left the perimeter vulnerable. It is possible that the hypothesis is correct nonetheless, and the Knicks were just idiosyncratic in terms of how they defended the paint. But it is also possible that, for all their defensive weaknesses and warts, they were doing something right in order to limit opponent FGA in the paint. So although we may be strongly suspicious of the appearance that the Knicks defended the paint well in ‘07, the data presented here does not categorically rule out the possibility that there was some largely unrecognized but positive component to New York’s interior D that allowed them to limit interior FGA, and thus interior points per 100 FGA, by the opposition.

However, the idea that New York’s atrocious defense of the 3 pointer is linked to their poor interior defensive eFG% seems a bit stronger. Not only is this idea consistent with conventional basketball wisdom, but it is also consistent with league-wide statistical trends in the ‘07 season. The worse teams defended the paint in terms of interior defensive eFG%, the worse they tended to defend the 3 point shot. (Of course, correlation does not imply causation, but there are independent, observational reasons for believing that a poorer interior defense could lead to a poorer perimeter defense.) The Knicks had a poor interior defensive eFG% and were among the very worst at defending 3s. So if the Knicks are to shore up their defense of the 3 pointer, it could very well require a fortified interior defensive eFG% (e.g. by way of better shot blocking and quicker defensive rotations). If the team focuses on improving 3 point defense while largely neglecting to focus on bolstering the interior defense, as Thomas’s quote suggests, the returns on perimter D could be fundamentally limited.

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