![]() ![]() This is the brain-knotting crux of attempting to evaluate this Knicks season: they’re not only experiencing make-and-miss volatility within this campaign, but experiencing it in the mountainous shadow of a season where they were on the exact opposite side of the same volatile coin. This perception would take an even bigger hit when factoring last season’s ShotQuality expected record of 29-48, with a by-far league-worst drop in actual to expected win percentage of -16.88%. This doesn’t sound like much, and underscores the fine margins in the sardine-tin middle of the suddenly superior Eastern Conference, but would likely flip the perception of this season as some unequivocal failure on its head. ShotQuality has the Knicks’ expected record this season at 21-19, giving them a two game bump on reality, which would be good for seventh place in the East. Here’s the Knicks’ regression analysis from this season: This year, opponents are shooting more in line with what SQ’s model would expect, which has contributed to the defensive drop-off so far this season, but the big difference can be seen offensively, where the Knicks are underperforming their expected percentages from all five spots on the floor. The Knicks have also gone from 24th to 12th in combined rim and 3-point shot frequency on offense, showing a significant evolution from some of their analytically antiquated shot profiles of the past, by eliminating a lot of midrange looks, and shooting more threes generally, but mostly off the bounce.” Last year, a major reason for them being 25th was because opponents shot 3% lower than expected on 3-point looks. Last year in net ShotQuality, the Knicks ranked 25th in the NBA, and this year they’re 14th. “The Knicks currently rank 16th in offensive shot quality and 13th in defensive shot quality, which, despite the drop-off in record, is actually a significant improvement on last season. I asked Simon, the founder of ShotQuality, how his metric evaluates the Knicks performance so far this season: ShotQuality is a metric that evaluates a teams performance according to the expected value of each shot, a value that is calculated using over 90 variables - including who’s shooting and where they’re shooting from, who’s defending and how far they are from contesting the shot, how long was left on the shot clock, the chance of an offensive rebound, and many, many more - to capture a picture of the true quality of every shot a picture that prioritizes process over the volatility of make or miss results. This season, it sure feels like they’ve missed a lot of these good-process, bad-result type shots, and that feeling may have some legs. After one kick and two swings, there are no more rotating defenders, and one of the good guys has time to check the wind twice before launching a shot that may as well be a warmup. The same split second sequence is repeated: scramble, rotate, swing. Defenders scramble and rotate to challenge the shot and the ball is swung to another open Knick. Stop me if you’ve felt the surge of primal injustice that accompanies this common offensive sequence watching the 19-21 New York Knicks this season.Ī player wearing blue and orange leverages a hard-earned half-court slither of an advantage and breaks through the defenses perimeter lines, they get their toes in the paint, sense the human-squash of a collapsing defense, and flick over the first domino, kicking the ball out to an open shooter. The bulk of the iceberg’s useful mass is in the process of the shot, not the result. Whether a shot is made or missed is the exact pinpoint tip of an iceberg of information, no more than the box score result of a possession that involved a shot, but the result alone is fickle justification for labeling the look a good or bad one. This volatile unknown is the nectar of sports’ essential draw, but it can also bend the truth, that over the course of a single game or even a whole season - the ball does, sometimes, lie. It’s a truism that is testament to the fundamental appeal of not knowing what will happen in any given game, where great shots can rim out and terrible shots can drop where Ricky Rubio can shoot like Steph Curry and Steph Curry can shoot like Brad Wanamaker where anyone can, on any random Wednesday night, beat anyone. The NBA is, and always has been, a “make or miss” league. ![]()
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