What Happened to Lofty Goals for New York Knicks Defense?
The first day of New York Knicks training camp was all about defense, but rebounding must not have been part of the lesson. Avoiding fouls and securing the perimeter might also have been overlooked.
The Knicks are 15th in opponents' points per game—not dreadful but not good enough, as their miserable 4-20 record shows.
I know what you’re thinking: They never should have traded Tyson Chandler. The 7'1" center and 2012 Defensive Player of the Year should be protecting the rim for New York instead of the Dallas Mavericks.
Yet consider this. The Knicks, without Chandler in the frontcourt, are one of the best teams in the league at protecting the paint. They are in the league's top five in opponents' field goals made in the restricted area (14.6) and in the rest of the paint (4.0). For the first half of Tuesday's game against the New Orleans Pelicans they even held MVP candidate Anthony Davis to only one field goal.
The trouble is, their admirable zeal for interior D is causing problems elsewhere.
Hacking and Whacking
New York is a rough town, and the New York Knicks are rough on opponents driving the lane. So much so that they are called for 23.8 fouls per game (tied for third-most in the league). They take away slam dunks but give away free throws.
And that's deadly. Nothing has hurt the Knicks more than the free-throw-attempt disparity. They don't draw enough fouls and commit too many. If they had simply equaled their opponents’ scoring at the line, 10 of those 20 losses would have been wins.
Imagine that. The record would be 14-10 instead of 4-20, and they'd be right below the Chicago Bulls in the standings.
Wide-Open Perimeter
The further from the bucket, the worse the defense gets. They are 25th in the league at opponent's three-pointers made (8.5 per game).
The guards are quick to provide help defense on the interior, dropping off their men to help clog up the paint. However, they drop off so far that they leave a man wide-open behind the arc and have no chance of getting back to him in time.
On other occasions it seems they simply aren't reading the scouting report. They give strong outside shooters plenty of breathing space to leisurely rain down triples.
Plus, the team as a whole is not good at fighting over screens. With the exception of 5'11" sophomore Shane Larkin, the Knicks guards usually drop below the screen, letting their men get a step ahead and an open look.
These are problems for the Knicks backcourt to solve (and have nothing to do with Chandler).
Defensive Rebounds, Or Lack Thereof
Defensive rebounds have been a problem for the Knickerbockers all season. At times they could rightly be criticized for being a bit prissy, breezily letting their opponents grab those boards. Yet recently the Knicks—Amar'e Stoudemire in particular—have been far more rough-and-tumble, scrambling and scrabbling for rebounds.
Unfortunately, they're sometimes so ravenous that everyone in blue and orange crowds around the bucket, where they are in a great position to grab missed lay-ups and short-range shots but in lousy position to grab a missed long-range jumper. When a long ball bounces off the rim, it caroms further away, sometimes over the heads of all those Knicks hugging the restricted area.
That's just physics, which I was supposed to learn in Mr. Campbell’s 12th-grade class but can now learn at Court Vision Analytics. The point is, someone with "New York" on his jersey needs to be eight feet away from the basket to have a chance to catch the rebounds on all those three-point attempts they're giving up.
Missing D-bounds causes double damage. Not only do the Knicks give the opposition a second chance to score, but they lose a possession themselves. And for the Knicks, time of possession is a big deal, because their shot attempts generally take a while to set up. Ball movement may improve shooting accuracy, but it eats up seconds.
The Good News, Such As It Is
The good news is that the Knicks are improving on these fronts.
Against the Portland Trail Blazers, the best rebounding team in the league, the Knicks held their own, grabbing 33 D-bounds to the Blazers' 28.
They're squeezing the perimeter a bit more. When I wrote about this two weeks ago, they were letting opponents make 9.7 three-pointers per game; they've reduced that average to 8.5.
Drawing and committing fouls, I'm afraid, continue to be just as dreadful as ever.
Overall, the Knicks are so far away...and yet so close. Eight of those games were lost by five points or less. Five of them lost by three or less. If they'd just stopped one more second-chance three-pointer or committed one fewer foul in every game, their record would be drastically different.
Now if the Knicks would just take physics lessons after shooting drills and buy really nice presents for the refs this holiday season, the record in 2015 will look much better.
All stats are from NBA.com/stats. Follow Sara Peters on Twitter @3FromThe7.
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