Banner by Max Mao
Nick lost the iron defense
Nick coach Tom Thibodeau announced the adjustment of Nick’s rotation after the 11/29 team practice, and decided to replace Kemba Walker with Alex Burk as the starting ball. Nick had 11 wins and 9 losses before 11/29 this season. Kemba lost three straight after falling out of the rotation, and currently has 11 wins and 12 losses. Although this year’s offensive efficiency has improved from last year’s ranking from 24th to 13th in the league, the defense has dropped from 4th to 16th in the league last year.
Although K. Walker’s field goal percentage is good this season, FG% 42.9, three-point percentage 41.3% or even a career high, but averaged 24.5 minutes, 11.7 assists and 3.1 times, Usage 22.7% is a career low. From Thibodeau’s media speech, it can be found that he attaches great importance to the +/- numbers of individuals or combinations on the court. When K. Walkerr was on the court, the opponent scored 118.1 points for every 100 possessions. The Knicks scored 104.9 points, which was a negative 13.2 points gap. When K. Walker was not on the court, the Knicks allowed their opponents to win. With 103.1 points, he scored 114.6 points, 11.5 points more than his opponent. The 24.7 points gap caused by the off-court has made K. Walker the bottom 1% of the league on the number of on/off +/-.
When Thibodeau explained this decision to reporters, he also explained that it was not just because of K. Walker’s poor performance, but also because of two other reasons. The first is that he felt that the height of the first five and the defensive range required. It’s taller and wider, so this is why the 6-foot-6 Alex Burk was drawn to the starter instead of D. Rose or Immanuel Quickley. Another reason is that Thibodeau felt that the three-back (Walker, Rose, and Quickley) lineup would not Success (look at the pioneers), because K. Walker can’t even play as a substitute because he can’t hold anyone in this way. Both of these explanations hold true in theory. Alex Burk has been in the Nick’s rotation since last year and is helpful to the team on both offensive and defensive ends. Although Thibodeau has never put a third guard on the court this season, the defensive height disadvantage brought by the third guard on the court is in line with general basketball common sense. Nick’s defensive efficiency dropped from fourth in the league at 108.4 last year to 16th in the league at 109.5 this year. Is it really just K. Walker who is not on the court?
“All of you here are…”
If we look at Table 1, we can find that although K. Walker’s on-court and off-court positive and negative values are indeed the worst for the Nickelodeon (or even the worst in the league), the Nick’s starting five (K. Walker, Evan Fournier, RJ Barrett, Julius Randle and Mitchell Robinson performed very poorly! Moreover, all five players performed poorly on both offensive and defensive ends at the same time, and none of the starting points were positive. This means that in fact, the Knicks’ starting combination is inherently problematic, and it may also be that other starting players except K. Walker are in poor condition this season. If you look at the five-man lineup, the Knicks’ best lineup is actually D. Rose, I. Quickley, A. Burk, O. Toppin and T. Gibson, none of the original starters (Table 2). The offensive efficiency of this bench lineup is 115.8 points, ranking in the top 30% of the league, and defense is 85.4, ranking in the top 1% of the league! Add up to win the opponent by 30.4 points and rank 5% in the league. And these five bench players plus N. Noel, who is also a bench, are Nick’s six positive and negative players, and none of them started. So what’s wrong with the Nick’s starting lineup? And is the crux of the problem really K. Walker? Let’s try to observe from the game clip.
K. Walker’s height is too short and the defense is not hard enough to be a real problem. From the following video (Video 1), you can see that K. Walker did not quickly post back to C. Paul after bypassing D. Ayton’s pick. Instead, M. Robinson was replaced by C. Paul. K. Walker tried to get the roll man Ayton behind him. However, because of the huge difference in height, K. Walker did not have the physical strength and explosive power to fight Ayton. C. Paul easily hoisted Ayton to the basket and scored two points. But if compared with last year’s Nick, a very important strategy for Nick’s defense of the pick and roll last year was “help the helper”, which means that in this play, RJ Berrett, who is on the same side of the bottom line as Ayton, should help defend D in the penalty area earlier. Ayton then directly instructed K. Walker, who was already a step slower to bypass the pick, to change to his original D. Booker. Of course, this is a simulated situation, and it is also a matter of paper. There are still many restrictions to achieve in the game. For example, if K. Walker wants to defend D. Booker outside the penalty area, he may have to bypass D. Ayton again. It is also possible that RJ Berrett received an instruction to not let Booker open his hand, so he went out early at the last minute to prevent C. Paul from passing it on to D. Booker.
