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No. 14: New York Knicks
Last Season: 17-65
15th place in East; missed playoffs
Two years ago, the Knicks were coming off their most successful regular season in 16 years. They had the league's sixth-best point differential and a third-ranked offense that, relative to the league's offensive efficiency, was the best in franchise history. The defense wasn't great, but at least it finished possessions well and created turnovers to feed the efficiency on the other end. New York took a step back the next season and in an effort to avoid sinking into the quicksand of mediocrity, owner James Dolan gave NBA legend and Knicks icon Phil Jackson a $60 million contract to restore New York to the heights it enjoyed during Jackson's playing career.
Given the Knicks' championship drought of four decades and counting, how could hiring a guy with 13 championship rings be a bad idea? We don't yet know that it was, but at least in terms of wins and losses, last season did not go well. That is unless you believe that the path to the top of the NBA begins at the bottom. If you do, then last season was a rousing success. Featuring a rookie lead executive (Jackson), a rookie head coach (Derek Fisher) and an injury-riddled franchise player just beginning the downward arc of his career (Carmelo Anthony), the Knicks free-fell to the league basement, and landed with a resounding thump: Their 65 losses were a franchise record. During one stretch, New York dropped 34 of 37 games.
After hitting rock bottom, Jackson set about retooling the roster with a mix of second- and third-tier overachievers, and a well-noted underachiever with immense raw ability. With most of the roster Jackson inherited turned over, beyond Anthony, this is his first real hand-picked roster in New York. Has he charted a course that can return the Knicks to their Nixon-era heights?
Under Fisher, Jackson's beloved triangle offense limped to a No. 29 finish in offensive efficiency, as the Knicks were a whopping 12.5 points per 100 possessions worse than they were in the record-setting 2012-13 season. Anthony, in the first year of his new five-year, $129 million contract, struggled at times with the new system, but mostly it was the bad knee that held him down. Anthony's true shooting percentage was down 30 points, but his usage, turnover, and foul-drawing rates were similar to their levels in Mike Woodson's iso-heavy offense. He simply didn't shoot as well, with above-the-break 3s and free throws being the primary areas of decline. Luckily, those are also areas prime for regression, if Anthony can get healthy.
Ultimately Anthony called it a season at the All-Star break and played just 40 games. He watched as his teammates lost game after game but, at the same time, maximized New York's ping-pong ball count for lottery night. While New York lacked the offensive creators and shooters to succeed in any system, the will to execute the triangle was at least present in terms of ball movement. New York's assist percentage ranked ninth in the league, up from 27th the season before. Only the Jazz made more total passes, according to SportVu. It's a start.
In many respects, the Knicks have just as far to go on the defensive end. Last year's defense was ranked 28th, continuing an annual descent towards the league's cellar. New York didn't force as many turnovers but at least remained above the league average in that respect. However, the Knicks ranked in the bottom five in each of the other four factors on the defensive end. New York did uncover one defensive asset by bringing in combo guard Langston Galloway from the D-League.
The defensive struggles might have been the biggest indictment of Fisher in his first season as a coach. To be fair, he had to deal with a roster in flux, as Jackson began the tear-down process before the season and continued it all through the campaign. Iman Shumpert, Samuel Dalembert, Amar'e Stoudemire, J.R. Smith and Pablo Prigioni were among the Knicks to bid the Big Apple farewell during the season.
Even Jackson's detour into tear-down mode didn't go exactly according to plan. Though only Minnesota lost more games than the Knicks, New York ended up with the No. 4 pick and Latvian big man Kristaps Porzingis on draft night. The impossibly long and skilled Porzingis may be a terrific prospect, but in June he was an utter dark horse to the mainstream patrons of the Barclays Center, where the draft was held, and so Porzingis' selection was booed. Luckily he seems fairly unflappable and it shouldn't take long to win over the fans if he lives up to the expectations of the scouts.
In free agency, despite having plenty of cap space to sign a leading free agent like LaMarcus Aldridge or Marc Gasol, Jackson struck out in the top tier of the marketplace. Even big market teams these days face the Catch-22 problem of turning around a franchise. You've got to have cap space to land a marquee free agent. But money and market aren't enough -- you have to have a winning foundation as well. Winning foundations, of course, eat up the cap space you need to sign marquee free agents.
Jackson veered into Plan B in free agency and ended up signing or retaining a cluster of over-achieving types long on work ethic and short on production. Arron Afflalo has been a below-replacement performer of late, but he's got a midrange game well suited for the Triangle and had solid free-agent value as Anthony's sidekick. Derrick Williams doesn't fit the overachiever description of Jackson's other signees, quite the opposite, but he at least carries with him the upside of a former top-of-the-lottery pick trying to prove that he's not a bust. Rookie Jerian Grant, along with hard-scrapping veterans Lou Amundson and Lance Thomas and new center Robin Lopez, should give Fisher a better set of defenders with which to work.
Kyle O'Quinn could start at the 4 and, along with Kevin Seraphin, should bring some of the offense the triangle likes to extract from big men. Sasha Vujacic, a former key reserve under Jackson with the Lakers and a teammate of Fisher's, was imported from a three-year stint overseas to provide spot-up shooting and to spread his knowledge of the offense.
Phil Jackson's 13 rings didn't help the Knicks land any big stars in free agency. But two first-round draft picks (Kristaps Porzingis and Jerian Grant) and five offseason signings (Robin Lopez, Arron Afflalo, Kyle O'Quinn, Derrick Williams, Kevin Seraphin) left star forward Carmelo Anthony with a sense of optimism heading into the season.
"Honestly, I thought we did a great job just as far as putting the pieces that we need to put together," Anthony said. "We didn't get DeAndre [Jordan], we didn't get LaMarcus [Aldridge] and Greg Monroe, but [Robin] Lopez is a great addition. Arron Afflalo, I played with him a long time in Denver. [Kyle] O'Quinn is a great pickup; I think guys will like him. He's a big guy, power forward. Derrick Williams, we're going to get him right. He seemed focused. And then rookies, KP [Porzingis], I had him with me working out at my gym [in the summer]. We're just trying to start this thing off right." -- Ian Begley
Projected Real Plus-Minus for starters
Jose Calderon, PG: -3.7
Arron Afflalo, SG: -2.9
Carmelo Anthony, SF: +3.4
Kyle O'Quinn, PF: +0.5
Robin Lopez, C: +1.5
Scouting reports on every player on the Knicks
Using shot data from 2014-15 and projected starters, Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry ranks each team's offensive efficiency based on square footage.
According to Tweet Master Phil Jackson, the 3-point shot is not the end-all, be-all of basketball. But the Knicks' below-average shooting from 3 (projected 34.7 percent this season) was improved with the addition of Afflalo, a career 38.5 percent marksman.
Jackson's triangle symphony was last in paint points per game (bad!) last season and first in mid-range scoring rate (worse!). Thankfully, newcomers Robin Lopez and Derrick Williams take almost 50 percent of their shots from inside five feet.
All About The Space: 16th (423 square feet of above-average offense)
To identify players who stretch offenses the most, ESPN Stats & Information created the Kyle Korver Effect -- a metric on a 1-100 scale, factoring in 3PT%, 3-point attempt rate (percentage of total shots that come from 3-point range) and influence on teammate FG%.
Korver Effect: Point guard Langston Galloway (78.3) is the Knicks's best floor-stretcher. That ... says enough.
If the end ultimately justifies the means, then there is not necessarily anything wrong with Jackson's blueprint to date. He stripped down a roster that was not going to win a title, added a player who could be a future All-Star -- albeit almost certainly not until Anthony has moved on because of age and/or losing-related disgruntlement -- and equipped the roster with players who can establish a blue-collar culture while also fitting Jackson's preferred style of play. Nevertheless, this is a franchise of mixed signals with an uncertain timeline in front of it.
Anthony turns 31 during next season's playoffs and his window as an elite player is closing. Porzingis has immense potential, but he's just 20 years old and will be getting his first extended exposure to American basketball. While the team culture might be improved, there is a considerable gap in production and talent between Anthony and the rest of the roster. Yet even though it's a re-tooled group, it's not particularly young: New York's effective team age projects to the seventh-highest in the league.
Most early-season projections, not to mention the Vegas odds, have pegged the Knicks for between 25 and 30 victories in 2015-16. While that would be an improvement over last year, it's not enough. It's imperative that Jackson's new group of overachievers actually overachieve and get the Knicks to .500. Doing so would not only generate a perception of forward momentum, but it could get New York into the postseason in the weak East. That could placate Anthony heading into another summer in which the Knicks should be able to offer a max salary to a premier free agent or absorb an elite player in a trade.
That level of overachievement is a long shot. So too is the scenario for landing a second star, as New York is short on future assets beyond Porzingis. It was a long season in New York in 2014-15. This season figures to be almost as long and if it is, all things, including a trade of Anthony, will be on the table.
East No. 13 | East No. 15 | Full List
