The Knicks limp into 2019 with a 9-28 record, including a 1-12 stretch in their last 13 games. Coming up with New Year’s resolutions for this team could be super easy. They are miserable at the most important parts of basketball. They can’t shoot (they rank dead last in effective field goal percentage at 49.2%). And, they can’t defend (they have the 29th ranked defense, allowing 115.3 points per 100 possessions, per Cleaning The Glass). To make this exercise worthwhile, we’re going to try and make these resolutions a combination of specific, measurable, and attainable. Here are three New Year’s resolutions for the Knicks in 2019: one defense, one offense, and one overall.

Defense

Improve defending the pick-and-roll

That the Knicks struggle to defend the pick-and-roll makes sense given their personnel. Enes Kanter earned meme-status for his inability to stop the two-man game. He was even trolled by the lowly Phoenix Suns for his ineptitude after a loss earlier this month. These seven players rank among the top-10 in minutes played for New York: Kanter, Emmanuel Mudiay, Kevin Knox, Tim Hardaway Jr., Trey Burke, Allonzo Trier, and Mario Hezonja. None of them are even average defenders for their positions. Teams don’t have to hunt mismatches against New York. The Knicks prepare and deliver mismatches via Seamless to opponents’ doorsteps.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of pick-and-roll defense in today’s league. Per Synergy, the Knicks have defended pick-and-rolls on just over 30% of their defensive possessions (that includes possessions that end on passes out of the pick-and-roll). As of December 27, they ranked 28th in the league in defending the pick-and-roll, allowing 0.994 points per possession. And, those numbers don’t factor in the straight-up evisceration by the Utah Jazz’s pick-and-roll attack. I’ve never seen a team look so helpless in defending one of the oldest plays in the book.

Check out this compilation of five Knicks blunders…all from the second quarter of their last game:

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That montage had everything. Let’s break down the five clips quickly:

  1. Trier gets screened into oblivion; ground-bound Kanter can’t even get his arms above his shoulders to contest Ingles’s layup.
  2. Dotson is way late on his weak-side help (he takes the blame at the end of the clip).
  3. Dotson goes under Gobert’s screen and Donovan Mitchell sticks the pull-up three.
  4. This one was tough. Typically Knox would have to bump the rolling Gobert. But, he’s understandably not willing to leave Kyle Korver. This play would’ve required Mudiay doing a better job of navigating the ball screen and Kornet being long and athletic enough to corale Dante Exum while breaking up the lob to Gobert. Mitchell Robinson likely could’ve done it. Kornet wasn’t the right man for the job, he was the one who was available.
  5. This wasn’t the traditional PNR that hurt New York all night. In this play, the Knicks had switched to their 2-3 zone (though you wouldn’t know it from this clip). THJ appears to forget they’re in a 2-3 and stands in Kornet’s spot. Kornet points at the wide open Korver, but it’s too late. Timmy gets comically stuck on a Gobert screen. Legend has it he’s still stuck on that screen to this day.

The Knicks aren’t usually this incompetent defending the pick-and-roll. But, that Jazz game illuminated every weakness they have in that department. One potential way to improve is to play Frank Ntilikina more minutes (please). Last season, Frank was the best in the league at guarding pick-and-roll ball-handlers, allowing only 0.65 points per possession. I don’t care how much he struggles on offense. Frank’s potential to slow down opposing pick-and-rolls is valuable enough to earn him substantial court time.

Our BBall Index team talent grades, which are calculated by weighing player grades by minutes played, show Perimeter Defense to be the Knick’s second greatest weakness of the 11 categories we use to measure each team. Frank last season was a B+ as a Perimeter Defender. Granting Frank more minutes is a simple way the Knicks can improve on that end of the court.

Given their roster, it’s unlikely the Knicks will approach league-average in defending the pick-and-roll in 2019. But, if they can go from the basement up towards 20th-23rd in the league? That would be a major step forward for their defense overall.

Offense

Hit 60+% on shots at the rim

The Knicks have really struggled this season with their touch around the rim. Currently, they rank dead-last in field goal percentage at the rim (56.6%), per Cleaning The Glass. And the gap between them and the 29th-ranked Cavaliers is substantial. Remarkably, CTG’s data indicates that every single Knicks player is below-average for their position at finishing at the rim. Some of the worst culprits include Mario Hezonja: 37-of-75 (49%), Kevin Knox: 39-of-78 (50%), THJ: 56-of-110 (51%).

Even Noah Vonleh, who has been a revelation for much of the season, has only converted 57-of-104 (55%) attempts at the rim. That puts him in the 11th percentile among bigs. The BBall Index’s proprietary grading system conveys a similar message. Among the 65 bigs to play at least 500 minutes so far this season, Vonleh ranks in the 16th percentile in “Finishing,” grading him out to an F in the category. Vonleh’s problem is, when he’s not hammering home thunderous dunks, he doesn’t have a great deal of touch around the basket:

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Watch him try and use his left:

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“Lack of touch” is just one of many reasons for the Knicks’ struggles at the rim. A symptom of offensive scheme deficiencies, New York lacks spacing at times despite being near league-average from three. They also rank 22nd in three-point frequency, which could muddle things up in the paint for drivers. Fizdale also likes to play two traditional bigs at the same time, clogging up the middle. One indication of this is how often they get their shots blocked by opponents. Per Basketball Reference, Knicks’ opponents block 6.3 shots per game. Only the Charlotte Hornets get their shots rejected more frequently. Remember that 19-block game versus Memphis earlier this season? Fun fact: Since 2010, no team has had more of their shots blocked in a single game.

Watch on this play, Vonleh gets a step on his defender, but Kanter’s man is sitting there waiting for him. Kanter even appears to help Zeller get in position for the block…

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Against the Bucks, Vonleh spotted up around the perimeter in an attempt to stretch the defense. However, Giannis rarely respected Vonleh’s range, leading to an even more clogged paint:

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But our talent data does also provide some hope when it comes to finishing. The Knicks as a team grade out better than a quarter of the league in that category. Those same problem players discussed above still grade out poorly, but this roster isn’t completely devoid of finishing ability. So why is there such a disparity between the dead-last rim shooting mentioned above and our talent grades that show the Knicks being much better than 30th?

The team’s greatest weakness in our talent grades, Playmaking, plays a role in this. Poor playmaking combined with an offensive scheme our experts consider to be in the lowest tier of NBA teams, makes the finishing opportunities the team generates lower quality. It’s reasonable to project that as the team’s core grows together, that Fizdale will be able to implement more sophisticated schemes to create better looks at the rim. Combine that with the potential for growth from their high usage players in playmaking for others, and we should expect better efficiency on dump offs. It’s no coincidence the Knicks are dead last in the NBA in dump off possessions and points. The lack of playmaking and good playcalling is minimizing the opportunity the team has to get and convert on easy finishing opportunities, leading to worse finishing numbers and worse offensive performance.

The path to league-average at the rim is asking too much. Changes in offensive scheme or playmaking ability don’t just happen overnight. But, now that Luke Kornet is getting more minutes, he should help provide more of that much-needed spacing. Getting that rim field goal percentage up to 60%, which would be good for 25th in the league, would be a marked upgrade.

Overall

Come to play

The Knicks routinely dig themselves holes to start games. On the season, they get outscored by opponents by 7.7 points per 100 possessions, which ranks 27th in the league. But, during first quarters this season, they’ve been outscored by an abysmal 13.1 points per 100 possessions per NBA.com – 29th in the league. Part of this phenomenon is likely because Fizdale has done so much tinkering with the starting lineup. Maybe it has been difficult for players to develop continuity. But, the lineup that has started most frequently for the Knicks – Mudiay, Hardaway Jr., Knox, Vonleh, and Kanter – has been so bad. This season, 44 lineups have played at least 125 minutes. This Knicks group ranks dead last in net rating by a mile: -15.4 points per 100 possessions.

The Knicks are in a tricky position where they do not want to try to win games (or placate disgruntled veterans) at the expense of player development. For example, the lineup with the best net rating of their most-used groups is: Ntilikina, Dotson, Hardaway Jr., Vonleh, and Robinson. That unit has a lot of the right players, but it moves Knox to the bench, which is not an ideal situation. Really, the only solution here is for Fizdale to keep tinkering until he finds multiple lineups that balance player development with competent on-court performance and complementary skill sets. I say “competent” instead of “successful” because the process is more important than the result. We want the Knicks’ young core to learn to play smart, aggressive two-way basketball and to, above all, compete. It’s felt all season like the Knicks start games without a sense of urgency. In 2019, let’s hope they can come out with energy, purpose and competitive fire on both sides of the ball.

Graphic: Akshay Ram

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