NBA 2012-2013 Season Thread - Page 675

Its the NBA team in Colorado baby.

rfx see nike thread

Sixers, baby. Sixers

I want to create a sock and name it Milk Stout, just so I can post after you do.

Great, great beer. I honestly don't even know what my name is a reference to but I have to believe that's at least a part of it.

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/nba/story/_/id/8802288/kobe-bryant-blames-age-los-angeles-lakers-lack-energy

Lakers Baby Lakers

Maybe they should take a page from the Spurs' playbook.

Knicks have had a tough last 8 games. There have been some legitimate excuses (injuries to Melo, Wallace, Felton) but I think they are 4-4 over the last eight and they should have been 6-2 or 7-1 or so. The defense isn't holding up, particularly in the first half. They are giving up over 100 points too often and its tough to win when you are a defensive team and the other teams gets to 100 first.

The good news is that Stat is back and looked good (if only to up his trade value from zero to something), Melo is back and had a strong game, JR Smith is playing Sixth Man of the Year type ball and Copeland is turning out to be an offensive machine.

The bad news is that Felton is out for 4 weeks, Kidd and Novak's shots have not been falling, the team still can't rebound, with Wallace out the second unit's defense and offense suffers and Chandler has to log more minutes and they seem to be a step behind all the teams they've played lately, at least in the first half.

He has no trade value. The guy is set to make $45MM over the next two seasons and he contract isn't insurable. The Knicks would probably have to insure the contract themselves to have any kind of shot at trading him.

I've said before that the Knicks' win streak was over reliant on the 3. I also haven't been under the impression that the D was what was winning them games, but I haven't watched as many games as Ed so I won't contradict him.

However, isn't it more a regression to the mean (unsustainable 3-pt percentages dropping, historically terrible defenders regressing) that is the Knicks' problem? Oh, and the injuries of course - no question.

Honest question, no trash talk

Their offense is undoubtedly predicated on the 3, but teams shoot in the low 30's pretty much and I don't think they were shooting significantly higher than that during the winning streak and I don't think they are shooting significantly lower than that now. The D is what was winning a lot of games, they lead, and probably still do, in opposing field goal % and points allowed. They also probably still lead the league in catch and shoot points, 3 pointers made/attempted. Its pretty easy to figure out if the Knicks are going to win or lose, if the opposing team has 70-75 points going into the fourth quarter, its almost definitetly a Knick win. If the opposing team has 85-90 going into the fourth, the Knicks will probably be on the losing end.

With Amare back, I think the defending will suffer and opp PPG will go up. Can they outscore? That's the question. They do seem to have a team that can put up points, though.

Really. That's amazing since outside of Tyson Chandler the entire Knick rotation is composed of players who've been historically derided for poor defense. Maybe Woodson should be coach of the year for that feat, if he can keep it up.

Or again, maybe they are bound to regress. Possibly wishful thinking on my part since they've already taken Miami behind the woodshed twice

Not trying to ride you, but a few things:

• The league average for 3pt% is .357 and the Knicks are at .388. Using league averages again, this works out to about 1.8 pts/gm more than the league average. Not an insignificant amount of points.
• The Knicks actually have one of the worst PA stats in the league and have the 8th worst Opp FG%. That said, PA stat is sort of worthless as it does not take into consideration pace of game. The spread between PF and PA, however, leaves the Knicks with the 5th best mark in the league and the best such mark in the Eastern Conference.
• Finally, in their last 7 games they've only shot above their average 3pt% once and were below 31% in three of those games. So it looks like their 3pt shooting has fallen off a bit as of late.