[FiveThirtyEight] The Knicks Did This To Themselves

hard to argue with any of this. good read.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-knicks-did-this-to-themselves/

The Knicks Did This To Themselves
Carmelo Anthony isn’t enough to make up for the chaos that the front office causes
By Chris Herring

When Carmelo Anthony joined the New York Knicks at the trade deadline six years ago, the team feted his arrival. Just before Anthony, who was born in Brooklyn, was introduced at Madison Square Garden as a Knick for the first time, the team played Diddy’s “Coming Home,” featuring Skylar Grey. The club, formerly led by Amar’e Stoudemire, was now armed with a second star, one who was supposed to change the trajectory of the long-suffering franchise and make it a contender. And for a time, at least on paper, it was hard to argue with the results: After a decade of mostly awful basketball, the Knicks reached the playoffs in each of their first three seasons with Anthony.

Fast-forward to today, though, and the team seems to be unraveling with every passing minute. The Knicks keep making headlines for the wrong reasons, whether it’s because their big-name point guard has gone AWOL, their president is putting his foot in his mouth or a fan favorite is being hustled out of the Garden in cuffs.1 Like last year, when New York fell off the map after a surprising 22-22 start, this year’s team put up a decent record early in the season only to see the wins have dried up and the club fall out of contention.

To figure out how the Knicks could be so terrible — it looks likely that they’ll miss the playoffs for a fourth straight year despite having a future Hall of Famer on the roster — look to what the franchise lacks: continuity. Even when it makes the most sense to keep things as they are, the status quo is often upended in New York.

The vast majority of that upheaval stems from failures in the front office, but before analyzing that mess, it’s important to note that Anthony isn’t blameless here either. The 32-year-old has shown an unusual degree of loyalty to the city and team he forced a trade to, despite being subjected to the team president’s subtweets and critiques every other month. But he hasn’t exactly been the easiest player to build around. People in the Knicks organization2 will tell you that Anthony’s never been happy about the physical toll that comes with playing power forward, especially on defense, even though power forward is his most productive position. He also didn’t see eye-to-eye with his first Knicks coach, Mike D’Antoni (who’s now nearly a lock for coach of the year in light of what he’s doing in Houston), though D’Antoni’s quick-trigger, pick-and-roll-based offensive principles should, in theory, have fit Anthony’s game well.

But most of the dysfunction is rooted in the Knicks’ front office. Perhaps the most maddening thing about its moves in recent years has been its inability to gauge the direction of the NBA as a whole.

It’s hard to picture it now, but the Knicks were once exemplars of the NBA’s push toward more 3-pointers. The 2012-13 Knicks thrived using a two-point-guard system with Anthony at power forward en route to breaking a league record for 3-pointers made and attempted in a single season. They won 54 games — their most in 15 years — and earned the East’s No. 2 seed as Anthony won his first NBA scoring crown.

Then, strangely, the Knicks dealt away Steve Novak, their best 3-point shooter (along with a first-round pick and two second-rounders3), for Andrea Bargnani, who couldn’t really shoot anymore. Later that offseason, owner Jim Dolan axed Glen Grunwald, the team’s general manager, who’d finished tied for third in Executive of the Year voting just months earlier.

Then, when Phil Jackson took over as president, he was adamant about using his beloved triangle offense. Teams throughout the NBA borrow from the triangle system, but it’s likely too antiquated to work when used in its entirety because it relies heavily on midrange and post-up shots that have fallen out of favor in today’s efficiency-obsessed NBA. At the same time, Jackson and his first coaching hire, Derek Fisher, seemed to downplay the importance of the three ball in today’s league. And by breaking up a team that was at the forefront of a larger leaguewide trend, the Knicks might have missed an opportunity to develop into an annual playoff contender.
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