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By Beckley Mason, on April 30th, 2013
Look familiar?
With J.R. Smith out of the lineup against Boston in Game 4, the Knicks leaned heavily on isolation play from Carmelo Anthony. His jumper was not able to bear the load. Melo fought his way to the line, but only shot 8-21 combined on isolations and post ups. When we include turnovers, that’s just 16 points from 25 possessions!
But when we count the 19 (!) free throws and 16 makes he earned off of iso and post up plays (this counts a foul on offensive board that came off of an isolation), he actually scored 28 points off of approximately 33 possessions, or a very respectable .848 points per possession, a rate that is actually not far off his season average Synergy.
The problem is that such a disproportionate amount of the Knicks offense came on these plays. Carmelo performs relatively well in isolations and the post, but his individual production in those scenarios still falls well short of the Knicks team output for the season, which is closer to 1.086 points per possession (per NBA.com/stats).
The Celtics are expert at defending great individual scorers, and have rotated a few defenders on Anthony to apply maximum ball pressure and hopefully force him into jumpshots. Anthony has smartly countered by returning the physicality and fighting his way to the free throw line.
But there’s another way around the Celtics defense, and that’s with the pick-and-roll. Jeff Green, Paul Pierce and especially Brandon Bass are comparatively ill-equipped the navigate the intricacies of pick-and-roll defense, and Carmelo Anthony, as it so happens, is the best pick-and-roll scorer in the NBA.
That’s right, according to Synergy, no one scores more than Melo’s 1.12 PPP on these sets.
In the series with Boston, Melo has taken nine shots out
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By Beckley Mason, on April 29th, 2013
New York: Steph Curry’s body is possessed by the holy basketball spirit.
Some people mark the beginning of ancient Rome’s decline with the assassination of charismatic generalissimo Julius Caesar. But Caesar’s death is just a handy catchall for 100 years of internal strife and civil war that precipitated the downfall of the day’s greatest empire. I’ve been listening to historian Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcasts on the subject (highly recommended — get your Genghis Khan knowledge up!), and there are more than a few theories about how everything fell apart.
One is that the financial system became too byzantine and complex; another that Rome’s government relied on outmoded political conventions designed to govern cities not empires. Others blame the accumulation of vast wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people. There’s still another theory that the young of Rome were made cynical by the ignoble power struggles that bloodied the floors of the Forum and, occasionally, turned the Tiber red. Rome and The Republic could not endure without the Myth of Rome.
I bring this up because, listening to Carlin wrap up at the end of nearly 10 hours of material, it was hard not connect these fatal syndromes of empire with events and trends in current day America — the financial system in need of regulation and overhaul, the political stalemate that retards all reform processes, the privatization of military defense. You’ve probably heard statistics indicating that the American middle class is not exactly swelling with optimism. It’s not swelling at all; it’s shrinking as money finds its way to fewer and fewer super-wealthy people, often with the aid of an incomprehensibly opaque financial and political systems.
People get salty and cynical in the face of conditions that do not inspire optimism for future generations, yet
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By James Herbert, on April 25th, 2013
HoopSpeak Game Night is back tonight for Game 3 of Heat/Bucks. Andrew McNeill and Danny Nowell will be here pregame (15 minutes before tip), halftime and postgame. Latest Spreecast is at the top. Enjoy.
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By Steve McPherson, on April 24th, 2013
I’m about to make the case for something I might not entirely believe. I say that because if I had my way, your 2013 Most Improved Player would be Larry Sanders. I could run down the reasons for this (in short: improved his per 36 rebounding from 9.0 to 12.5, reduced his per 36 fouls from 7.4 to 4.3—the difference between staying on the floor and being ejected—and raised his PER by more than 5 points while playing more than three times as many minutes), but you can find that statistical argument elsewhere. Instead what I’m going to do is defend Paul George.
Here is the move and then the countermove that has happened in the statistical argument about George’s worthiness for the award. The league’s press release stated that George went from career averages of 10.0 points, 4.7 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.3 steals per game to career highs of 17.4 points, 7.6 rebounds, 4.7 assists and 1.8 steals per game this season. And then those who measure things with more advanced analytics pointed out that both his field goal percentage and his effective field goal percentage actually went down this season, and that while his defensive rating improved by 3 points from 100 to 97, his offensive rating dropped from 108 to 104. Overall, his per game statistical improvements don’t look as resoundingly impressive when converted into per 36 numbers, and it’s for a fairly simple reason: he played a lot more this year.
His total minutes played went from 1,958 last year to 2,972—a more than 150 percent increase—and his minutes per game went from 29.7 to 37.6. The translation for a lot of diehard statheads? He didn’t get better: he was just on the court more, doing the same things.
And
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By Beckley Mason, on April 23rd, 2013
Please take this test:
Watch a bit of the video below, which catalogues Mike Woodson’s reactions to everything from blown calls to children who want him to sign a hat.
(video via Oakley & Allen)
What did you think? Did you enjoy it? Did you even laugh a bit?
To a normal person, there is almost literally nothing interesting about this video. Sure, there is the occasional slack-jawed, blank expression that suggests Woodson is just zoning out, or trying to remember whether he turned over the laundry, rather than managing an exceptionally complex process in front of 20,000 fans.
But by and large this is pretty unremarkable stuff. To a normal person.
However, if you happen to be a Knicks fan, or just a basketball nerd, this reel suddenly becomes endlessly entertaining. If you find yourself chuckling, good for you — you somehow get it about Mike Woodson, the most unlikely lovable character in the NBA.
From both a tactical and personal sense, Woodson was something of a cipher when he took his place on the Knicks sideline. Sure, we knew of Iso-Joe and the switch-heavy defensive system that Atlanta employed in order to take advantage of a starting lineup that included four quick players between 6-8 and 6-9.
But it was all so blah. Woodson wasn’t a maverick, riding into town to shake up a corrupt and struggling frontier outpost. He was the weathered deputy suddenly promoted to sheriff after the office’s previous occupant had skipped town.
Even the preseason profile from Will Lietch suggests Woodson’s best quality is that he is an utterly vanilla person “They want the predictable, they want the projectable … they want, frankly, the old.“
Everyone expected Woodson would deliver on this uninspiring mandate.
The players are old, and Woodson’s ideas on
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By James Herbert, on April 22nd, 2013
Tonight marks the debut of HoopSpeak Game Night. Andrew McNeill and Danny Nowell will be here pregame (15 minutes before tip), halftime and postgame for both playoff games tonight. Latest Spreecast is at the top. Enjoy.
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By James Herbert, on April 18th, 2013
Today’s HoopSpeak Live is a playoff preview! Your fearless hosts — Beckley Mason, Zach Harper and Ethan Sherwood Strauss — will be jumping on the Googliest of Hangouts to discuss the eight series that you will be watching over the next couple of weeks.
Use the #HoopSpeakLive hashtag to participate.
HoopSpeak Live airs every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 p.m. ET. You can find the audio-only version on iTunes and Stitcher. If you subscribe and/or write us a review, I promise that the Nuggets and Warriors will combine for 300 points in one of their games.
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By James Herbert, on April 11th, 2013
By @AnthonyBain
Today’s guest: Dan Devine of Ball Don’t Lie.
To participate, simply click the “submit a question” button and leave us a question or comment during the show. If you’d like to join us on camera to ask a question, find a spot without too much background noise, click the “camera” button and then click “allow” and “remember” on the Flash settings box. To join the live chat, click the chat icon in the top-right corner.
If you want to watch the show directly on Spreecast, click here.
HoopSpeak Live airs every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 p.m. ET. You can find the audio-only version on iTunes and Stitcher. If you subscribe and/or write us a review, I promise we’ll send you Robert Sacre’s cat wig. Wait, what’s a cat wig?
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By James Herbert, on April 2nd, 2013
Today’s guest: Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN.com.
If you want to watch the show directly on Spreecast, click here.
HoopSpeak Live airs every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 p.m. ET. You can find the audio-only version on iTunes and Stitcher. If you subscribe and/or write us a review, I promise that we won’t tank the remainder of the season.
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By James Herbert, on March 28th, 2013
By @AnthonyBain
Today’s guest: Paul Flannery, the radio voice of the Utah Jazz and the host of SB Nation.
To participate, simply click the “submit a question” button and leave us a question or comment during the show. If you’d like to join us on camera to ask a question, find a spot without too much background noise, click the “camera” button and then click “allow” and “remember” on the Flash settings box. To join the live chat, click the chat icon in the top-right corner.
If you want to watch the show directly on Spreecast, click here.
HoopSpeak Live airs every Tuesday and Thursday at 3 p.m. ET. You can find the audio-only version on iTunes and Stitcher. If you subscribe and/or write us a review, I promise that Kobe won’t not foul you.
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