Tag Archives: Landry Fields

Melo forgets to show up for the playoffs

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Writing about a top seed defeating a low seed isn’t exactly thrilling. While this series has had some drama, the simple fact is it ended just like everyone expected. We’ll do our due diligence though and wrap up the series and throw at least a few insults Melo’s way.

The Knicks leave their front court in the past

2012 New York Knicks Playoffs Round 1 Totals

Player Pos G MP WP48 WP PoP/48 PoP/G
Jerome Jordan 5.0 1 3.7 0.662 0.05 17.5 1.3
Mike Bibby 1.0 5 118.1 0.184 0.45 2.6 1.3
Toney Douglas 1.0 1 8.3 0.244 0.04 4.5 0.8
Landry Fields 2.4 5 115.0 0.082 0.20 -0.5 -0.3
Steve Novak 3.6 5 94.7 0.072 0.14 -0.8 -0.3
Jared Jeffries 4.3 5 33.7 0.027 0.02 -2.2 -0.3
Tyson Chandler 5.0 5 166.6 0.070 0.24 -0.9 -0.6
Josh Harrellson 4.5 4 24.9 -0.051 -0.03 -4.7 -0.6
Amare Stoudemire 4.3 4 139.0 0.051 0.15 -1.5 -1.1
Baron Davis 1.0 4 97.4 -0.096 -0.19 -6.1 -3.1
Carmelo Anthony 3.3 5 204.1 -0.023 -0.10 -3.8 -3.2
Iman Shumpert 1.5 1 19.3 -0.209 -0.08 -9.6 -3.9
J.R. Smith 2.0 5 175.1 -0.186 -0.68 -8.9 -6.5
Total 5 1200 0.008 0.21 -14.1 -14.1

As always, to try and get a handle on the Knicks playoffs hopes we’d want to look at the top six of their roster. Let’s take quick rundown of the Knicks top players courtesy of the NBA Geek

Player Pos GP MP WP48 Wins
Tyson Chandler C 62 2061 0.311 13.34
Landry Fields SG 66 1894 0.170 6.71
Carmelo Anthony SF 55 1876 0.104 4.05
Steve Novak PF 54 1020 0.143 3.04
Jeremy Lin PG 35 940 0.131 2.56
J.R. Smith SF 35 967 0.108 2.19
Jared Jeffries PF 39 729 0.124 1.88

The Knicks top six consisted of an amazing Tyson Chandler, a very good Landry Fields, an average Melo, and an assortment of above average role players. Of course, Jeremy Lin managed to have a hot streak for the Knicks before getting injured. In the playoffs there were a few problems:

The Knicks had no point guard. Behind Lin the Knicks had nothing. Mike Bibby and Baron Davis both got major minutes. Bibby did indeed surprise a few people, but this was not a good recipe for success.

Amare came back. Amare has not been good in a while. Playing Melo at the 4 (which seemed to work well during Amare’s injury) or giving Jeffries or Novak more time seemed like a good idea. Instead the Knicks moved Melo back to the three, where Bron shuts down everyone, and left Jeffries on the bench.

The Knicks stars were mediocre The players pulling the Knicks this season have been Fields and Chandler. Fields has been up and down and against Dwyane Wade and LeBron James he did not play at a top level, which might be understandable. But Chandler not showing up is surprising. The Heat’s one weakness is supposed to be a lack of a legitimate big and Chandler wasn’t able to exploit that.

The former Nuggets didn’t show Melo and J.R. are filled to the brim with talent. Their problem, as Dan Filowitz has keenly observed, is their decision making skills. Sadly, the talented players did not show up and J.R. and Melo were two of the worst players for the Knicks.

Be afraid of the Heat

2012 Miami Heat Playoff Round 1 Totals

Player Pos G MP WP48 WP PoP/48 PoP/G
LeBron James 3.6 5 189.2 0.225 0.89 3.9 3.1
Dwyane Wade 1.8 5 179.4 0.215 0.80 3.6 2.7
Mario Chalmers 1.0 5 179.9 0.200 0.75 3.1 2.4
Mike Miller 2.5 5 116.0 0.234 0.56 4.2 2.0
Shane Battier 2.7 5 138.2 0.191 0.55 2.9 1.7
Chris Bosh 4.9 5 166.8 0.178 0.62 2.5 1.7
Joel Anthony 5.0 5 85.0 0.170 0.30 2.2 0.8
James Jones 2.5 4 19.8 0.245 0.10 4.5 0.5
Udonis Haslem 4.0 5 95.2 0.110 0.22 0.4 0.1
Norris Cole 1.0 3 18.1 0.060 0.02 -1.2 -0.2
Ronny Turiaf 5.0 1 7.2 0.043 0.01 -1.7 -0.3
Juwan Howard 4.0 1 5.2 -0.624 -0.07 -22.5 -2.4
Total 5 1200 0.190 4.76 14.2 14.2

With top Chicago Bulls dropping like victims in a horror film, the East seems to be merely a warm up to the Heat returning to the finals. There’s not too much surprising about this. For Heats fans in a gloating mood, let’s go down the list though.

Having the MVP in the playoffs is a good thing LeBron is the league MVP. Having that kind of player on your team in the playoffs is huge. His first series was up and down, but he’s already recorded one of the top games of the playoffs, leaving the Heat in a good spot.

Chris Bosh may be back Bosh’s play was iffy this season, but he played rather well in this series against one of the top centers in the league. If he keeps up his great play, the Heat may be unstoppable.

The Heat finally have health to their role players Few realize just how good the Heat could have been last season if not for injuries. Heading into the playoffs Haslem, Miller and Battier seem to be doing fine and that’s huge.

Chalmers has matured and Cole is on the bench Chalmers growth has been bumpy but this season he’s finally been playing well. Cole has been one of the few sore spots on this otherwise fantastic team. Luckily, Chalmers has kept it up and Cole has been left on the bench.

Summing up

In the battle between Melo and Bron, Bron took this easily. The Knicks got to end their drought of playoff wins at least, which had been going on for over a decade. The Knicks have bigger problems with which players will be able to come back next season and which will stick around. As for the Heat, we’ll just have to see if they’re for real when they take on the Pacers

-Dre

The Knicks need Melo and Amare to stay put

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A coach getting fired is usually a bad sign for a team. It usually means the team is performing poorly. After D’Antoni was fired the Knicks turned things around and look to have secured a playoff berth. There are two very key parts of the Knicks turnaround. The first is that Melo is playing amazing. The second is that Amare has been injured. Let’s take a quick look and I’ll explain more.

New York Knicks 12-25-2011 to 3-24-2012
Player Pos G MP WP48 WP PoP/G
Tyson Chandler 5.0 48 1538.6 0.316 10.13 4.5
Landry Fields 2.3 49 1456.3 0.186 5.63 1.7
Steve Novak 3.6 38 631.1 0.195 2.56 1.0
Jeremy Lin 1.0 36 940.4 0.151 2.96 0.9
Josh Harrellson 4.5 27 391.3 0.161 1.31 0.6
Jerome Jordan 5.0 20 75.1 0.245 0.38 0.4
Renaldo Balkman 3.1 15 115.4 0.179 0.43 0.4
Jared Jeffries 4.5 34 668.8 0.113 1.57 0.2
Bill Walker 2.6 30 610.5 0.067 0.85 -0.4
Mike Bibby 1.0 31 329.8 0.022 0.15 -0.5
Amare Stoudemire 4.2 43 1428.3 0.059 1.75 -0.9
Baron Davis 1.1 15 249.8 0.009 0.05 -1.0
Iman Shumpert 1.6 42 1141.3 0.044 1.04 -1.0
J.R. Smith 2.5 18 413.3 0.023 0.20 -1.1
Carmelo Anthony 3.2 39 1298.3 0.028 0.77 -1.5
Toney Douglas 1.2 33 546.6 -0.164 -1.86 -2.8
New York Knicks 3-25-2012 to 4-17-2012
Player Pos G MP WP48 WP PoP/G
Tyson Chandler 5.0 12 427.8 0.276 2.46 4.1
Carmelo Anthony 3.7 12 443.4 0.225 2.08 3.0
J.R. Smith 2.7 12 389.7 0.155 1.26 1.2
Iman Shumpert 1.7 12 428.0 0.131 1.17 0.7
Mike Bibby 1.0 10 103.8 0.156 0.34 0.4
Steve Novak 4.0 12 260.0 0.122 0.66 0.3
Jerome Jordan 5.0 3 6.1 0.254 0.03 0.2
Josh Harrellson 4.9 9 97.5 0.088 0.18 -0.1
Bill Walker 2.5 2 1.3 -0.680 -0.02 -0.3
Landry Fields 2.6 12 312.0 0.072 0.47 -0.5
Jared Jeffries 4.9 6 60.1 0.005 0.01 -0.6
Toney Douglas 1.5 7 80.4 -0.045 -0.08 -1.1
Baron Davis 1.0 12 295.0 -0.012 -0.07 -1.8

Highlighted are all players that have seen a change of at least 1.0 PoP per game. Landry Fields in red because he’s gotten worse.

Using the Points over Par metric (Wins Produced in points format) helps tell us what has happened. Since Amare has been out with injury the Knicks have seen a major change in performance from five players. A few of the explanations are easy:

  • J.R. Smith has played better. That’s nothing new. J.R. plays all over the place. As a Nuggets fan I assure you, it was baffling to predict which J.R. would show up. For the last 12 games it’s been the good J.R.
  • Iman Shumpert is young. According to Arturo’s predictions he was an ok draft pick. It’s not uncommon for young players to improve so Shumpert playing better is a pleasant surprise.
  • Toney Douglas has gone from terrible to bad. He’s still hurting the Knicks, but less so. He traditionally hasn’t been this bad so hopefully he’s finding his way back to his old self.
  • Landry Fields has been terrible. He started the season off poorly before getting back to form. Here’s hoping this is just a slump too.

Alright, let’s get into the Knicks two biggest “stars” and how Amare’s recent absence and Melo’s recent surge play out.

Amare off the court is better than Amare on the court

I want to stress that once Amare was a very good player. If we look at Amare back between 2005-2008 we see he was average at most things required of a center and an absolutely amazing scorer (in 07 and 08 his true shooting percentage was over 63%!) After 08 he slowly deteriorated in most aspects of the game. Then, when he got to the Knicks his great scoring left him. As a result we have a player that was once really only good at scoring, that is now just good at taking lots of shots. When Linsanity first occurred it should be noted that Amare missed some playing time. In the Knicks recent push the Knicks have played better with him out of the game. It is not a coincidence!

In the absence of Amare the Knicks have had Melo play bigger and given Novak more minutes. Both of these have worked out well. It turns out Melo is a very talented athlete but his shot selection is poor. It’s possible that one way to make him take better shots is to actually put him closer to the rim on a regular basis. This same strategy also works well to improve offensive rebounding and Melo has been doing better there as well. It’s kind of hard to gauge Novak as his playing time has been sporadic over his career. In the last two seasons he’s played well though. Swapping out Amare and giving these two players more minutes at the 4 has been very helpful to the Knicks. If they want playoff hope I suggest they leave Amare on the bench.

Melo is on a hot streak, let’s hope it continues

Wow Melo is playing amazingly. In fact, using Basketball-Reference’s new splits tool (I endorse all tools that improve game splits) we can see Melo has raised pretty much every level of his game. Since March 26th he’s been putting up 30 points a game with a 59% true shooting percentage. This is well over his career average and even his career highs. His steals and blocks are also at career highs in this short stretch, however not by much. Basically, Melo is playing amazing right now because he is shooting like everyone thinks he normally shoots. I’ve been burned too many times but I’ll say this again. If he has actually improved his shot selection then maybe Melo can finally be the star everyone thinks he that he is.

Summing up

We have a twelve game sample for the Knicks and I’d be fooling myself if I said we should read too much any to anything I’ve said (although it was very fun to say it and I hoped you enjoyed reading it) I will stress that with Amare on the bench the Knicks have played better players in the PF spot. This coupled with good timing for Melo, J.R. and Iman to “surge” has helped the Knicks into the playoff hunt yet again. While I wouldn’t bet the farm on Melo and Smith staying good, I am quite ok saying Amare shouldn’t suit up. In fact, the current Knicks squad without Amare (and hopefully with a healthy Lin come next season) is very potent. I’m only hoping Dolan doesn’t listen to Isiah and ruin everything.

-Dre

An exercise in cruelty: The Detroit Pistons

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While I was busy moping about a win with a great performance last night, Ben Gulker (@brgulker) was kind enough to point out it could be worse. I could be a Detroit Pistons fan. Last night Greg Monroe went out and did something he does often: he played a great game. The Pistons did something they don’t do often: they won. Of course their opponent was the Charlotte Bobcats and losing has come as naturally to the Bobcats as winning once did to their owner.

I know hindsight is 20/20. I know the draft, despite all of the current flaws in talent evaluation, is still tricky. I know that constructing the proper team just from picks is difficult. (Of course Oklahoma City and San Antonio may beg to differ.) But looking at the terrible roster of the once great Piston franchise I couldn’t help but wonder, what if things were a little different? I decided to play a game called “What if they’d drafted right?” It’s a cruel game for any team but it’s also a bit of fun. Had the Pistons used the picks they had in the last three years draft a bit more effectively here’s what their lineup could be this year:

Fantasy Pistons team for 2012. Numbers through February 29th 2012
Player Cost Pos G MP WP48 WP
Ty Lawson  $1.6 1.0 31 1057.3 0.157 3.46
Landry Fields  $0.8 2.3 36 1143.0 0.197 4.69
Chase Budinger  $0.9 3.0 31 596.0 0.178 2.21
Kenneth Faried  $1.3 4.0 16 272.2 0.350 1.98
Greg Monroe  $3.0 5.0 37 1212.3 0.181 4.57
 Total  $7.6 4280.8 0.190 16.91 

So for the cost of Charlie Villanueva or Rodney Stuckey the Pistons could have had an incredibly fierce starting five. Again this exercise is more for fun than anything. That said, the Pistons did make some remarkably bad draft choices. That, coupled with some bad signings, have made all the difference in the outcome to Detroit. The good news is that maybe if the Pistons make smarter moves in the next few drafts things will turn around. If not, at least I’ll get to yet again play the fun game of perfect hindsight.

-Dre

Game Splits for the 2011-2012 Season

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Hey all,
With the All-Star Break upon us our developers have gotten some time to work on some our stats tools. If you were interested in Game Splits using Wins Produced for the current season then look no further!

Nerd Numbers – Game Splits

The tool is still in “beta” but I’ve been having too much fun with it not to share. I’m definitely working on ways to make it faster and more robust (handle more than one team at a time for instance) Feel free to take it for a spin and let me know what you think! Here’s the first set of splits I was really interested in!

Linsanity Splits – New York Knicks February 6th 2012 to All-Star Break
Player Pos G MP WP48 Wins
Tyson Chandler 5.0 11 354.2 0.257 1.90
Landry Fields 2.5 11 368.1 0.194 1.49
Jeremy Lin 1.0 11 415.7 0.172 1.49
Steve Novak 3.6 11 249.8 0.234 1.22
Jared Jeffries 4.2 11 279.7 0.200 1.17
Iman Shumpert 1.9 8 217.7 0.098 0.44
J.R. Smith 2.1 4 108.4 0.149 0.34
Jerome Jordan 5.0 4 17.8 -0.013 -0.00
Bill Walker 2.9 7 186.5 -0.006 -0.02
Mike Bibby 1.0 5 62.8 -0.052 -0.07
Renaldo Balkman 3.0 1 5.1 -0.761 -0.08
Carmelo Anthony 3.1 4 104.9 -0.066 -0.14
Toney Douglas 2.0 2 9.2 -0.794 -0.15
Amare Stoudemire 4.4 7 222.8 -0.034 -0.16
Baron Davis 1.0 3 37.3 -0.434 -0.34

Enjoy and let me know if you have any problems!

-Dre

What the heck happened to New York?

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The following post gets it’s Wins Produced numbers from the fantastic NBA Geek. Seriously go check out the player comparison engine and I’ll see you in a while. We also have historical Wins Produced back to 2000. Finally any other numbers are from Basketball-Reference.

Last season New York managed to return to the promised land. With two supposed superstars in Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire and a giant splash in free agency with Tyson Chandler they were looking poised to be even better this season. It hasn’t quite turned out that way and I thought I’d give New York a closer look.

Chandler, Amare and Melo are all back

It would be easy to fall back on the chemistry myth: putting multiple stars on a team together doesn’t always work. When we look at their production though Melo, Amare and Chandler are all pretty close to where they were last season.

Anthony, Chandler and Stoudemire 2010-2011 vs. 2011-2012
Player 2011 MPG 2011 WP48 2012 MPG 2012 WP48
 Carmelo Anthony 36.2  0.088 35.8 0.207
 Tyson Chandler 27.8  0.268 33.3 0.270
 Amare Stoudemire 36.8  0.039 36.5 0.029

In fact this trio is in fact better than last season. Melo is playing very well right now. Chandler’s production is matching last year’s but he’s playing more minutes per game. Stoudemire is still quite bad and a long way removed from his former self. He’s still close to levels from last season though, so we can’t exactly blame him for a decline.

They forgot the rebounding

Last season Landry Fields was an amazing rookie talent. His production came in two ways. First, he was a very efficient scorer. Second, he was an absolutely beast at rebounding for a guard-forward. This season Field’s points per game have stayed roughly the same as last season. The problem? He’s actually gotten much worse at shooting and is just taking more shots to make up for it. Additionally, Fields is now rebounding half as effectively as he was last season.

The case of the Knicks’ missing rebounds
Player 2011 TS% 2011 ORB-48 2011 DRB-48 2012 TS% 2012 ORB-48 2012 DRB-48
 Landry Fields 0.598  1.5 5.9 0.498  0.6 3.1
 Tyson Chandler 0.697  3.6 8.5 0.806  2.5 4.7

In acquiring Chandler the Knicks were supposed to be getting a premier defender. Part of that includes rebounding. Chandler though is having the lowest rebounding season of his career. Looking at last season the best two players the Knicks have should be Fields and Chandler. We’d expect this to mean they’d grab many boards. That has yet to happen this season.

It’s too soon to tell what is going on with Fields. It’s entirely possible that the addition of Chandler has convinced him to lay off rebounds. Players tend to know scoring gets you paid and on a team with Amare and Melo (and Douglas, who is putting up 15 shots a game) it is hard to get touches. Fields’ new strategy may very well be to just shoot as often as possible and hope the extra points boost his value. (this is the last year on his contract)

They don’t have a point guard

New York Knicks point guards past and present
Player Season MPG WP48
Toney Douglas 2011-2012 33.8 -0.008
Baron Davis 2010-2011 25.3 0.068
Chauncey Billups 2010-2011 32.1 0.158
Raymond Felton 2010-2011 36.5 0.121

Last season the Knicks started the season off by acquiring Raymond Felton. Felton proceeded to play very well for the Knicks. The Knicks then decided to trade Felton with other pieces for Carmelo Anthony. Luckily they acquired another good point guard in Chauncey Billups in return. In order to get Chandler they released Chauncey Billups. To rectify this they signed Baron Davis off of waivers. Davis has been injured. As such the Knicks have played Toney Douglas as their starter. Douglas has proceeded to take many shots and make very few of them to go along with very few assists. The end result is the Knicks have an absolutely terrible player at the point. This is employing a similar strategy the Lakers have in recent years with Derek Fisher. Unfortunately Melo and Amare are not quite the players Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom are.

Still hope?

Landry Fields is young. It’s hard to know if he’ll revert to form or if he’s changed his game for the worse. The plus side is that in theory some of his production from last year can come back. Additionally it seems unlikely that Chandler’s rebounding will stay so low. In that regard the Knicks have hope they’ll get more wins.

The bigger problem the Knicks have is weakness in their point guards and big men outside of Tyson Chandler. While I’m hopeful, it’s unlikely Amare will revert to his 2008 form. Their other options are two rookies in Josh Harrellson and Jerome Jordan or two veterans in Steve Novak and Jared Jeffries who have never been that productive. At the point guard they are hoping that an aged and injured Baron Davis will come back and be productive or that an injured rookie Iman Shumpert will be productive or that Toney Douglas will stop being awful. I wouldn’t hold my breath on any of those players.

If Fields reverts to his 2011 form and Melo keeps up his career production (two big ifs) then the Knicks will be very good at three positions (SG, SF, and C). Unfortunately they will still be quite bad at two of the other positions. In the east though that should still be enough to keep them competitive.

If that doesn’t happen though then the Knicks decline will largely be a result of “losing” Landry Fields, Ray Felton and Chauncey Billups and keeping Amare. Of course, when all is said and done it is likely that other targets will be blamed and the same problems may repeat themselves in New York.

-Dre