Kevin Knox, and how to avoid a draft bust
Kevin Knox played the 101st game of his NBA career on Sunday night.
Given the sample size, it feels far too early to begin making any drastic proclamations about his status as a long term contributor in this league. At the same time, to anyone who has watched him, neglecting to draw any major conclusions about what we've seen from him thus far feels shortsighted, if not downright negligent.
The aspects of Knox's game that lead to the latter notion were on display against Denver Sunday night, as were the parts of his game that embolden people who preach patience with someone who is still among the 20 youngest players in the league. For example, even considering Jokic was all but holding up a red cape here, this was impressive:
It gets late early in the NBA though, especially in this city, playing for a team that has traditionally not been patient with its youth. The current regime has internally preached patience with Knox, but along with patience must come a plan, and far too often this season, that has not been evident.
Take Sunday night, for example. When Knox checked in midway through the third quarter, he did so at shooting guard. For a player whose issues on defense stem largely from poor footwork and foot speed navigating the perimeter, placing him in a position to chase around the likes of Gary Harris goes past the point of productive development and into the zone of "If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball."
Sure enough, on his very first defensive possession of the half, here's what happened:
This play obviously isn't all on Knox. Bobby Portis, seeing what is transpiring right in front of him, should have recognized it and acted accordingly. But Plumlee is an elite dive man and Harris may have exploited the situation regardless.
It all starts with the Knicks neophyte going below the double screen, which he surely did because of how often he's been left in a lurch trying to go over such barricades. These plays aren't in his wheelhouse, at least not yet. They might be someday, but for right now at least, it's more important that Knox not feel like a massive liability for his team every time he's on the court.
Despite these seemingly obvious pitfalls, Knox has spent almost twice as many possessions at shooting guard as he has at power forward this season according to Cleaning the Glass. This is, in a word, baffling.
Meanwhile, Knox has shown good instincts around the rim, like in the last game he played against the Nuggets, when he provided perhaps the only highlight of David Fizdale's last evening as head coach:
Thus far this season, Knox is blocking 20.4 percent of the team's shots when he's on the floor, which is third on the team after Mitchell Robinson and Taj Gibson. He is not yet physically astute enough to play the four full time, but we've seen enough at this point to know that five to ten minutes a night in that spot might go a long way towards furthering his development as at least a passable defensive player.
On the other end, Knox has been mired in a season long shooting slump since starting the season unconscious from deep over the first handful of games. No one seems to be concerned though, and slumps happen, especially when a player gets so deep in his own head about other parts of his game, which it seems like Knox has fallen victim to.
That doesn't mean New York can't still be doing more to help his offensive growth. After shooting a dismal 48 percent on shots at the rim last season, he has upped that number to 55 percent. That's good!
The problem is that he's taking even fewer shots in the restricted area this year (from 29 percent to 26 percent, according to Cleaning the Glass), which is largely a product of the lack of driving lanes due to the Knicks' poor spacing.
Almost every offensive issue with this team comes back to the lack of strong perimeter shooters on the roster, so this might not have an easy fix...at least not this season. That said, as the team prepares to dip their toe (or jump head first, as many fans would prefer) into the trade waters, if there was any way to acquire one more playable shooter, the domino effect would be significant.
All in all, over the five games Mike Miller has been the coach of this team, the Knicks have been nearly two points per 100 possessions better with Kevin Knox on the floor than with him off. Considering they were 7.5 points per 100 possessions better with him off the floor in the 21 games prior to the coaching change, that counts as significant progress.
It might only be a baby step, but for an organization that can't afford to let the pick they used on Knox go bust, it's a start they'll happily take. Now they just need to kick the process into high gear.
