I was delighted to see Adam Zagoria focus on Steve Novak's crucial contributions to the Knicks' recent victories in an article today. Zagoria and Novak talked mostly about Jeremy Lin, but in praising Lin, Novak kind of touched on his own importance:

"I think you’re really starting to see our offense come together when we have that kind of penetration and that kind of finding guys," Novak said in crediting Lin, the rookie sensation from Harvard.

"And it’s contagious because other guys know, ‘I’m going to get the ball from him or I’m going to make the next pass because the next time down he’s going to find me again."

Novak's right, but in a way, he's got it backwards.

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Perhaps you may have noticed this, but there's actually a spot for you to buy Knicks tickets at Posting and Toasting. On the far right of the menu up top, there's a link that says "Tickets". If you click on it with your computer mouse, it'll take you to this page, which gives you all sorts of pictures and graphs and deals from all different ticket brokers. I imagine that might be of some use.

Don't go spending dollars (or chasing waterfalls) just yet, though, because TiqIQ would first like to offer you some free tickets. You just have to "like" TiqIQ and Posting and Toasting (feel free to "unlike" P&T soon thereafter if you'd rather not have my nonsense flooding your feed), post a quick thing about who your favorite player ever is (say Lee Nailon and you can also win a high five from me), and then I think you'll be in the running for free tickets to the Knicks-Nets game on Monday, February 20th.

As always, I am reluctant to put anything promotional on the front page unless there's an opportunity for some of y'all to win free stuff. If you'd like a shot at said free stuff, take the jump for the full instructions.

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Oh, this is so very helpful. Knowing that we'd all get to asking, Brian Cronin of Knickerblogger took the time to explain the forthcoming contract options for Landry Fields and Jeremy Lin (the latter of whom will have his deal guaranteed for the rest of the season on Friday). Both Lin and Fields will be free agents this summer, but there are rules and exceptions in place that could help the Knicks reel either or both of them back to New York (whether and how badly they'll want to do that remains to be seen).

See, because Fields will have played two years with the Knicks, he'll be eligible for the "Early Bird Exception", which means the Knicks can offer him one ratite of his choosing (sources say Fields would favor a rhea). If Fields signs a one year deal, the Knicks will have full bird rights next season and be eligible to offer Landry any feathered creature he desires. Lin has no bird rights and is only entitled to things like the non-bird exception, wherein he could be offered either a badger, an eggplant, or a clock radio. I think I've got that right, but here's Brian:

As an Early Bird player, Fields can be offered a contract that starts at 175% of his current salary or anything up to the average NBA salary (which is roughly $5 million). They can pay Fields this money without affecting their mid-level exception. However, if Fields just signs a one year deal for anything up to the average salary, then the following season the Knicks will have his full Bird Rights and then can re-sign him to a salary larger than the average salary. It really depends on how well Fields plays the rest of the year to determine what kind of deal he signs.

Lin, however, is not an Early Bird player since he has only played one year for the Knicks. Therefore, if they want to re-sign him, they would have to use one of the following:

1. The Non-Bird Exception, where they could pay him up to 120% of his current salary (or roughly $1 million)
2. The Bi-Annual exception (which is something like $2 million) or
3. However much of the mid-level (which is roughly $5 million) they would need to re-sign him.

Essentially, that makes Fields pretty easy to re-sign and Lin somewhat trickier (though doable) should his fine play continue. Of course, if the Knicks find themselves even considering a dip into the mid-level to pay Lin, that'll mean things went pretty well. That's one of them good problems.

I highly recommend you read Cronin's full piece, where he fleshes out and explains each of the alternatives. This stuff isn't particularly relevant right now, but it's good to know, and we'll be happy we learned about it come summertime.

Everybody say thank you to Brian. Come on! Thaaaaaank you Briaaaaaaaaan. Good job.

(WDDDWTD?)

This is a new feature here at P&T in which I, Seth, will engage in a debate on some Knicks topic with a person who is totally real. For our first exchange, please welcome celebrity chef and renowned hater, Cristobal Jeeves-Almibar.

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Update: Of course, now everybody's reporting that the Knicks might pursue Sessions. It'd take some heavy finagling for the reasons detailed below.

You, like me, have probably seen the Jose Calderon and Ramon Sessions trade rumors floating around and been like "Hey, wait, the Knicks desperately need point guard help. Gimme.". If you have had that experience, then you've probably also waddled over to the ESPN Trade Machine and been like "gimme gimme gimme click click click" (that's either the sound of you clicking a mouse or muttering in an African click language) only to find that New York's payroll situation is so bipolar that there isn't anybody even remotely equivalent in salary to those two players. Dan of The Knicks FanBlog describes the situation:

It doesn’t take a genius to notice that the Knicks have three contracts taking up the majority of their cap and then a bunch of filler. After the Broadway Bigs, the next highest contract belongs to Renaldo Balkman. And as good as he is, to nab someone like Sessions or Ridnour, I suspect the Knicks would have to sweeten the pot. And who is going to get ‘er done? Shumpert? Landry? Those combinations would work but would it be worth it for the Knicks to give up on long-term potential to fill a short-term need when 2012 free agency awaits with a litany of point guards?

Seriously, though, Carmelo Anthony, Amar'e Stoudemire, and Tyson Chandler each make double-digits of millions a year. Balkman, the fourth-highest paid Knick, makes less than $2 million a year. So, like Dan says, the only way the Knicks could deal for a point guard (or anybody) of that caliber would be to lump a bunch of smaller salaries together and just completely empty out the already scant depth they've got for a single guy. Seems unrealistic (yet familiar), though there are potentially cheaper, albeit less appealing point guards out there if Baron Davis takes too long to return or is deemed insufficient when healthy.

The main purpose of this post is to direct you to Alan Hahn's newest "Knicks Fix" (now over at MSG), but it's also here to showcase the impeccable flow of one Mike D'Antoni. Here he is spitting about, well, flow, actually:

"That's what we have to do and we're not doing it all the time. And then because we can't score points, every little thing is magnified . . . We have to open our offense up, we gotta run, we gotta move the ball and we gotta go. We gotta go. It's gotta move, it's gotta flow. And right now we can't get the flow."

You can witness the rhymes at about 1:07 of the linked video. It's a stretch, but if I can't find ways to distract myself from the Knicks' on-court product right now, I'm gonna lose my mind and start snatching schoolchildren.

But...uh...anyway, the section on the Knicks' offensive struggles is worth a look, as is Hahn's bit about New York's three-point shooting. He, like many of us, figures that letting Steve Novak spin might at least be worth a shot. Couldn't possibly hurt.

Carmelo Anthony's single-point outing last night felt pretty unusual, so I waddled over to Basketball Reference to see how often in history his feat had been matched. I defined "his feat" as:

- One point scored (and, therefore, no field goals made)

- Started and played 30+ minutes (Melo played 29:38, so other guys in this club might look down on him, but oh well. Changing it to 29+ minutes a game doesn't add any names and makes me twitch, so we're rounding up.)

- The player's team won the game

- Only one free throw attempted (i.e. No shooting fouls drawn. The only attempt and point was a technical free throw. There's no other way a guy could attempt just a single free throw without hitting any field goals, right?)

That last qualification is the big eliminator, because plenty of folks have done all of the above while taking multiple free throws but only converting one of them. These are guys who started, played starter's minutes, won the game, and scored exactly one point on a technical free throw without even attempting other free throws. Take the jump for the monumentally important list.

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Ian Levy of Hickory High put together a nice little summary of NBA teams' application of the pick-and-roll-- how often they use it, how effectively they use it, and how those numbers break down into plays finished by the ball-handler versus those finished by the friend setting the screen. If you're interested, I recommend that you take a look at the graphs and poke around in the chart yourself, but here are the numbers of note regarding our Knicks:

- 15.1 percent of Knick plays include a pick-and-roll, which puts them 23rd overall in pick-and-roll frequency.

- 78.8 percent of Knick pick-and-rolls end with the ball-handler trying to score, which is the second-highest frequency in the league. Knick pick-and-roll ballhandlers average 0.82 points per possession (PPP), which puts them ninth in the league.

- Thus, 21.2 percent of Knick pick-and-rolls end with the screener trying to score, which is the second-lowest frequency in the league. Knick pick-and-roll screeners average 1.16 PPP, which is the fifth-best number in the league.

- The Knicks' overall pick-and-roll PPP collapsed across finisher is 0.89, which is eighth best in the league.

So, if I may attempt to simply the above: The Knicks run one of the league's better pick-and-rolls, but they run it very infrequently. When they do run the pick-and-roll, they almost always let the ball-handler finish, and he does so relatively effectively. On the rare occasions that the Knicks feed the screener, he finishes even more effectively (and relatively more effectively when compared to his counterparts).

Now, my Synergy account isn't up and running yet, so I can't compare the above data to previous years' data (and I'd probably be too lazy to do that even if it were), but I think it's safe to guess that 1. The Knicks would like to run a lot more pick-and-rolls. and 2. The Knicks would like to run a lot more pick-and-rolls that feed the screener.

And that's why a lot of us are hoping Baron Davis can reinvigorate this offense upon returning. He isn't an elite pick-and-roll one by any means, but it seems reasonable to expect an offense with a truer, more polished point guard to run Mike D'Antoni's most beloved play more frequently than eighth-to-last in the league and more effectively (particularly in terms of hitting the man rolling to the basket) than the Knicks have been thus far. And the funny thing is that it seems they HAVE been running it effectively, just not frequently and not with the ideal balance.