Now, this isn't going to be anything you couldn't conclude yourself after watching the Knicks' first fourteen games, but Zach Lowe turned his attention back to the Knicks for an article today, and trotted out a few numbers demonstrating that New York's offense is bad, wrong, broken, and bad again just for good measure. Here's one datum that handily sums up just how inept the offense has been:
The Knicks have finished 16.2 percent of their possessions with isolation plays. That is the highest number in the league, edging the iso-tastic Kings, according to Synergy Sports. New York has scored 0.65 points per possession on those plays, the second-worst mark. Put simply: The Knicks are devoting a giant portion of their offense to something at which they are horrible — at least so far. New York has shot an incredibly low 29 percent on isolation plays, per Synergy. That is very hard to manage.
Yeah, that seems less than ideal. Now, you can go one of several ways with the above information. A lot of folks will see this and grumble about how D'Antoni isn't calling plays and has no control over anything that happens on the floor. Others will blame Amar'e and Melo for gobbling up possessions and stifling the Knick ball movement. And there's a third group that will read this and stick their thumbs back in their ears and go "NAH NAH NAH NO POINT GUARD JUST WAIT UNTIL BARON DAVIS IS BACK I CAN'T HEAR YOU NAH NAH NAH". Oh, and how about that bench? I've heard plenty of folks say that the Knicks' foremost problem is their lack of depth.
None of us are wrong, none of us are entirely right, and I hope we can all agree that every one of these factors is partially to blame. Any way you slice it, the Knicks have opened this season with one of the worst offensive stretches we've ever seen from them, like, ever. We've nothing to do but sit, wait, and hope things improve. Or go outside or something. Don't panic, though. It's not a good look.
(All that said, Lowe rightly acknowledges that the Knick defense, while undeniably bizarre, has been relatively effective thus far.)