NY Times: Anthony’s Potential Impact on Knicks
Posted by Justin Kubatko on December 16, 2010
Just how much would Carmelo Anthony help the New York Knicks?
Keeping Score: Anthony’s Potential Impact on Knicks
This will also appear in Friday's print edition.
December 16th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
Sir, thank you for writing this.
December 20th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Interesting article, and it made me curious about the following: while we know that long 2-pt shows are bad options because the points per FGA are low. One thing I'm curious about, though, is whether more offensive rebounds are grabbed as a result. Here is my thinking: long shots lead to long rebounds. The longer the rebound, the more uncertain it is as to who will get the rebound (and since the default would be for the defender to get it, this uncertainty favors the offense). Further, unlike 3 pointers, where you may be too far away to get the board, shooters are slightly closer on long 2's. This MAY explain some of Anthony's success at grabbing offensive boards. But, if those assumptions are correct (and I'm not sure they all are), then the question becomes whether the lower points per FGA is sufficiently offset by the increased number of offensive rebounds that are pulled down from misses.
I'd be interested to see the result.
Cheers,
December 20th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
You mention that the Knicks already excel in the areas where Carmelo would be expected to contribute, implying that adding Anthony would have minimal impact. Don't these claims presume we know when the diminishing marginal utility of a given category of performance kicks in? Do we know this? I recognize that such a point theoretically exists, but would you say that the most efficient offensive team, according to your metrics, should never spend their next dollar on offensive, rather than defensive skills? A previous post ranked teams according to the differential of their offensive and defensive efficiency numbers. Aren't their two ways to improve this ranking? Or would you maintain that if a team is relatively inefficient the defensive side of the ball, this necessitates that, at the margin, money should be spent on improving defense?