Amar’e Stoudemire loss = Knicks’ gain?
Paramedics had to stitch up Amar'e Stoudemire's non-shooting hand after Tuesday's game in Miami because he punched a glass-encased fire extinguisher. (AP)
The Knicks, obviously, cannot go through the NBA season like a normal team. Every team has its share of drama, and much of the craziness that engulfed the Knicks this season was of the good variety, like the rise of Jeremy Lin from nowhere and his transformation into one of the biggest sports stars in the world.
But there has also been much ugliness, peaking with the 24-hour period in mid-March when anonymous sources leaked that Carmelo Anthony had requested a trade, other anonymous sources leaked that Anthony’s teammates were furious with him for hijacking Mike D’Antoni’s offense upon his return from injury, and D’Antoni finally resigned after concluding he would be unable to coach Anthony. Mike Woodson replaced D’Antoni, and suddenly Anthony could be bothered to work hard on defense, even admitting that he was focusing under Woodson at bringing an “energy” he hadn’t played with under D’Antoni.
The drama stopped for a while as the Knicks improved defensively under Woodson and Anthony began hitting an unsustainable number of isolation shots. But it returned in true New York fashion after Game 2 in Miami on Tuesday night, when Amar’e Stoudemire, frustrated by something, punched the glass enclosure of a fire extinguisher, cut his hand, received an unknown number of stitches and left Miami in a sling. He is reportedly unlikely to play in Game 3 and may be done for the rest of the series, which the Knicks trail 2-0.
As I and others have noted repeatedly this season, Stoudemire just hasn’t helped the Knicks, mostly because the Anthony/Stoudemire combination has been a disaster. The Knicks outscored opponents by about 3.2 points per game, but with Stoudemire on the floor, opponents beat them by about three points per 100 possessions. That number got even worse — about four per game — when Stoudemire and Anthony shared the court, per NBA.com’s stats database.
The Knicks have suffered from something of a catch 22 with this pairing: They cannot play the Anthony/Stoudemire duo without Tyson Chandler because it would be defensive suicide. But playing Chandler with the two stars has sabotaged the offense because Chandler and Stoudemire play roughly the same role in any functioning offense — pick-and-roll screener — and are not skilled enough perimeter shooters or off-ball cutters to work a secondary role.
New York has shown flashes, including on Tuesday in Miami, of the kind of quick-hitting motion that would loosen things. But those possessions have come only occasionally, and they too often end with Anthony’s isolating from the perimeter — 10 seconds of nice-looking professional basketball that ends with the same hit-or-miss proposition.
New York, on the other hand, perked up during a 13-game, late-season stretch in which Stoudemire was injured and Anthony shifted to power forward, confounding opponents and creating mismatches everywhere. On the surface, then, it would appear that New York might be better off in this series without Stoudemire. The Knicks can shift Anthony back to power forward, work Chandler as the sole screener in pick-and-roll plays and space the floor around them with shooters.
The Knicks my well be better off — they could hardly be worse off than they were in Miami — but there are two complicating factors here:
1. The injuries are reaching the breaking point now. Iman Shumpert’s versatility on defense was a key reason those small lineups were successful, but the rookie guard tore his ACL in Game 1. When the Knicks played those identical groups, only with J.R. Smith in Shumpert’s place, their defense fell apart, according to NBA.com. Chandler is recovering from the flu and hasn’t played as many minutes in this series as expected. Baron Davis is always hurting. Jared Jeffries is dealing with knee issues and played just four minutes in Game 2.
The Knicks are running low on bodies that can contribute anything, and Anthony looked gassed at the end of Game 2, flinging up misses and engaging in the sort of tired, lazy switches that can be fatal to New York’s defense.
The Heat have put LeBron James at power forward more often in this series, and their smaller lineups have been very effective against New York. (AP)
2. Few teams go small as effectively as the Heat, who have been happily playing small even more than usual — and even smaller than usual — in this series. They are doing so in both their typical way, with LeBron James at power forward, and even for stretches in which James sits and a smaller player (Mike Miller) works as the nominal power forward. Miami is loaded on the wing and thin up front, and it can “out-small” the Knicks on both ends — especially if fatigue becomes a factor.
The loss of Stoudemire also comes at a time when Woodson, in a move that is both a surprise and the likely result of the Chandler/Jeffries health issues, is leaning more heavily on the Stoudemire/Anthony duo to produce enough scoring against the stingy Heat defense. Woodson spent the entire season terrified of playing Anthony and Stoudemire without Chandler; no such lineup logged more than 15 minutes all season, and five of the seven such groups that had at least 10 minutes together allowed a points-per-possession mark that’s worse than the Bobcats’ league-worst defense (and in some cases, much worse than even that), according to NBA.com.
And yet, in this series, such lineups have combined to log 29 of the 96 minutes the two teams have played, with two such groups among the four units New York has played most often. Anthony, Stoudemire and reserve forward Steve Novak have already played 21 minutes together in this series after sharing the floor for just 50 minutes in the full regular season.
New York has done some nice things offensively with these groups, spreading the floor around Smith/Stoudemire and Anthony/Stoudemire pick-and-rolls, but it has predictably struggled on the other end. The Heat snared some key offensive rebounds against these undersized groups in Game 2; Stoudemire and Anthony did not respond well to Miami’s screening action under the hoop; and Stoudemire and Smith passively watched as Heat point guard Mario Chalmers cut to the corner with 7:10 left, caught the ball and nailed an uncontested three-pointer to halt a mini New York rally that had cut the lead to nine. Overall, Miami has scored 117 points per 100 possessions through two games, a number so high it’s just ridiculous.
It has been interesting to watch Woodson experiment with these groups. (And he’s not the only coach going deep into the well of ideas, by the way. Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle played Dirk Nowitzki for stretches at center in Tuesday’s loss to Oklahoma City, something he has seldom done in the past two seasons. Denver used lineups against the Lakers in Game 1 that barely saw the light of day during the season. Miami, as stated above, is going small much more often without LeBron. The playoffs are fun, matchup heaven.) But they are obviously out the window now that Stoudemire has irresponsibly taken himself out of this series. New York may well be better without Stoudemire in the short term, but it won’t make a difference against a vastly superior Heat team, and the loss of Stoudemire may well be something of an injury tipping point.
In the long term, of course, the Knicks have to decide if the max-money combination of Chandler, Anthony and Stoudemire can work, and if it can’t, what the next steps might be. The Knicks used their one-time-only amnesty clause on Chauncey Billups to free up room to sign Chandler, so they do not have it in reserve to potentially wipe away Stoudemire’s massive deal (three years and $65 million left after this season). This season has felt a lot like an extended rehearsal, with all the chaos and the lack of practice time, and so perhaps the Knicks can find a way to make it all work next season.
For now, they have to fight to try to end an 11-year losing streak in the playoffs.
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