The Knicks failed to make the playoffs and we could have seen it coming

“Nobody was expecting this,” Knicks head coach Mike Woodson said of his team missing the playoffs for the first time since 2010.

“At the beginning of the season, nobody ever thought we’d be in this situation, in this position that we’re in right now,” said star forward Carmelo Anthony, who will not play in the postseason for the first time in his 11 year career. After coming into last year’s postseason as the second seed in the Eastern Conference, the New York Knicks are a lottery team. But to say no one was expecting this outcome would be a lie.

On Oct. 15 of last year, practically six months ago to the day, ESPN’s computer-based, analytics driven computer projection system called SCHOENE predicted that the Knicks would finish the season 37-45. Their current record after 80 games? 35-45 and eliminated from the playoff race.

In explaining why the SCHONE projections had the Knicks faring so poorly, two of the reasons Kevin Pelton gave were the team’s projected 3-point outage and the aging roster. Both proved true to an extent, as you’ll see later in this column.

Six months ago, the team’s response to this prediction was typically and naturally bombastic.

“Sometimes there’s glitches in the computer,’’ Anthony said on Oct. 16. “That’s all I can say.’’

Woodson took it even further, asking if the computer model is the one that plays. “It’s a computer system. I don’t think computers run up and down the floor,” Woodson said. “You still have to play the game, guys. I don’t get caught up in that. I don’t have any control over the computers. The only thing I can control is our team and how we play.’’

Half a year later, Woodson and Anthony were singing different tunes about how their season turned so sour.

“We didn’t get it done and being the coach, I just apologize to the fans because they pay their hard-earned money to go out and see us play and we didn’t come in this season expecting this,” Woodson said on Sunday. “We dug a hole early and we tried to make a major push here at the end and we just didn’t get it done.”

The Knicks famously started the season 10-21 with injuries and inconsistencies, building to a point where their deficit in the playoff race proved insurmountable.

“It’s hard now, it’s hard for me to accept it. It’s just a hard situation,” Anthony said.

“There are so many reasons why you could look back and say ‘we should have done this or we should have done that,'” Amar’e Stoudemire said. “That’s pretty much the unknown at this point. You can never really pinpoint one particular reason. So it’s been a tough year, ”

But believe that this Knicks team missing the playoffs was no glitch, and that there are plenty of particular reasons to pinpoint what went wrong.

“You could point the finger in a lot of directions but I’m not one to sit and complain,” Woodson said, refreshingly showing accountability for the team’s mess. “It’s my responsibility as the coach to get this team into the playoffs and I didn’t get it done.”

It was the perfect concoction of defensive inefficiencies, coaching philosophies, offseason moves and injuries that derailed this team.

We’ll start on the offensive end, where the team subtly missed 3-point marksmen Steve Novak and Chris Copeland and J.R. Smith got less efficient after an award-winning 2012-2013 campaign.

Knicks O	Points	FG %	3 FG %	Turnovers	Made 3’s	Pace	Points Per Shot
2012-2013	100	44.8	37.6	11.6	10.9	89.8	1.23
2013-2014	98.5	44.9	37	12.3	9.3	90.2	1.2

 

The Knicks only averaged 1.5 fewer points per game this season than last, but that’s a pretty big drop-off when you consider that the team’s point differential is minus-one point per game this season. The field goal percentages are pretty much the same, but SCHONE predicted the 3-point decrease, and the fewer points per shot and higher turnover rate adds up over the course of an 82-game season.

Adding Andrea Bargnani, as this writer expected, hurt the team in many ways. Tyson Chandler’s fractured leg in the third game of the season hindered a lot of what the team wanted to do early on. The team’s lack of an average point guard hurt the team as well. Raymond Felton really fell off this year, to the point where he was barely playing at a replacement player level, if that. Iman Shumpert fell off and Metta World Peace was a disappointment, negating the pleasantly surprising rookie season Tim Hardaway Jr. had. Management was definitely lacking in many ways, which may now be alleviated with Phil Jackson now in the fold.

But the real noticeable and discernible difference is on defense.

Knicks D	Points	FG %	3 FG %	Reb Margin	Forced TO	FT Attempts	Points Per Shot
2012-2013	95.7	45.8	35.7	-1	14.5	22.2	1.23
2013-2014	99.5	45.9	37.2	-1.6	13.7	25	1.27

 

The Knicks allowed more threes and made fewer threes, and they scored 1.5 fewer points and allowed nearly four more points per game this season than last. It all adds up to a significantly worse record than last season. Last season, the Knicks scored as many points per shot as they allowed. This season they were allowing .07 more points per shot than they were scoring, which also adds up over the course of a season.

A lot of the problems also arose from Woodson’s stubborn nature. New York’s small lineups, featuring Anthony at power forward, were extremely successful this season and last, but Woodson repeatedly went back into his comfort zone and started two big men and kept his two-ballhandler lineup off the floor.

In addition, Woodson’s switch-heavy defensive philosophy clearly didn’t work, leaving defenders confused at times, and often leaving shooters wide open and players and fans loaded with frustration. The poorly executed switches were evident in how poorly the Knicks guarded long-range shots, which you’ll see in the following charts.

Knicks D	Under 8 Feet	8-16 Feet	16-24 Feet	24+
2012-2013	57.6	38.9	39.3	36
2013-2014	55.4	39.7	40.9	37.4

This season, the Knicks are allowing the fourth highest shooting percentage on 16-24-foot shots and the fifth highest percentage on shots beyond 24 feet. New York greatly improved their shooting defense from within eight feet but got markedly worse from long range, which accounts for their worse allowed points per shot.

Is it possible that the Knicks never truly bought in to Woodson’s philosophies this season until it was too late?

“We gotta get to the point where we buy into it from the beginning and we gotta try to master it before the playoffs,” Stoudemire interestingly said.

Was it possible that expectations were just too high for the team this season after their dubious offseason decisions and numerous injury risks?

“They should have been a little higher if you ask me,” Stoudemire said. “On paper, we might be the best in the league…we just couldn’t put it together.”

Woodson didn’t go nearly as far as Stoudemire did, but emphatically said that the team being bit by missed player games was a killer. “Our personnel was good when it started out and people started to tumble,” Woodson said. Smith had his marijuana suspension, Chandler went down early, Kenyon Martin couldn’t stay in the lineup, Stoudemire had early minutes restrictions. Even Felton and Pablo Prigioni missed time, as Woodson mentioned (though he said he wasn’t making excuses).

“We are playing better basketball, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that we’re a little healthier than we were earlier on in the season,” he said. “There are a lot of what-ifs and those are the things as a coach that you can’t control.”

Of course there were things that the Knicks couldn’t possibly control, but they botched a lot of the things they could control and it spiraled towards the ugly quite quickly.

“It all started from early, games that we lost you could always say they come back to bite us. You could say injuries, you could say this, you could say that but it is what it is,” Anthony said, still in a state of disbelief that he would not be playing postseason basketball.

“We just didn’t, as a unit, we just didn’t get it done,” Woodson said. “And it all started earlier in the season and we dug a hole and we were desperately trying to get out of  that hole and it was a good fight. And I’m not knocking anybody in that locker room because they fought to get us to this point. We fell short.”

The Knicks may have fell short of the expectations placed on them by the coaches, players and fans, but according to the ESPN SCHONE projections the disappointing New York Knicks were just an ordinarily mediocre 37-45 team waiting to happen.

Shlomo Sprung is a national columnist for SheridanHoops who loves advanced statistics and the way they explain what happens on the court. He is also the web editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A 2011 graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, he has previously worked for the New York Knicks, The Sporting News, Business Insider and other publications. His website is SprungOnSports.com. You should follow him on Twitter.