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NBA Stats Notebook: Why the Knicks' low-passing offense works so well

nqajqrqw7months ago (05-19)Basketball Hub106

The NBA schedule naturally lends itself to several checkpointsthroughout the season that serve as frames of reference to check ateam's pulse. The trade deadline and All-Star break are typicallyviewed as the midseason opportunities to evaluate performance.

However, for some teams, there's a specific date when theirseason drastically changed. For this year's New York Knicks, thatdate is December 4, 2022.

That night, in a 92-81 win against the Cleveland Cavaliers, TomThibodeau trimmed New York's rotation to nine players. Since makingthe tweak, the Knicks are 27-14 and one of three squads with top-10offensive and defensive ratings, per Cleaning the Glass.

New York has bounced up to the fifth seed in a strong EasternConference and only gotten better since acquiring Josh Hart priorto the trade deadline. His addition, marking another importantseason benchmark, has coincided with a seven-game winning streakthat has given this young squad a glow in the nationalspotlight.

The Knicks are fun because they don't have one cure-all playerresponsible for the surge. Sure, Jalen Brunson's off-dribble juicehas changed the game, and Hart has been a seamless fit so far, butthis squad really jells because of collective improvement andsynergy across the rotation.

New York owns the second-best offensive rating innon-garbage-time minutes since Dec. 4, and they are No. 1 since thewin streak began. But interestingly, their scoring distributionlooks nothing like the pass-heavy green flags we associate with"good" offense. Look at some of these ball-movement numbers fromthe league's stats database since Dec. 4:

StatValue (sinceDec. 4)NBARankOffensive Rating116.25thPasses per game265.525thAssists per game21.630thPotential assists pergame38.930thAssist-to-passratio9.6%29th% of makes that wereassisted52.3%30th
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