Tonight will be the 15th game the Knicks have played under Mike Miller. This is both a good and a bad thing.
It’s bad because now when I go to the NBA’s stats page, I won’t be able to look at only the Miller games by using the nifty drop-down menu because that only goes up to “Last 15 games.” Now I actually have to input something in the “Date from” field, which takes a good 8-10 second longer. These seconds really do start to add up after a while.
It is largely good though, because
any lingering questions about how real or fake all of this actually is should go finally by the wayside. Not only does 15 games feel like a very representative sample size, but after playing the Lakers,
Miller’s Knicks will now have faced half of the teams with the top 10 net ratings in basketball, including three of the top five, as well as five of the six teams that have 25 or more wins.
Compare that with only
four games against teams with one of the ten worst net ratings, and you can now officially shove your arguments about how whatever is happening isn’t legit.
And stuff is happening. Aside from the downright respectable -1.1 net rating under Miller I referenced yesterday, as well as their improved defensive and offensive shot profiles I’ve written about a few times,
the Knicks have climbed up from the cellar in several basic but still key areas. Perhaps most importantly, they have the
21st-ranked effective field goal percentage in the league with Miller at the helm after being
dead last under Fiz. Elfrid Payton is a lot of things, but a shooter ain’t one of ‘em.
They’re also taking much better care of the ball now. Their
12.9 turnover rate since December 6 ranks sixth in the NBA over that timeframe, whereas their 15.3 figure before ranked
18th. On a related note, they have the
12th best assist to turnover number under Miller; it was
29th with Fiz.
One thing that was thought to be going well with David Fizdale was rebounding, and it was, to an extent. The Knicks were the fourth best offensive rebounding team under his watch, but only 16th in defensive rebounding rate and
16th overall. Thanks to more consistency on both ends under Miller, they’ve been
6th.
Last, and perhaps most surprisingly,
after playing at a snail’s pace (
27th in the league)
for the first 22 games, the Knicks have been the 11th fastest team in the NBA under Mike Miller, as Tom Piccolo brilliantly wrote about last week.
Now for the truly crazy part: they might be leaving a good bit of productivity on the table.
