NBA Recap 03/04: New York Knicks @ Boston Celtics

New York at Boston								Advanced Stats		4 Factors
Teams	1	2	3	4	OT	T		PACE	Offense	EFG%	TOR	ORR	FTR
NY	29	27	16	31	8	111		98.73	102.83	0.48	17.26	33.33	22.34
BOS	27	24	29	23	12	115			104.46	0.47	11.05	25.53	17.48

New York Knicks Shots Location:

At Rim			3-9 Feet			10-15 Feet			16-23 Feet			Threes
FGM	FGA	eFG%	FGM	FGA	eFG%	FGM	FGA	eFG%	FGM	FGA	eFG%	FGM	FGA	eFG%
23	42	0.55	4	10	0.40	4	9	0.45	2	15	0.13	8	18	0.67

Boston Celtics Shots Location:

At Rim			3-9 Feet			10-15 Feet			16-23 Feet			Threes
FGM	FGA	eFG%	FGM	FGA	eFG%	FGM	FGA	eFG%	FGM	FGA	eFG%	FGM	FGA	eFG%
22	36	0.61	1	10	0.10	9	16	0.56	6	23	0.26	7	18	0.58

Yesterday's game showed that both teams had a well defined game plan. The Knicks didn't want to be involved in a half court game against Bosh and they really tried to run and push up the pace. Looking at the pace of the game (98.73), we can say that their mission was accomplished! However, they showed little patience in executing their offense, with 22 turnovers, with some of them being committed on the early offense! Baron Davis was particularly the perfect example of the Knicks kamikaze style on the offense. Every time he had the ball on his hands, he took high risk decision and this is why that in just 21 minutes, he had 7 assists and 6 turnovers. His assist rate of 63.6% and TO rate of 54.5% is almost a case study!

By playing Keving Garnett and Brandon Bass on the frontcourt, Boston has been constantly outrebounded and yesterday was no exception, with the Knicks having the edge 33.3 vs 25.5% on the offensive rebound rate! The Knicks forced and looked to play down low and they scored 54 points in the paint, even though they weren't effective with 23-42 FG at the rim. Even their lack of effectiveness, it's better for them to take a shot at the rim than take a long two jumper.

On the other side, Boston showed why Doc Rivers and his coaching staff is really good. The Knicks defense is run by former Hawks coach Mike Woodson and if you recall how the Hawks played on the past few years, they were defensively a pure "switching team", as they would easily switch in the rotations in almost every play. Boston took notice of that and therefore ran a big number of high pick n rolls and suddenly they had Pierce vs Lin or Garnett vs Fields/Shumpert, with clear size mismatches in favor of the Celtics. When the Knicks attempted to make up the mismatch, then Boston rotated the ball and found an open from the perimeter: I recall Pietrus missing several completely wide open treys or Rondo passing the ball and taking advantage of the open space.

Speaking of Rondo, he had a magical game except in finishing off near the basket, where he just didn't have the touch with 6-13 FG at the rim and 0-4 FG from 3-9 feet. Mike D'Antoni tried the same strategy that worked in Toronto (while defending a red hot Calderon) a couple of weeks ago by putting Shumpert defending the opposing PG. However, that strategy simply didn't work as once again the Knicks switched on the defensive end and Shumpert ended up defending another guy. D'Antoni also made some poor decisions down the stretch in my opinion by not committing a foul and send the game to the FT line when they were up by 3 just to watch Pierce tying the game with a contested trey and then in the OT, D'Antoni decided not to foul once again when down by 5 points with just 32 seconds to go, allowing Boston just to ran the clock.

Boston won the game, but once again their weaknesses were quite evident: poor rebounding with little or no depth on the frontcourt plus a complete lack of continuity between their starters and their second unit, as not a single bench player had a positive +/- team numbers! On the other side, the Knicks are still a work in progress and on this shortened season with few chances to practice, I really don't think that they will have the proper time to take "the next step" this season.