Lichtenstein: Knicks And Nets Close To Contention ... April Fool's!
By Steve Lichtenstein
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What better way to celebrate April Fool's Day than to schedule a game between New York City's two professional basketball teams, both of whom have foolishly run their respective franchises into the ground.
The Nets and the Knicks are both headed for Lottery Land as soon as this season mercifully concludes. Emptyhanded, I might add, despite sporting the league's fourth- and the seventh-worst records, respectively. Trades from prior regimes for ancient (Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce) and underachieving (Andrea Bargnani) players have gifted prime slots to fellow Atlantic Division members Boston and Toronto for this coming June's NBA draft.
It will take years before all the rubble is cleared from these disasters.
Brooklyn will cross the East River to face its rivals at Madison Square Garden on Friday night, which also happens to coincide with the 28th biirthday of the impish twin brothers who man the middle for both teams. Brooklyn's Brook Lopez has gotten the better of the Knicks' Robin in two of the first three meetings.
Brook and Robin, who in addition to DNA share an affinity for comic books, superhero movies and mascot bashing, once played together while at Stanford.
Which got me thinking, what if we combined these two wretched rosters? The resulting fantasy would obviously yield a more competitive team, but how much more? Both clubs are front-court heavy with weak backcourts. Could we find the right mix of 15 currently healthy players (the Knicks' Lance Thomas and the Nets' Jarrett Jack were not considered because they're out for the season with injuries) with size, athleticism, 3-point shooters and perimeter defenders to contend with the big boys in this postseason?
Assuming there's no such thing as a salary cap, let's find out:
CENTERS
Starter: Brook Lopez (Nets)
Reserve: Robin Lopez (Knicks)
Knicks rookie sensation Kristaps Porzingis could certainly eat some minutes here, which is why I only included the Lopezes.
The twins have vastly different approaches to the game, but Brook is the superior player and deserves the starting nod. He has been the Nets' best player this season by far, averaging 20.6 points, 7.8 rebounds and 1.7 blocks per game while shooting 51.4 percent from the field. His passing out of the post has improved dramatically — it's too bad he's had very few willing cutters to act as recipients on his current team.
Robin is the better defender and rebounder but less comfortable on the other end in the post. In his eight NBA seasons, he's only had one when he averaged over 28 minutes per game. He may be paid $13 million a year, but he's best suited as a backup.
FORWARDS
Starters: Carmelo Anthony (Knicks), Kristaps Porzingis (Knicks)
Reserves: Thaddeus Young (Nets), Bojan Bogdanovic (Nets), Derrick Williams (Knicks)
D-League: Chris McCullough (Nets), Sean Kilpatrick (Nets)
Anthony and Porzingis would be my starters among this deep position group. For all his alleged sins, Anthony leads the Knicks in assists (albeit at a paltry 4.2 per game) and still commands a double team when he gets going. The Triangle has not been kind to his 3-point efficiency (34.6 percent this season), but I believe his form from two years ago would return with better spacing.
Porzingis can be a matchup nightmare if used properly. He has very good instincts for a 20-year-old, which bodes well for the future. He'll hit the weight room in the offseason, so he won't wilt as much against those who try to pound his body. He also needs to improve his 3-point rate above his current 33 percent.
For this combined team, Porzingis would be a better fit than Young for areas such as rim protection and picking up loose change resulting from the oppositions' focus on Anthony and Lopez. Young, for all his success this season as the Nets' Energizer Bunny, is too undersized and not an efficient enough long-range shooter to play big minutes on a better team.
The loss of Thomas really hurt the Knicks, and he'd be missed here as well. He was not only New York's premier wing defender, he was also knocking down 40.4 percent of his 3-pointers. In addition, his presence allowed Anthony to sometimes shift to power forward, where he has often found more favorable matchups.
As opposed to Thomas, Williams and Bogdanovic are one-dimensional specialists. Williams excels in faster-paced contests, and Bogdanovic is more the standard catch-and-shooter. Neither play any defense, which makes them liabilities for any stretch longer than the typical six-minute reserve runs.
McCullough and Kilpatrick should be sent to the D-League to stay in game shape, since it would be very hard for either of them to see the court outside of garbage time.
GUARDS
Starters: Jose Calderon (Knicks), Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (Nets)
Reserves: Langston Galloway (Knicks), Arron Afflalo (Knicks). Jerian Grant (Knicks), Shane Larkin (Nets)
Not a particularly exceptional list, especially with the omission from consideration of Jack, who injured his knee in early January.
That leaves Calderon as the only credible point guard between the two teams. He won't beat anyone off the dribble or keep penetrators out of the paint, but he can still convert from long range at a greater than 40 percent clip, and he doesn't turn the ball over much.
Like with the Nets, Hollis-Jefferson is desperately needed here to guard people. The 21-year-old rookie's ankle injury that cost him 50 games this season has made his sample size a bit small, but there's no denying his impact on the games. It's not a coincidence that the Nets' team defensive rating goes from 100.3 points allowed per 100 possessions when Hollis-Jefferson is on the court to 108.8 points when he is off the court.
I would say that Hollis-Jefferson's versatility would allow him to swing up in smaller lineups, but there's just very little quality backcourt depth here to do that. Afflalo has been such a disappointment that most Knicks fans are praying that he will opt out of his $8 million contract for next season. Chris Herring of The Wall Street Journal recently dissected Afflalo's performance and reported that the disparity between his shooting percentages during wins and losses is among the greatest in the NBA, which implies that he too often shoots his team out of games.
Among point guards, Galloway is more reliable and a better defender than Larkin, but his March shooting (31 percent from the floor, 25 percent from deep) attests to his own battles with consistency.
Grant has shown flashes that he can succeed in this league, but he's a 23-year-old rookie who can't get playing time on a team that is 16 games under .500. He'd be an extra point guard here.
COACH
None of the above.
OK, if I was forced at gunpoint to choose between the two interim coaches who should be meeting again in two weeks on the unemployment line, I would go with Brooklyn's Tony Brown over New York's Kurt Rambis.
At least the Nets look like they're having fun while they're getting run out of arenas. Brown seems to understand that the Nets are playing for future seasons, which is why he uses certain odd combinations, such as Bogdanovic and Sergey Karasev against teams with superstar wings such as the Heat and Cavs. He'll run out five-man bench mobs no matter how many times they get obliterated because the organization gets to evaluate more players that way.
Since Brown took over for fired coach Lionel Hollins, the Nets are playing at a faster pace and shooting better. Oh, their defense has been beyond atrocious, but the games have been more entertaining.
Which is more than can be said about the Knicks, who have imploded after Derek Fisher was relieved of his duties on Feb. 8.
The latest controversy revolves around whether or not Rambis really conversed with Afflalo about his recent benching -- which glosses over the fact that 32-year-old Sasha Vujacic is now actually starting for an NBA team while Rambis can't give a young player such as Grant regular minutes.
PROGNOSIS
A combined team with eight Knicks and five Nets (plus two others from Brooklyn who could play in the D-League), in my opinion, would win about 40 to 45 games. The improvement would mostly come from better depth — the bench would certainly be competitive with most teams.
However, they'd still get killed by all the terrific point guards in the league, and Lopez's poor pick-and roll defense would make them susceptible to more open 3-point looks just like it does with the Nets.
In the absence of a playmaking point guard, the offense could get bogged down late in games by the isolation preferences of stars Anthony and Lopez. Hollis-Jefferson's erratic shooting could be problematic on nights when Porzingis doesn't have it from long ranges.
My guess is that this roster would have enough firepower to be a playoff team, but one that would get bounced in Round 1 by one of the East's top seeds.
That shows how far Knicks president Phil Jackson and Nets general manager Sean Marks have to go before either organization can be considered a legitimate contender.
Jackson has already had a year under his belt, one in which he registered a big hit with the drafting of Porzingis but didn't come close to filling all the club's holes.
Marks is in his second month on the job after taking over for the "reassigned" Billy King, who set the franchise almost all the way back to its final New Jersey days. So far, Marks has been saying all the right things about patience and value while shaking up the team by clearing roster spots through buyouts of Bargnani and Joe Johnson that he used for younger players.
Both the Nets and the Knicks will have significant salary cap space after this season, but in the past that has been more of a curse than a blessing. Transformational NBA players are not choosing to leave a team in free agency to play in New York City the way they have in other sports. More often, Knicks and Nets fans have gotten stuck with overpriced mediocrity.
We've been the fools.
For all things Devils and Nets, please follow Steve on Twitter at @SteveLichtenst1
