More basketball tonight!
— New Orleans Pelicans (@PelicansNBA) October 30, 2021
🏀: vs Knicks
🕕: 6 pm CT
📺: @BallySportsNO
📻: @ESPNRadioNOLA pic.twitter.com/GDbkJ0kQXF
Losses continue to pile up as we lose a nailbiter last game.
Tonight we take on the 4-1 Knicks, currently 1st in the Eastern Conference, in what is very likely to be a loss. The Knicks are a very similar defensive team to us, in terms of rating (16th to 19th) but unlike us, with our 24th rated offense, the Knicks are 4th so far this year. They just have firepower that we currently do not, even with Julius Randle and RJ Barrett both currently shooting horribly (both shooting under 30% from 3 on high volume).
A lot of this is currently based on Kemba Walker, Evan Fournier, and Derrick Rose all shooting at least 42% from 3 on at least 4 attempts a night: Kemba's currently shooting better than 58% from 3 on 6 a night! They're taking the 4th most threes in the NBA and making the most, as well as generally not turning it over that much. Combine that with being in the top half of the league in assists, it's no wonder that their offense is looking shiny even with RJ and Randle struggling to score.
The plus side is that relying so heavily on legitimately absurd 3pt shooting is the kind of offense that can collapse at any point. The downside is that there's very little we can do as a team to make that happen - 3pt shooting is largely independent of defense played on it, according to the data we have. Good 3pt defense doesn't change the likelihood of a shot to go in: once the ball is in the air, the defender is out of the equation. Good 3pt defense is about deterring the shot in the first place, and can we do that at a high enough level? It's a real question.
So let's see what happens.