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[Knicksfan1992]

Defensive stats suck. Most people who do analytics agree that defensive stats are mostly flawed because defense is much more of a team system thing, effort based and based on physical traits than offense is. RJ is not a high "stocks" player which effects how his stats look. He's fine on that end. Not All-Defense but he has good physical traits to not get bullied by big wings. He struggles with quicker guys off the dribble. His best role was his role in his second year when Bullock took the quicker wing assignments and allowed RJ to take the bigger wings and play a little center field as an off ball defensive wing. Which is why Grimes should start over Fournier, but that's a whole other topic.

Ideally RJ is your 2nd best wing defender in the starting lineup but he can function as your number 1 in the right matchups.

[god shammgod]

I’m not watching those old biased videos

Explain why he’s a negative

DBPM


RJ (-1.3)

OBPM


RJ (-0.3)

BPM


RJ (-1.6)

Def RTG (stupid stat but people like it)


RJ 111.6

Def win shares
(nba.com)

RJ 0.089
(ball ref)

Credit to rob!

if use defensive raptor or defensive lebron he comes out looking bad too. he actually had the worst defensive lebron score on the whole team.

They choosing to ignore the evidence cause it doesn’t fit their fantasy narrative

i actually am sick of talking about him, it's too much of a topic here, but some of these claims are just false. the elite defender video ? c'mon man.

[3toheadmelo]

if use defensive raptor or defensive lebron he comes out looking bad too. he actually had the worst defensive lebron score on the whole team.

They choosing to ignore the evidence cause it doesn’t fit their fantasy narrative

i actually am sick of talking about him, it's too much of a topic here, but some of these claims are just false. the elite defender video ? c'mon man.

Good thing we have prominent member of team villain Chanel battling the terrible people for us

[god shammgod]

They choosing to ignore the evidence cause it doesn’t fit their fantasy narrative

i actually am sick of talking about him, it's too much of a topic here, but some of these claims are just false. the elite defender video ? c'mon man.

Good thing we have prominent member of team villain Chanel battling the terrible people for us

chanel should be a lawyer if he's not because he's ready to argue forever

[Iron Mantis]

RJ had some of the most difficult matchups in the league. He didnt fair well, but he had tougher matchups then Burks on average. Burks only started half the season so no way he is close. When Burks did start and was asked to defend better players his efficiency dropped like crazy.

I dont think it was necessarily bad that RJ was given that type of load as hopefully it helps him get better. He did have that really nice 2-3 month stretch even with being our #1 option on both ends. His defense probably slipped during that stretch when he had the heavier offensive load, but our overall defense was decent so he must have been doing something right. More help would make things easier for all...And just hoping we see that with Brunson running the point, and hopefully Grimes who can at least hold his own if not be a big plus on defense.

Read on Twitter

?s=20&t=5jfRiargyNu3O2e9ywm3mg

RJ wasn't drafted to be Kawhi Leonard....he was drafted to do what he did in college: score, rebound, be a playmaker.

Let the man focus on scoring, doing what he can on defense, but let the 3&D handle the toughest wing matchups. It's not complicated.

But he's not a good scorer, and he's not a playmaker.

There were a lot of red flags at Duke, that have transferred to the NBA. It's time to adjust expectations, and give him a role where he can have a positive impact on winning. He's closer on defense than he is on offense.

He can get to his spots wherever he wants whenever he wants, and at the rim, no matter who is defending him.

The hope is he add moves/footwork/savvy, to improve his ability to get his shots off with better efficiency. He knows and acknowledged this....and thus, he's working on it..

RJ has playmaking ability....as the game slows down for him it will get easier. The guy y'all worshiped, Donovan Mitchell, praised RJ's evolution as a playmaker.

He just turned 22 and has the hunger and work ethic to improve in those areas. And he will.

[Deeeez Knicks]

I cannot find the tweet for the whole season but Burks ranked high in match-up difficulty as well.

Here's the Bball Index graph on match-up difficulty from late January. At that point Burks ranked higher in both match-up difficulty and impact. In March he ranked only slightly lower on match-up difficulty but higher on impact.

Read on Twitter

Payton ranked extremely high in match-up difficulty for us yet his defense sucked. A high match-up difficulty doesn't mean you're good on defense, that was basically my point. But I understand that you acknowledge RJ needs to get better, and I think that is fair.

I think you're extremely generous when you say RJ had a "nice 2-3 month stretch". He was good for two weeks. There was a 2-month stretch where he wasn't horrible. That's great

But yes hopefully the team as a whole gets better with the addition of Brunson. They do need to offload Fournier too.

It doesn't even matter about Burks but here's a chart that shows RJ had tougher matchups. RJ was defending the best 2 or 3 every night because they had to hide Fournier. I dont even know why this one is being debated. Just seems like any RJ fact gets debated to death.

Over a 45 game stretch over 4 months RJ put up:
21.8ppg, 5.8rpg, 3.1apg, 42%fg, 37% from 3, 52.6 TS%

Agree, the efficiency will need to get better, but imo it was a nice stretch in which he showed improvement especially considering he had a heavy load as our #1 offensive player and #1 defensive player.

Read on Twitter

?s=20&t=OHQAC4Dka-VU1Y-wF1MWnQ

[3toheadmelo]

RJ at least listens to good music. You old heads would hate it though

Read on Twitter

[Deeeez Knicks]

Defensive stats suck. Most people who do analytics agree that defensive stats are mostly flawed because defense is much more of a team system thing, effort based and based on physical traits than offense is. RJ is not a high "stocks" player which effects how his stats look. He's fine on that end. Not All-Defense but he has good physical traits to not get bullied by big wings. He struggles with quicker guys off the dribble. His best role was his role in his second year when Bullock took the quicker wing assignments and allowed RJ to take the bigger wings and play a little center field as an off ball defensive wing. Which is why Grimes should start over Fournier, but that's a whole other topic.

Ideally RJ is your 2nd best wing defender in the starting lineup but he can function as your number 1 in the right matchups.

Yea, exactly. Grimes could handle some of the quicker guards/wings, RJ could cover the bigger ones.

Ideally RJ is your 2nd best wing/perimeter defender, 2nd or 3rd best scorer/facilitator, 2nd/3rd best rebounder, etc. More of a complimentary type switchable wing that does a little bit of everything. But add it all together and its a good player...kinda like Middleton/Jrue, Jaylen Brown, Wiggins, Siakam, etc roles with there teams. Its a valuable piece. But yea, maybe hes not the franchise savior

[GONYK]

Defensive stats suck. Most people who do analytics agree that defensive stats are mostly flawed because defense is much more of a team system thing, effort based and based on physical traits than offense is. RJ is not a high "stocks" player which effects how his stats look. He's fine on that end. Not All-Defense but he has good physical traits to not get bullied by big wings. He struggles with quicker guys off the dribble. His best role was his role in his second year when Bullock took the quicker wing assignments and allowed RJ to take the bigger wings and play a little center field as an off ball defensive wing. Which is why Grimes should start over Fournier, but that's a whole other topic.

Ideally RJ is your 2nd best wing defender in the starting lineup but he can function as your number 1 in the right matchups.

Yea, exactly. Grimes could handle some of the quicker guards/wings, RJ could cover the bigger ones.

Ideally RJ is your 2nd best wing/perimeter defender, 2nd or 3rd best scorer/facilitator, 2nd/3rd best rebounder, etc. More of a complimentary type switchable wing that does a little bit of everything. But add it all together and its a good player...kinda like Middleton/Jrue, Jaylen Brown, Wiggins, Siakam, etc roles with there teams. Its a valuable piece. But yea, maybe hes not the franchise savior

RJ Barrett is a modern day Caron Butler to me unless he takes major strides with his pull up game. I don't mean that disparagingly at all.

[Chanel Bomber]

I cannot find the tweet for the whole season but Burks ranked high in match-up difficulty as well.

Here's the Bball Index graph on match-up difficulty from late January. At that point Burks ranked higher in both match-up difficulty and impact. In March he ranked only slightly lower on match-up difficulty but higher on impact.

Read on Twitter

Payton ranked extremely high in match-up difficulty for us yet his defense sucked. A high match-up difficulty doesn't mean you're good on defense, that was basically my point. But I understand that you acknowledge RJ needs to get better, and I think that is fair.

I think you're extremely generous when you say RJ had a "nice 2-3 month stretch". He was good for two weeks. There was a 2-month stretch where he wasn't horrible. That's great

But yes hopefully the team as a whole gets better with the addition of Brunson. They do need to offload Fournier too.

It doesn't even matter about Burks but here's a chart that shows RJ had tougher matchups. RJ was defending the best 2 or 3 every night because they had to hide Fournier. I dont even know why this one is being debated. Just seems like any RJ fact gets debated to death.

Over a 45 game stretch over 4 months RJ put up:
21.8ppg, 5.8rpg, 3.1apg, 42%fg, 37% from 3, 52.6 TS%

Agree, the efficiency will need to get better, but imo it was a nice stretch in which he showed improvement especially considering he had a heavy load as our #1 offensive player and #1 defensive player.

Read on Twitter

?s=20&t=OHQAC4Dka-VU1Y-wF1MWnQ

No see now you've changed your statement.

What I'm debating is your claim (that you made earlier) that he always guarded the opposing team's "best player", which is simply not true.

See the games where he was the primary defender on LeVert and Bruce Brown, while Burks and Randle were the primary defenders on Garland and Durant.

Now you are saying that he always defended the opposing team's best 2/3, which I never debated.

Of course he's gonna guard the best 2/3 with Fournier on the team. He's actually done a good job man-to-man but he was awful as a team defender.

PS: The point isn't about who scored higher in matchup difficulty. The point is Burks scored high as well, which goes to show that RJ wasn't the only player to have tough assignments. That's before we mention Mitch cleaning up the mistakes.

[god shammgod]

RJ at least listens to good music. You old heads would hate it though

Read on Twitter

it's fine actually but it's just a very basic list. there's nothing much that's not super popular.

[Knicksfan1992]

Defensive stats suck. Most people who do analytics agree that defensive stats are mostly flawed because defense is much more of a team system thing, effort based and based on physical traits than offense is. RJ is not a high "stocks" player which effects how his stats look. He's fine on that end. Not All-Defense but he has good physical traits to not get bullied by big wings. He struggles with quicker guys off the dribble. His best role was his role in his second year when Bullock took the quicker wing assignments and allowed RJ to take the bigger wings and play a little center field as an off ball defensive wing. Which is why Grimes should start over Fournier, but that's a whole other topic.

Ideally RJ is your 2nd best wing defender in the starting lineup but he can function as your number 1 in the right matchups.

Yea, exactly. Grimes could handle some of the quicker guards/wings, RJ could cover the bigger ones.

Ideally RJ is your 2nd best wing/perimeter defender, 2nd or 3rd best scorer/facilitator, 2nd/3rd best rebounder, etc. More of a complimentary type switchable wing that does a little bit of everything. But add it all together and its a good player...kinda like Middleton/Jrue, Jaylen Brown, Wiggins, Siakam, etc roles with there teams. Its a valuable piece. But yea, maybe hes not the franchise savior

People's inability to parse out the bolded and be objective about it is the biggest flaw I see when people evaluate RJ. Mostly has to do with his draft position and who was taken ahead of him IMO.

Looking at RJ in the lens of like peak Nic Batum, Demar Derozan or Jaylen Brown instead of guys like Kawhi, PG, Kobe etc. makes a lot more sense. Best case scenario is he really puts all of his trades together to the point where he's like Jimmy Butler.

[3toheadmelo]

RJ at least listens to good music. You old heads would hate it though

Read on Twitter

it's fine actually but it's just a very basic list. there's nothing much that's not super popular.

Yeah it’s mostly mainstream songs. At least it’s the good ones lol

[Deeeez Knicks]

Defensive stats suck. Most people who do analytics agree that defensive stats are mostly flawed because defense is much more of a team system thing, effort based and based on physical traits than offense is. RJ is not a high "stocks" player which effects how his stats look. He's fine on that end. Not All-Defense but he has good physical traits to not get bullied by big wings. He struggles with quicker guys off the dribble. His best role was his role in his second year when Bullock took the quicker wing assignments and allowed RJ to take the bigger wings and play a little center field as an off ball defensive wing. Which is why Grimes should start over Fournier, but that's a whole other topic.

Ideally RJ is your 2nd best wing defender in the starting lineup but he can function as your number 1 in the right matchups.

Yea, exactly. Grimes could handle some of the quicker guards/wings, RJ could cover the bigger ones.

Ideally RJ is your 2nd best wing/perimeter defender, 2nd or 3rd best scorer/facilitator, 2nd/3rd best rebounder, etc. More of a complimentary type switchable wing that does a little bit of everything. But add it all together and its a good player...kinda like Middleton/Jrue, Jaylen Brown, Wiggins, Siakam, etc roles with there teams. Its a valuable piece. But yea, maybe hes not the franchise savior

RJ Barrett is a modern day Caron Butler to me unless he takes major strides with his pull up game. I don't mean that disparagingly at all.

Butler was a good player...2 time allstar, NBA champ i think.

RJ at least attempted a lot more pull-ups last year, which resulted in lower efficiency. But I think it was good he attempted them and is trying to make strides in that area. Hopefully it pays off eventually. Its why I am not overly concerned on the efficiency at this point...it needs to get better, but theres lots of paths for improvement

[cgmw]

Just chiming in to point out that losing his Alec Burks and Elfrid Payton security blankets will be a make-or-break adjustment for Thibs. IDK which team you guys have been watching, but RJ Barrett can focus on defense because he is now firmly third banana on offense behind Thibs' two main go-to workhorse isolation scorers. RJ's adjustment is just one of the questions you should be asking:

* Can Brunson be the ball-dominant north-south workhorse that Thibs demands out of his PG?
* Will Grimes seize the opportunity or will he be trapped in Thibs' rigid role of a 3-D Reggie-Bullock release valve?
* When D. Rose misses half the season, which will happen, can IQ effectively step into the rigid Thibs' PG role?
* And yes, can RJ adjust to being the third option of offense, which he most certainly will be?

One thing about Thibs, we know exactly what to expect. He is an old dog way beyond learning new tricks.

We can 100% expect Jalen Brunson to dribble the air out of the ball, put his head down, and attack the rim North-South on 2 out of every 3 halfcourt possessions because that is what Thibs preaches/demands. We can 100% expect Thibs to continue to spoon-feed and coddle Julius Randle with forced isolation looks masquerading as PNR every 1 out of 3 halfcourt possessions. Consequently we can expect a natural dip in production (but spike in efficiency) from RJ Barrett who won't crack 20 ppg as long as Brunson stays healthy.

IMO the biggest key to whether or not the Knicks achieve the >.500 record the bosses so desperately crave for their meaningless Playoff berth is extremely simple -- it all comes down to 3 pointers. Can a Brunson-led Thibs' dribble-drive isolation scheme produce enough quality 3-point looks to overcome the decidedly huge talent gap our roster faces compared to the rest of the East?

Just me, but I wouldn't bet on it.

[Deeeez Knicks]

I cannot find the tweet for the whole season but Burks ranked high in match-up difficulty as well.

Here's the Bball Index graph on match-up difficulty from late January. At that point Burks ranked higher in both match-up difficulty and impact. In March he ranked only slightly lower on match-up difficulty but higher on impact.

Read on Twitter

Payton ranked extremely high in match-up difficulty for us yet his defense sucked. A high match-up difficulty doesn't mean you're good on defense, that was basically my point. But I understand that you acknowledge RJ needs to get better, and I think that is fair.

I think you're extremely generous when you say RJ had a "nice 2-3 month stretch". He was good for two weeks. There was a 2-month stretch where he wasn't horrible. That's great

But yes hopefully the team as a whole gets better with the addition of Brunson. They do need to offload Fournier too.

It doesn't even matter about Burks but here's a chart that shows RJ had tougher matchups. RJ was defending the best 2 or 3 every night because they had to hide Fournier. I dont even know why this one is being debated. Just seems like any RJ fact gets debated to death.

Over a 45 game stretch over 4 months RJ put up:
21.8ppg, 5.8rpg, 3.1apg, 42%fg, 37% from 3, 52.6 TS%

Agree, the efficiency will need to get better, but imo it was a nice stretch in which he showed improvement especially considering he had a heavy load as our #1 offensive player and #1 defensive player.

Read on Twitter

?s=20&t=OHQAC4Dka-VU1Y-wF1MWnQ

No see now you've changed your statement.

What I'm debating is your claim (that you made earlier) that he always guarded the opposing team's "best player", which is simply not true.

See the games where he was the primary defender on LeVert and Bruce Brown, while Burks and Randle were the primary defenders on Garland and Durant.

Now you are saying that he always defended the opposing team's best 2/3, which I never debated.

Of course he's gonna guard the best 2/3 with Fournier on the team. He's actually done a good job man-to-man but he was awful as a team defender.

PS: The point isn't about who scored higher in matchup difficulty. The point is Burks scored high as well, which goes to show that RJ wasn't the only player to have tough assignments. That's before we mention Mitch cleaning up the mistakes.

My point was just that RJ had the most difficult matchups on the team, and some of the most difficult in the league. He was on par with the elite wing defenders in the league in terms of difficulty. Like you said, he actually graded out well as a man-to-man defender. But true, his team defense did not grade out well. But think about it...he was often defending the other teams best player and doing a good job, as you even said...but team defense was bad. Maybe a part of that was also the team.

[Reign23]

RJ's our best wing defender by default

Grimes has solid potential, but he doesn't have the size to guard bigger wings, Cam has the size but not the consistency, and Fournier just sucks on that end

RJ's a decent defender, but nothing special. He was asked to guard the toughest matchups cause we had no one else, but he's not good enough to do so on a nightly basis.

just this. nothing more to say in this discussion tbh.

[Reign23]

Watch on YouTube

Bunch of answers about Grimes to start the presser

thibs spends the first two minutes basically telling us why we and everybody think grimes would be the perfect fit at the two... just to start Fournier.

[Knicksfan1992]

Yea, exactly. Grimes could handle some of the quicker guards/wings, RJ could cover the bigger ones.

Ideally RJ is your 2nd best wing/perimeter defender, 2nd or 3rd best scorer/facilitator, 2nd/3rd best rebounder, etc. More of a complimentary type switchable wing that does a little bit of everything. But add it all together and its a good player...kinda like Middleton/Jrue, Jaylen Brown, Wiggins, Siakam, etc roles with there teams. Its a valuable piece. But yea, maybe hes not the franchise savior

RJ Barrett is a modern day Caron Butler to me unless he takes major strides with his pull up game. I don't mean that disparagingly at all.

Butler was a good player...2 time allstar, NBA champ i think.

RJ at least attempted a lot more pull-ups last year, which resulted in lower efficiency. But I think it was good he attempted them and is trying to make strides in that area. Hopefully it pays off eventually. Its why I am not overly concerned on the efficiency at this point...it needs to get better, but theres lots of paths for improvement

Yeah I think a lot of people would have a different view of RJ if he simply just shot free throws better lol. He's got so much low hanging fruit for his efficiency to improve. That's why I don't really worry too much about it at this stage of his career. If it doesn't start to get better this year, then I could see being more concerned.

[Reign23]

oh no I just spent a few minutes reading through the 1000th RJ bashing party from the usual suspects.
shame on me I guess.