thebuzzardman wrote:Knox gets a lot of heat on this board, at least from some. I know I got on him for his defense.
Defense aside, which we know needs a lot of work and may never be good, Knox is a pretty decent scorer. Or I should say "was", as a young 19, and a rookie.
So, this year, he'll start the season 20 years old and about 2 months. That means he started last year at 19 years old, two months. Which means he was playing in the summer league at 18 (ok, barely)
Ultimately, Knox's FG % wasn't all that hot. We know he took, and missed enough shots.
But young players are almost always inconsistent.
When you look at Knox's form on his jumper, it's good. He's good at 3's off the dribble, catch and shoot, off a cut. He's good on pulling up on jumpers inside the arc. This is based on form. It's there. Did he miss enough 2 pt FG's? Oh yes.
Knox missed enough layups to go with jumpers. I think it was obvious a lot of them were about strength. Again, he's pretty adept at finishing, in that he has a variety of moves and can adjust, but he wasn't adjusting to getting bumped as he has to get stronger.
Two things: 19 years old, rookie. Those will get better. Probably starting this year, but it might take 3 years total.
So, Knox's FG% was .370%, which is pretty bad. However, 40% of his shots were 3 pointers. That's going to pull the FG% down some, though obviously he has to get better at 2 pt FG's, through a combination of finishing stronger and more consistency with his jumper.
Knox's FG% for 3PT range was .343. NBA league average was .355.
Yeah, Knox was .012% points "off" league average. What is that, missing one more 3 every 5 games?
Point is, a young guy, at 19, coming off one year of college and adjusting to the new distance, shot league average for 3. That bodes well for Knox to become an above average 3 point shooter.
Last, but not least. Knox shows some skill in the open court and driving the ball. He's got good form on both his 3 point jumper and dribble pull up jumpers from 2 point range. Again, both need consistency; the driving needs strength/work. But Knox has something most young players don't have and lots of vets don't have. That floater.
Knox's floater/push shot is a weapon and I'm surprised it isn't discussed more. Watch his highlights. Knox is hitting floaters, adjusting to the defense ANYWHERE in the paint. And I mean anywhere. I must have counted like 10 from around the FT line.
Knox has a shot that enables him to get off a shot he is clearly comfortable with, that he uses to adjust to the defense being played, from anywhere from 12 feet in. And I mean anywhere. Sure, lots of players have the "line up with the basket straight in" floater, but Knox uses his floater like a jump hook push shot from all angles.
Maybe I'm over analyzing it (well, yes I am) but I think you take that ability, add Knox's 3 point range, already decent NOW, his decent ability to put the ball on the floor (for a SF), and his ability to dribble and hit jumpers, plus adding some strength on drives, and I think Knox winds up being a pretty potent scorer one day.
In fact, I think at some point in his career, Knox has a 20 ppg season. At least one.
Yeah, I said it.
To add to this, Knox was actually surprisingly decent as a PnR scorer. 64th percentile, 45% eFG, not world beating, but really solid especially for someone so big and so raw. Spot ups were alright too, 43rd percentile, 51% eFG, he just could not iso to save his life (11th percentile, 29% eFG), and he only shot 50% around the rim (which is dreadful)
I think it's perfectly fair to give him passes for last year. Given that he was the youngest player in the league and not the most polished guy coming out, plus the fact that our "system" was very iso heavy and we didn't pass very well which was not catered to his skillset at all. Which, to be fair, he was just kind of an overall terrible offensive player last year, not really good at anything in particular, even his PnR scoring which he was the best at relative to the rest of the league was still pretty mediocre
His defense is another story. I think I posted the stats in the DSJ thread, but my new favorite tool on stats.nba.com is a two player on/off comparison, gives you one player's stats when another player is on vs off, and in the admittedly small sample of games DSJ was here, Knox being on the floor with him made his Drtg 15 points worse (and his offense 11 points worse). This is a bit of an exaggeration, so I use Frank as a control, which has him being 8.3 points worse defensively when Knox is on vs off. Not as dramatic as DSJ, but it's probably more indicative and is still pretty bad (in case you were wondering, Knox made our offense with Frank 3.2 points better, but we were still by far better off with him on the bench. It's kind of a scenario where neither option makes us good, but in terms of NetRTG it's the difference between being a bottom 5 team and being far and away the worst team in the league)
https://stats.nba.com/vs/advanced/#!?PlayerID=1628372&VsPlayerID=1628995&Season=2018-19&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&DateFrom=02%2F02%2F2019&DateTo=08%2F01%2F2019https://stats.nba.com/vs/advanced/#!?PlayerID=1628372&VsPlayerID=1628995&Season=2018-19&SeasonType=Regular%20Season&DateFrom=02%2F02%2F2019&DateTo=08%2F01%2F2019I do like his potential. He's just, terrible right now which is to be expected. I think a good comp for him might be Gallo, just overall a very good but not great scorer, and I think while his defense was pretty cancerous this year, we could at least develop it into being, good enough to stay on the floor in a tight game. Give him 2 or 3 more years of development and he could be really nice for us
