I'd rather have Knight never become an all-star and play with a chip on his shoulder, pissed off at everybody in every game, and win a championship.
There is almost zero chance that Knight becomes a bust. How good will he be? That's the question. He has a great stroke and is already a pretty good defender. Is he Rose, or Irving, or Paul? No, and he'll never be that guy. However, I could see him going to a couple of all star games. I'd like to see him average 16+ points and 6+ assists this year. If he can do that, then I'll be very happy with his progress. I agree with whoever said that he would be a better player if he had better players around him. Give Drummond a year to work on the pick and roll. Give Knight and Monroe time to work on their pick and pop game. Give Knight a legit 20 ppg guy on the wing. I could see Knight developing into a 17 ppg 10+ assist guy. That's not bad.
You see a lot of stuff that I don't see. Do you also see dead people like that little kid in the Sixth Sense?
I've watched the Lions all of my life. Does that count? I just see Knight's floor as a Mike Bibby type PG. If he can get a pick and pop/ pick and roll game going with his bigs, then he could put up some solid assist numbers.
Here's a positive(ish) article on Knight: The First 25 - Has Brandon Knight Improved? - Detroit Bad Boys This made me think of one thing that I suspected: Knight's TOs are more due to his sloppy ball handling than his ability to pass the rock. So I did a little research. According to bb reference, this year Knight has logged 132 assists and 86 turnovers for a putrid AST/TO ratio of 1.53. 82games.com however provides a little more insight. According to them, only 46 of his turnovers were bad passes, so his assits/badpass ratio is 2.9. In that category, he is actually slightly doing better this year (2.7 last year). Doing a little bit of math, he's turning the ball over 52% while passing and 48% of the time dribbling around. Here are the same stats for a few PGs this year to put this in perspective: Player/Assist to badpass ratio/Assist to TOV ratio/% of TOs while dribbling Cream of the crop CP3/6.3/4.1/35% Parker/6.2/3.6/42% Westbrook/5.1/2.7/47% Rondo/4.5/3.2/29% D-Will/4.0/2.7/33% Nash (last year)/3.7/2.9/22% Billups (2010/11 - as last season he was hurt)/3.6/2.2/39% Young Guns Jennings/5.5/2.6/53% Linsanity/5.0/2.2/56% Holiday/4.8/2.3/52% Wall (last year)/4.0/2.1/48% Lillard/3.7/2.1/43% Curry/3.7/2.1/43% Rubio (last year)/3.6/2.6/28% Irving/3.0/1.4/53% Knight/2.9/1.5/48% So, looking at these numbers Knight is the most similar to Kyrie Irving. Knight turns the ball over more while passing and Irving gets it poked out of his hands more. Still trying to make sense of these numbers, but in general, a PG that turns the ball over more while trying to assist someone is a better ball handler, so long as their A/TO ratio is respectable. CP3, Rondo, Nash and to a certain extent Williams fall into that category. The scoring slasher PGs would tend to have more TOs handling the ball, like Parker and Westbrook. I think Knight belongs in that second category. So, all things being equal, if he can bring his A/TO ratio over 2.0 he'd be about as effective as John Wall. Then I looked at Stuckey's numbers. His numbers are 7.0/2.9/59%. So almost two thirds of his turnovers have nothing to do with passing. When he does pass the ball, he's much better at it than Knight. Ok, let's look at his last year when Knight wasn't around and he was solely playing PG, the 10-11 campaign: 5.0/2.3/54%. Holy crap batman, these numbers suggest that Stuckey is as good a ball handler as Linsanity, Jrue Holiday or Brandon Jennings. So, essentially, Stuckey is a better passer than Knight, but Knight is the better ball handler. Huh? I know I should never have attempted to analyze advanced stats. Now I feel weak, uncertain, disgusted and incoherent. Where's that Andre Drummond thread?
One way to explain it would be that Stuckey is drawing more defenders when he drives. That makes it more likely that he will be stripped or get an offensive foul (i.e. inflate his non passing turnovers), but it is also more likely that he will get an easy assist if he dumps it off. It's an interesting thing to try to draw out of the stats though. Not sure how you would really do it. Some problems: - you'd really want to know how much time each guy spent dribbling - you'd want to know if it was easy dribbling (waiting for Rip to curl around Big Ben) or challenging (driving for example) This isn't perfect, but consider the following: Inside FGA/ ast/ passtov/ dribtov/ Charge Knight: 144/ 132/ 46/ 36/ 4 Stuck: 146/ 105/ 15/ 15/ 6 This tells me that on 276 potential drives into the lane, Knight lost his dribble 36 times and committed 4 offensive fouls (14%) On 251 potential drives into the lane, Stuckey lost his dribble 15 times and charged 6 times (8%) Judging by that, it looks like Stuckey protects the ball better when he drives, nearly twice as well. [It makes some assumptions that are probably wrong, but hopefully for both guys equally. It assumes that all assists are generated through penetration, that all FTA were the result of being fouled in the paint, and that all dribbling and charging turnovers were committed in the paint. For inside FGA, I used all FGA in the paint + 50% of all FTA to get the estimate.] Overall, Stuckey and Knight have almost exactly the same assist rate per minute (RS is at 5.2 per 36 and BK is at 5.4). However, their turnover rates are much different. BK is at 3.5 and Rodney is at 1.8. If my assumptions above are anywhere near accurate, then it would seem that Knight is a worse ball handler and also a less efficient passer than Stuckey. However, he has an advantage over Stuckey in the shooting department. The main reason for that is that Knight is shooting an amazing .435 from deep while Stuckey is at .235 and only attempts them 60% as often. That 3-point shooting for Knight puts him 5th in the league among point guards. Also, he is 13th in the entire league among players who attempt more than 2 treys per game (that weeds out the guys who only shoot when 100% open like Bonner). But back the problem at hand- we just don't have the specific details we need to nail it statistically. If you had video archives and logged the plays looking for this, you could probably take a sampling of 10 games and come very close to the right answer.
For statistics, those are big assumptions; to the point that I think it would make analysis unreliable, approaching random. However, if you correlate your results with visual analysis, I think it holds up. Both Knight and Stuckey work the slash and dish game. When Knight hoists a jumpshot, I am often impressed with how smooth it looks. When Stuckey hits a shot, I am often surprised to not hear him yell HEY! and head toward the line.
Agreed. It's too hard to rank ball handlers based solely on the available tracked stats. It really seems to be a hole in the system. You can more accurately figure out good shooters, passers, defenders, etc. This is more like trying to figure out who sets the best picks by looking at offensive fouls only. It's just not enough.
They aren't that bad. The top point guards turn the ball over quite a bit. It's all about the balance between risk taking and mistakes.
No thanks. Kemba is way above his baseline at the moment. Ill take a consistent ok starter BK over an up and down Kemba.
Kemba probably has a better feel for the game than Knight, but considerably less talent. Knight feels like a Jason Terry/ Mike Bibby type player. Walker feels like a tiny SG. I would say that Kemba Walker is probably putting up points on a bad team. Every time I watch the Bobcats, it seems like he's the guy who is dominating the ball. At this point, I would take Knight's length and perimeter shooting over Walker's ability to get buckets on a team that is even worse than the Pistons.
