Drafting for Defense, Lower Risk Drafting, the New York Knicks' 2011 Draft, and Iman Shumpert (Updated and Corrected Version)

An original version of this was posted twelve hours earlier that lacked information about the Knicks acquiring center Josh Harrellson from a second round trade. Although all the main points remained valid (thank the Lord) the original version was definitely flawed due to not mentioning Harrellson.

A few hours later an even bigger error was discovered. About half way through the original version (and through this corrected version) a question is posed regarding which type of roster is better, and there are two options, (a) and (b). The correct answer is (b) but in the original version it was claimed that the correct answer is (a). Oops, that blunder is going to go down in history as one of the top ten editing blunders of all time.

As a perfectionist I apply quality control to everything produced (up to and including discontinuing things that just are not working out). But even though I am someone who sometimes gets into too much of a hurry to "get something out the door" I can not seem to stick to an obvious and very smart rule: A seemingly completed report will NOT be posted for at least 24 hours while undergoing quality control review.

Often I'm lucky when I push something out the door because quality control reveals no errors to speak of. Other times there are minor errors that I correct without any reposting needed. But this time I got burned. I was in too much of a hurry, and also I was not experienced enough with looking at draft results to be able to completely and correctly understand them quickly.

I am going to try to follow the 24 rule every time from now on.

Due to the major omission and the major error in the first version, it is being deleted and replaced with this version. I realize that deleting and reposting is generally NOT a good way to apply quality control nor a good way to publish reports; it's pretty rude and confusing actually. But I had to do it in this case. This is approximately the third time this has ever been done (out of about 750 Reports) and hopefully it will be the last time.

So now here is the updated and corrected version:

Quest for the Ring (QFTR) has vast resources at its disposal (including its own custom creations) for reporting on how and why NBA championships and playoff games were and are won and lost. But those resources are not so vast when it comes to looking at college players / draft prospects. Today I spent a few hours shoring up QFTR access to quality information about players not in the NBA, especially NCAA and Euro players who might be drafted.

The NBA draft is largely a hype type of event (all pomp, circumstance, reputation and fantasy with much less real significance). Because of that and because we are always backlogged as it is, QFTR generally ignores the NBA draft. Unfortunately, you can not know in advance whether a drafted player will ever be a superstar or whether he will ever be important in NBA playoff games. Much fewer than half of the drafted players will be superstars and maybe half of them will ever be capable of being important in NBA playoff games. Some drafted players won’t even last through a career in the NBA but will end up in the D-League or elsewhere instead. You can’t tell on draft day how drafted players will fare, although approximately the first half dozen players drafted are much more likely to be major factors in the future than are ones drafted seventh and later.

Having said all that, one useful thing you can do is glance through the draft and see if a team with a notorious problem used the draft in the best possible way to try to solve that problem. In this instance QFTR checked on the New York Knicks who only had one draft pick to make, the 17th pick of the 2011 draft (a round one pick). But they made a draft day trade to pick up a second drafted player.

The notorious problem of the Knicks is that their defense is so bad that regardless of how wonderful their offense is (and with the combination of Amare Stoudemire at the 4-spot (PF) and Carmelo Anthony at the 3-spot (SF) it could be very wonderful indeed) the Knicks will always go down in flames in the playoffs until and unless they get serious on defense. Neither Stoudemire nor Carmelo Anthony is a big defensive asset. Both of them are offensive geniuses but defensive dunces if you want to know the truth. Stoudemire and Anthony need to get serious and need to improve defensively, but since neither will ever be defensive superstars even if they get better, the Knicks would have to do more than get Stoudemire and Anthony to defend a little better to have a chance. At a minimum the Knicks need a truly outstanding defender at center or power forward to go along with what they have now.

In order to win the Quest, the Knicks have to be realistic and try to win it with offense more so than with defense (and yes that can be done, as you just saw here in 2011 with the Dallas Mavericks). But they can not disrespect or ignore defense and they can not expect to have a chance with a substantially below average defense.

Knicks Coach Mike D’Antoni is an outstanding offensive coach but he is actually obsessed with offense and may be a fatal liability with respect to what the Knicks would have to do defensively to stand a chance to advance in the playoffs. QFTR has recommended that an assistant coach who is expert on defending be given more authority than most assistants get so that the Knicks might be able to offset D’Antoni’s gaping defensive blind spots. Either that, or D’Antoni himself is going to have to get real on defense, or else the Knicks are going to need a new coach.

I’ll tell you one thing, although QFTR was happy as you can get after Carmelo Anthony in effect agreed with QFTR that Denver will never ever win the Quest with George Karl at the helm, we were not happy that Carmelo ended up being coached by Mike D’Antoni, because what he needs is a defensive genius coach, not an offensive one. If a player never gets the type of coach he really, really needs, that right there can easily kill his chances to win the Quest; ask Allen Iverson for example if you are in doubt about that.

Unbalanced stars and superstars benefit much more from coaches who are outstanding in what they are not. A star or superstar player who is great on offense but poor on defense needs a defensive genius coach and vice versa. Sometimes that can backfire though. If the coach disrespects or misunderstands the player, a real disaster can occur. For example, defensive coach extraordinaire Larry Brown coaching offensive powerhouse Allen Iverson produced a disaster: Iverson was moved from point guard to shooting guard which was a massive error which partly (or slightly if you prefer) ruined Iverson’s career.

See this Report for more detailed recommendations of what the Knicks need to do to have a chance in the playoffs in the next few years. In this Report here I wanted to take a look at who the Knicks drafted here in 2011 with their one and only pick. They drafted a point guard, Iman Shumpert out of Georgia Tech, Atlantic Coast Conference.

Alright, every team needs at least two quality point guards, and we know that two of the three current Knicks point guards, Chauncey Billups and Anthony Carter, are both over the hill and are both going to retire soon. Billups will be 35 this coming season and Carter will be 36. Guards rapidly go downhill once they reach 33-35 years old. So to go along with Toney Douglas, the Knicks needed a point guard from either the draft, from a trade, from free agency, or from a lucky break.

A lucky break is when you get a player who is good enough to start off of waivers or from the D-League or from a foreign League. (Obviously you should never count on getting a lucky break although you should always be trying to get one of them.)

Apparently, for their round one pick the Knicks were trying to simultaneously get a point guard to go along with starting point guard Toney Douglass and the aging Billups and the aging Carter (who will probably soon be waived) while at the same time addressing their horrendous defense. So they made the logical move of using their first round pick, the 17th pick in the draft, to draft a point guard who has been a great defender in college.

Well, the decision may have been logical as far as it went but was it a powerful enough decision for winning The Quest for the Ring? Was it the best possible move? Will drafting Shumpert pay off enough to put the Knicks in contention in the playoffs?

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Not only will the draft of Shumpert not by itself put the Knicks in contention (which you probably didn’t need QFTR to tell you) it was probably not a very smart move to make overall (although it would have been worse if the Knicks had drafted a point guard who was NOT a really good defender and at least satisfactory on offense).

In general it is a bad idea to draft point guards. The exception is the very best point guards, the obvious superstars of the NCAA, the ones who are so outstanding that even if they are never quite as good in the NBA as they were in College they will still be NBA stars at a minimum. As two examples of what should be safe point guard picks, take Derrick Rose, drafted first in 2008, and the number one 2011 pick, Kyrie Irving.

It’s pretty safe to draft the absolute top two or three college point guards but beyond that all bets are off. The absolute best two or three point guards from college each year generally guarantee you at the very least a solid starter / very good type of point guard who will be good enough to be a factor in some playoff games. With any luck, you’ll get a star or superstar who will be more than good enough to impact playoff games.

But when you draft a point guard who was NOT among the very best three point guards in College you might end up with a point guard good enough to win a lot of regular season games but not good enough to win playoff games. Or you might end up with a point guard who is not even good enough to win a lot in the regular season! As I said, all bets are off.

The Knicks obtained the fifth point guard chosen in the 2011 draft. Assuming they were chosen in actual order of how good they really are (which could be a wrong assumption but we will make it here for present purposes) the Knicks pick was pretty close to the top three but not quite there. So bottom line the Knicks are taking a small risk with the pick of Shumpert. This will end up being a wise pick if and only if the Knicks have a little bit of luck to go with this pick. But if won't ever be the best possible pick the Knicks could have made.

DRAFTING FOR DEFENSE
Aside from the obvious point that you look for players who were way above normal defenders what else do you need to do if you want to draft for defense? You have to keep in mind that centers and power forwards are more important than guards when it comes to defense.

GENERAL ORDER OF IMPORTANCE OF POSITIONS FOR DEFENDING
1.Center
2.Power Forward
3.Small Forward
4.Point Guard
5.Shooting Guard

Obviously many teams will vary a little from this; for example, on some teams, the power forward will be the most important defender, ahead of the center.

When looking at defense, centers and power forwards should be looked at as a unit. If you have a starting center who plays a lot of minutes who is NOT a great defender than you need a starting power forward who is a great defender to make up for that. And the other way: if you have a starting power forward who plays a lot of minutes who is NOT a great defender than you need a center who is a great defender to make up for that. But you can NOT make up for an overall roster of centers and power forwards who are not very good defensively by having point guards and shooting guards who are outstanding defenders. Why not? Simply because point guards and small forwards are not as important defensively as are centers and power forwards.

Even though it is all important to have centers and power forwards who are outstanding defenders, you should not think that if you have them that you could win a lot of playoff games even with poor defending point guards and shooting guards. But generally you can often get away with point guards and shooting guards who are just average defensively if you really do have centers and power forwards who are outstanding defensively.

Which is better between the following?

(a) Power forwards and centers who are average defensively and point guards and shooting guards who are well above average.

(b) Power forwards and centers who are well above average defensively and point guards and shooting guards who are average defensively.

The answer is definitely (b).

THE KNICKS AT THE 2011 DRAFT
Therefore, since the Knicks need defensive help at center / power forward more than they need it at other positions, if they seriously and optimally wanted to address defense in the draft they should have drafted a center in round one. The Knicks’ only above average center is Ronny Turiaf who has been getting a little better each year but is still only a little above average among all NBA centers, both defensively and overall. That’s not good enough when you don’t have a starting power forward who is outstanding defensively. Moreover, backing up the defensively challenged Amare Stoudemire at power forward are two other power forwards, Jared Jeffries and Derrick Brown, both of whom are below average overall and who are definitely not good enough to be impact players in the playoffs.

Therefore, on the night of the 2011 draft, although the Knicks did need a point guard, they needed a center or a power forward or even a small forward who is outstanding defensively much more so. And since it is safer to draft any player OTHER than a point guard in the draft than it is to draft a point guard (unless you have a top ten pick and you get one of the absolute best three point guards) the Knicks did not make the best possible decision in round one in the 2011 draft. They should have drafted a center who is an above average defender: a great rebounder, a great blocker, and/or a great make them miss type of defender.

The Knicks did pick up a center in the 2011 draft; from New Orleans via a trade, they got Josh Harrellson. But 18 centers and power forwards were drafted ahead of Harrellson. At the point of the Knicks' first round pick, only seven centers and power forwards had been drafted. So the Knicks could have and should have drafted a center or power forward in round one in which case they would have ended up with the 8th drafted center or power forward instead of the 18th.

Strictly looking at centers things still look bad but not as bad for the Knicks. They ended up with the fifth drafted center. But they could have ended up with the third drafted center and that's 40% higher in percentage terms which is very substantial.

QFTR first published this Report without even realizing that the Knicks had obtained Josh Harrellson from a draft day trade with New Orleans. It's no surprise we got snookered for a few hours due to not being experienced at looking at the fine print in draft results. I told you we generally ignore the draft and I meant it; we didn't look at the fine print and notice that the Knicks had obtained Harrellson via a trade with New Orleans until about eight hours after this Report was published.

But we didn't have to modify the Report all that much because all of the primary points still stand. Again, the bottom line is that the Knicks needed a center more than they needed a point guard. Round one is much more powerful than round two. So the Knicks needed a center in round one more than they needed a point guard. In general, players chosen in round two are much more likely to never be stars or better in the NBA compared with round one picks.

Even if Josh Harrellson turns out to be better than you would expect for a round two pick the Knicks in the 2011 draft were still guilty of continuing to obsessively push offense while short changing defense. QFTR has a slight offensive bias but we can not support the Knicks' seemingly out of control obsession with offense. The Knicks continue to treat defense as if it was an after thought and that's wrong.

GETTING CENTERS AND POWER FORWARDS FROM THE DRAFT IS LOWER RISK
If you want to avoid wasting a draft pick on a player who ends up below normal for most of or all of his career, you want to draft the positions which entail the least risk of that happening:

RISK OF BAD DRAFT PICKS BY POSITION FROM HIGHEST RISK TO LOWEST
1.Point Guard
2.Shooting Guard
3.Small Forward
4.Center
5.Power Forward

So again, the Knicks should have drafted a center in round one. For point guard for the coming season the Knicks should have settled for Billups and solid starter Toney Douglas. For a superstar point guard who would ensure that the Knicks’ offense is the very best in the NBA they would then work on a trade for that. Meanwhile they would have drafted a low risk, outstanding defensively center to shore up that horrible defense.

Even if the Knicks get lucky and Iman Shumpert turns out to be a star point guard or better, that won’t happen for at least a few years. But a trade can easily get you an instant star or superstar point guard. Another problem with drafting the point guard Shumpert is that it all but closes the door on the possibility of historic superstar point guard Chris Paul becoming a New York Knick. (Paul has recently been dreaming and openly speculating about teaming up with Stoudemire and Anthony).

Because playing point guard correctly in the playoffs is actually a complicated thing, experienced point guards are generally better for the playoffs than young ones. For the playoffs, a veteran, star point guard with a lot of experience is approximately equivalent to a young superstar point guard with little or no playoffs experience. In other words you might as well boost the veteran up one level if you are comparing a veteran to a young point guard for the playoffs.

If that veteran, star point guard used to be a superstar before age started catching up with him than that’s like an insurance policy for winning playoff games. For example, remember that Dallas Mavericks owner Marc Cuban traded Devin Harris for Jason Kidd. What he was doing was trading a younger, inexperienced point guard for a veteran, experienced one. On the surface that might have seemed to be a mistake since overall Harris was at least as good as Kidd at the time of that trade. And then of course Kidd became even older after the trade. But since point guard is more complicated than most people think it is, especially in the playoffs, this was a very, very smart thing for Cuban to do. Kidd was smart enough and experienced enough to be able to help win razor tight games in the 2011 Championship. Devin Harris would probably have lost those tight games to the Miami Heat and Miami rather than Dallas could easily have won the series if Devin Harris (or any younger point guard) had been the Dallas point guard. In fact, of all the moves Cuban made that led to the Mavericks winning the 2011 Quest, getting Jason Kidd was probably the most important.

BUT IMAN SHUMPERT WILL IN FACT BOOST THE KNICKS POOR DEFENSE
Note, in the following discussion what is compared are not merely raw counts, but rather the pace adjusted rates for the defensive plays discussed, which corrects for different playing times. So when it’s stated that player x made more of something than player y, it means that player x made more of the thing for any given number of possessions.

For a guard, Shumpert was an extremely good rebounder in NCAA College basketball. Among the 49 players drafted from the NCAA to the NBA in the 2011 draft, Shumpert is the 24th best rebounder, extremely (or amazingly if you prefer) good for a point guard. Among the fifteen point guards drafted from the NCAA to the NBA in the 2011 draft, Shumpert is tied with Alec Burks to be the second best rebounder in college; Norris Cole was an even better rebounder than were Shumpert and Burks.

Even the best guard defenders make very few blocks and so it’s no surprise that Shumpert made very few blocks in college. The only three drafted point guards who made a non-trivial number of blocks in college are Kyrie Irving, Charles Jenkins and Reggie Jackson.

STEALS AND WHO MAKES THEM
Although overall guards are less important than forwards and centers when it comes to defense, there is one type of defensive play that guards make much more than forwards and centers: the steal. In general, NBA coaches underrate the importance and value of steals. Guards and small forwards who make a lot of steals are not only underrated but are often ignorantly criticized for “gambling too much” on defense.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained! Steals lead to easy fast break scores, so guards who make a lot of steals should be considered extremely valuable defenders rather than gamblers. The term “gambler” should be reserved for guards who try too often to make steals relative to their ability to make steals. The guard can either make a lot of steals or he can not. If he can not, then trying to make a lot of them is gambling. If he can and does make a lot of steals, trying to make a lot of them is definitely not gambling.

Although classified as a defensive play, due to the easy fast break scores coming off them, steals are really both defensive and offensive plays at the same time. Steals are extremely important for winning razor close playoff games.

Among the fifteen point guards drafted from the NCAA to the NBA in the 2011 draft, Iman Shumpert made by far more steals than any of them. (Norris Cole was way behind in second). Kyrie Irving, Kemba Walker and Charles Jenkins were the other outstanding “thieves” among the point guards. Those who understand how important steals are will want to keep their eyes out on these draftees especially in the coming years.

If you look at personal fouls you find that Shumpert made more of them than any of the other point guards among the fifteen drafted. That’s bad because the last thing you want is for your point guard to be in foul trouble in a close, important NBA game. Also, it suggests that Shumpert might not be as good at making shooters miss as the Knicks think he is. On the other hand, it certainly supports the idea that Shumpert is an aggressive, energetic defender who if he can somehow keep the referees off his back might very well turn out to be one of the best defenders among young point guards during the next few years.

In summary, it’s really true: Iman Shumpert really is a very outstanding defender among point guards. But again, the Knicks needed a center who is a great defender more, and also, the risk with drafting point guards is much more on the offensive side than on the defensive. If a point guard (or a shooting guard) is an offensive bust, it becomes almost irrelevant how great a defender he is. (George Karl so very much does NOT understand or agree with this, laugh out loud.)

IN COMING MONTHS...
How good Shumpert was in college offensively will most likely make it into a future Report. How good Josh Harrellson was and is now in the NBA will definitely make it into future reports. Before you say “yeah right, QFTR is always promising future stuff that they never have the time to produce” consider that:

--We are nearing roll out of three new (custom, never seen before) point guard evaluation performance measures.

--We are going to continue to focus heavily on the New York Knicks, indefinitely.

So therefore, surprise!, QFTR actually WILL be giving you in depth evaluation of Shumpert on offense (NCAA and NBA) and of Josh Harrellson in the coming months.