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Carmelo Anthony
KG, Paul, Joe, Shaun, & the Nets took the Knicks to school on their home court. (AP)
Hello New York basketball hipsters. Thank you for your continued support of The Brooklyn Game, your only locally-grown artisanal analysis of the Brooklyn Nets. Do the cool thing and pick up an unironic t-shirt at The Brooklyn Game Store. Your support keeps us alive. Thank you!
Here's a roundup of today's Nets festivities.
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How long does this impeccably chiseled goatee have in New York City? (AP)
Thank you for your continued support of The Brooklyn Game. Here's some Nets news & notes from around the 'net:
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(Note: SPONSORED POST)
Who has the best fantasy basketball value in New York? (AP/Kathy Willens)
Close your eyes and imagine a landfill. I want you to envision all the foul smelling items you have disposed of recently mixed in: expired food, dead rat carcasses stuck in mouse traps, human vomit, and all the other wretched things left to never be seen again in those horrible places. Try and conceptualize what that odor might smell like if you were to accidentally take a whiff. Starting to get a good feel for what experiencing that horrible part of the Earth may be like?
Also, have you figured out where I’m going with this?
As disgusting as that landfill might appear, the state of basketball in the state of New York is ten times worse. Staring at the screen for more than a ten second period during a Brooklyn Nets game makes my temperature suddenly rise and a pain grow in my forehead. It actually makes me physically sick to watch that team. To be fair, the Knicks aren’t any better (their record is actually worse). I am not even a New York sports fan, nor from the state, so I can only imagine how the locals feel.
But just because they aren’t playing well doesn’t mean that there isn’t fantasy value to be had. Most of the time, bad teams present value in fantasy because other owners will overlook them or just avoid. Bad teams have a tendency to get blown out or just don’t have an entertaining brand of basketball to watch, so owning their players is no fun. We've talked about this on Fantasy Basketball Money Leagues. Considering the high expectations the Nets had coming into the season, I doubt you were able to acquire their players at a discount. The Knicks, on the other hand, were very superstar-heavy from the start. If you wanted someone on the team, you targeted Carmelo Anthony and if you whiffed on him, you could wait a long time for the next.
I wanted to find out which team holds the better fantasy value. So I will go position by position analyzing which team has the superior fantasy performer at each spot. For only then can we really determine which team is more of a fantasy landfill than the other. Here's what I found:
How bad is it? This bad. (AP)
The Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks face off tonight in what's widely considered the worst Nets-Knicks game of all time. Just how bad is it? Here's some facts we found on tonight's matchup.
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Positional issues bring these two together in the middle. (AP)
Carmelo Anthony: 42.3 FG%, 27.7% 3P% 26.3 PPG, 2.5 APG, 9.9 RPG, 1.1 SPG, 0.6 BPG, 2.7 TPG, 40.4 MPG
Joe Johnson: 43.8 FG%, 42.9 3P% 16.0 PPG, 2.7 APG, 3.0 RPG, 0.3 SPG, 0.2 BPG, 1.0 TPG, 33.3 MPG
This is perhaps the oddest matchup of all: Joe Johnson, who normally plays at shooting guard, will go up against Carmelo Anthony, who in recent years has played most effectively at power forward. But New York Knicks coach Mike Woodson's steadfastness in keeping two big men on the floor with Anthony whenever possible and Brooklyn's injury woes have set these two against each other, each their team's most prolific wing scorer.
Anthony's game has been ruthlessly dissected and analyzed over the past three seasons as the face of New York basketball. He represents one of the biggest gulfs between the "eye" test and the "numbers" test; Anthony's offensive scoring touch is nearly unrivaled in the NBA, and he can score from just about anywhere on the floor. But the numbers don't lie: through 16 games, Anthony is shooting a career-worst 42.3 percent from the field and under 28 percent from three-point range. The once-bulletproof forward even drew the ire of teammate Iman Shumpert, who lit into Anthony on the bench following a missed defensive assignment:
Johnson hasn't looked much better -- or elevated his team much higher -- but Joe Cool has been nothing if not consistent, scoring in double digits in all but two games this season and shooting 43 percent from three-point range. He's also not considered a lock-down defender, but has a better reputation on that end than Anthony. He's also got the league's best crunch-time resume, including a game-winning shot against these very same Knicks last season, one of four that he talked me through in training camp:
Anthony is a more versatile scorer, a far superior rebounder, and does an incredible job limiting turnovers despite having the ball in his hands for far longer than Johnson. It's closer than you might think, but Anthony's all-world offensive game both on and off the ball gives him the edge.
EDGE:
| Next: Kenyon Martin vs. Kevin Garnett |
Full Matchup Breakdown:
Each day that there's a playoff game, we'll have three things to watch in the NBA playoffs. Each note will be accompanied by a contest. We'll announce winners after each round. Here's today's three things to watch:
1) Indiana doing it again. The Pacers now have a 2-1 lead over the Knicks in the second round of the playoffs, and it's no accident. While New York runs its offense through Carmelo Anthony at a historic rate (more on that in a bit), the Pacers utilize a balanced attack. Three different players (David West, Paul George, Roy Hibbert) have led the Pacers in scoring in their three games against New York, and they've gotten important contributions from George Hill and D.J. Augustin (in Game 1). It's not just their offense: the Pacers have done an excellent job funneling three-point attempts away from New York like no team has been able to this year. At home, their success should continue tonight.
2) An unlikely hero. With San Antonio joining the world in expecting Stephen Curry to shoot the Warriors through the playoffs, the Warriors got two unlikely heroes in their two series wins: guard Klay Thompson (who put up an enormous 34-14 in Game 2) and Harrison Barnes (who somehow took 26 field goal attempts in their Game 4 overtime victory). I'm guessing Thompson will do it again: you can only stay at home on Curry for so long without giving Thompson some open looks.
3) Melo the shooter. As Kevin Pelton of ESPN noted today, Carmelo Anthony is currently using 38.7% of his team's possessions in the playoffs, the highest of any multi-series playoff performance ever. He's taken 230 field goal attempts in the playoffs, just ten fewer than his next two teammates combined. If that trend continues and Anthony continues to shoot poorly -- just 39.1% in the playoffs an 29.5% from deep -- it could spell trouble for New York.
Will Thunder strike again? (AP)
Each day that there's a playoff game, we'll have three things to watch in the NBA playoffs. Each note will be accompanied by a contest. We'll announce winners after each round. Here's today's three things to watch:
1) Indiana vs. Manhattan. The Pacers defeated the Knicks 102-95 in Game 1 on the road, thanks to a balanced effort -- six Pacers scored in double figures and they led by 16 heading into the fourth quarter. With a win today, the Pacers would secure a dominating home-court advantage -- needing just two wins with as many as three more games at home. The Pacers produced a convincing 44-30 edge in rebounding, unexpectedly led by Brooklyn-born guard Lance Stephenson.
2) Kevin Durant. Oklahoma City barely eked out a victory in Game 1, winning 93-91 against the Memphis Grizzlies, one of the league's best defenses and a team that starts Marc Gasol, the league's Defensive Player of the Year. Kevin Durant led OKC to victory behind 35 points on 13-26 shooting, adding 15 rebounds and a 19-footer to take the lead for good with 11 seconds left. There's few ways -- if any -- to stop Kevin Durant, but if any team has the capability of doing it, it's the Grizzlies, who employ both Gasol and Tony Allen, arguably the league's best perimeter defender. Memphis has a bevy of talented scorers, and the Thunder barely won even with Durant's routine explosion and may need an unlikely hero to seal Game 2.
3) Carmelo Anthony's shooting. Anthony is no stranger to shooting -- Game 1 marked the 44th time this season that he's recorded more field goal attempts+free throw attempts than points. He averaged 28.7 points on 28.8 FGA+FTA per game in the regular season, which makes this proposition basically a 50-50. The Knicks will be most successful if Anthony's shooting efficiently -- will he?
Deron Williams & Brooklyn will try to even up the cross-borough series today. (AP)
The Brooklyn Game goes roundtable-style to break down today's final Nets-Knicks matchup... MORE →
Expect another dogfight. (AP)
Today, Martin Luther King Day, marks the final of four matchups between the Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks. unless the playoff alignment Gods dictate it so, these two teams won't face off again this year. After the Nets took the first matchup on November 26th, New York responded with two victories: one a 100-97 squeaker that came down to the final play, the other a 100-86 laugher that was done by the third quarter.
In honor of tonight's final Clash of the Boroughs AKA the Battle for New York's Soul AKA Excuse for Spike Lee to Yell A Lot AKA a regular season NBA game, we at The Brooklyn Game have broken down each of tonight's positional matchups, the benches, and the coaches, just to get an idea of what to expect tonight.
Start Here: Deron Williams vs. Jason Kidd
Full list:
Deron Williams vs. Jason Kidd
Joe Johnson vs. Iman Shumpert
Gerald Wallace vs. Carmelo Anthony
Reggie Evans vs. Amar'e Stoudemire
Brook Lopez vs. Tyson Chandler
Bench Mob vs. Knicks Bench
P.J. Carlesimo vs. Mike Woodson
Villain. (AP/Kathy Willens)
In their still-blossoming rivalry with each other, the Knicks and Nets have played two hard-fought, high-spirited games with each other where heroes have emerged for both sides. But from the perspective of Nets fans, a true supervillain has emerged – someone who is guaranteed to torment the Brooklyn franchise for years to come. ... MORE →
