Derek Fisher thinks Knicks can jump ‘from 15 [wins] to 63’ next year
The New York Knicks are running out the clock on the worst season in franchise history. A campaign that began with postseason aspirations quickly turned fecal, with the combination of a near-total lack of defensive personnel and the struggle to learn a new offense leading to an Opening Night blowout, the Knicks’ longest losing streak ever and feckless play that led fans to hide their faces in paper bags.
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That was before Carmelo Anthony finally got the season-ending surgery he’d put off for months so he could “host” the All-Star Game. And before a buyout put a sad period at the end of the unfulfilling sentence that was the Amar’e Stoudemire Era. And before watching the jettisoned J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert come home to give the basketball gods “heartburn.” And before the Knicks got officially eliminated from playoff contention a full month before the end of the season by the guy who went just one eternally infuriating spot before the Knicks’ pick in the 2009 draft.
An “experiment [that] has fallen flat on its face,” a “project gone awry” … however you want to describe it, it’s been bad, and a pessimist might say that it can always get worse. An optimist, though, would suggest that it’s always darkest just before the dawn.
Yes, the 2014-15 Knicks have been abysmal. But the 2015-16 Knicks could be better, with a once-again healthy Anthony, an infusion of fresh young talent in the form of a top 2015 draft pick (probably) and possibly some free-agent reinforcements brought in with the scads of salary cap space (estimated to be about $30 million) that New York will have available this summer. Fortunes can change in a heartbeat in the NBA, and by the sound of it, Knicks head coach Derek Fisher expects an especially drastic shift for his team, according to Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN New York:
The Knicks’ head coach said Thursday that the Knicks “will turn around quickly.” When asked about potentially duplicating a dramatic 23-game turnaround like the Milwaukee Bucks (38-40) have done this season, Fisher said the Knicks are capable of something much more stunning.
“I guess that’s possible, but we are not here trying to squeeze in, we are not here trying to go from 15 to 36,” said Fisher, whose Knicks currently have 15 wins. “That’s just not who we are. So it can turn around quickly. It will turn around quickly.
“But we don’t really have to put a number on it,” Fisher continued. “We are 6-21 in games [decided] by six points or less this year. So we lost 21 games on two possessions. So we don’t have go from 15 to 36 next year. We can go from 15 to 63 if we really want to. But that is up to us.”
Before we go any further, let’s first take a moment to applaud how quickly Fisher went from “We don’t really have to put a number on it” to “We can go from 15 to 63.” That is exactly the kind of quick market correction that Knicks fans hope to see next season!
That said … that’d be a pretty broad jump, Fish. Like, wildly, unprecedented-in-NBA-history massive.
I’ll explain this carefully, in case you are not as good at advanced basketball analytics as I am: to go from 15 wins, which the Knicks have now, to 63 wins, which Fisher thinks the Knicks can do next year if they really want to, they would need to win 48 more games next season.
The biggest single-season year-over-year increase in wins in NBA history is 42, accomplished last decade by the Boston Celtics, who went from 24-58 during the 2006-07 season to 66-16 in their championship-winning 2007-08 season.
So, in order for Fisher’s rock ‘n’ roll dreams to come through, the Knicks just have to increase their win total by as much as Boston did after trading for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. And then add six more wins on top of that.
Seems pretty simple. I’m surprised more other teams haven’t done it.
No other team has ever topped 40 additional wins in a single-year turnaround. The San Antonio Spurs added 36 from 1996-97 to ’97-’98, which coincided with getting David Robinson back from a broken foot and taking Tim Duncan with the No. 1 overall pick in the 1997 NBA draft.
So the Knicks just need ‘Melo to come back from injury as strong as The Admiral did, to secure the No. 1 pick in the lottery, to have whichever big man they take — likely either Jahlil Okafor of Duke or Karl-Anthony Towns of Kentucky — be as good as Duncan instantly, and then add 12 more wins on top of that. Total murderdoll status.
Oh, and also, Fisher and his staff just have to be as good at scheme design, system instruction, in-game adjustments and rotation management as the Doc Rivers/Tom Thibodeau combo and/or Gregg Popovich. Easy, breezy, beautiful, Cover Girl.
So, yeah, making the kind of jump Fisher discussed is exceedingly unlikely. That said, taking meaningful steps doesn’t have to be, even without getting blessed by the basketball gods with health and generational talent.
Fisher’s right to point to the Knicks’ dismal record in late and close games as an area for improvement. While the ability to create and make shots in such situations can certainly come down to talent, much also relies upon effort and attention to detail, areas in which the Knicks — and, it’s worth noting, first-year coach Fisher — have often struggled this season.
The Knicks rank in the bottom 10 in the league in both turnover rate and points per game allowed off turnovers. Crisper execution of the triangle sets they’ve spent the year installing, along with more confident and expedient movement into counters once initial actions are cut off, could go a long way toward dropping both numbers. And after a chaotic first run through the wringer, Fisher could prove to have a steadier, more experienced hand in Year 2, especially when it comes to making calls late in tight contests; it’s worth noting here that, quiet as it’s kept, the Knicks have actually shown some improvement in close-and-late situations over the course of this lost season.
Experience, continuity and sheer randomness could help nudge that record in games decided by a half-dozen points or less into something closer to .500, which in and of itself would go a long way toward helping the Knicks improve from abysmal to merely bad. It’s not much, but after the way this season has gone, it’d be a hell of a start. And from there, the Knicks would just be a returning Hall of Famer, a brand new Hall of Famer, and maybe a third Hall of Famer away from completing their transformation from zeroes to heroes.
Sure, it sounds unlikely. But crazier things have (literally never) happened.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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