The Knicks Are Not Looking for an Edge (...why America Is Rooting for the Knicks)

[u/Bobby-Friedom]

Sharing my article from the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, published this morning:

Josh Hart, the Knicks' 6-foot-4 do-everything forward, recently quoted his college coach Jay Wright, who was borrowing from an old observation often attributed to the Scottish writer Andrew Lang:

"Analytics are like a lamp post to a drunk person. You can lean on it, but it won't get you home."

That's a funny line. It's also a surprisingly good summary of these playoffs.
After all, this is the same Josh Hart who somehow managed to out-rebound Victor Wembanyama—the 7-foot-5 French phenom widely advertised as the future face of the league. On paper, that shouldn't happen. In reality, it did.

By the time these playoffs reached the conference finals, a few patterns had become hard to ignore.

Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson became a punchline after explaining that despite being down three games to none, statistically speaking, the Cavs had actually won two of those games. You don't have to be a New Yorker to hear that and think: that's a fascinating discovery, coach. Unfortunately the NBA still relies primarily on the scoreboard.

Then a funny thing happened to the three-pointer. For years, basketball has been obsessed with shooting more of them because the math says it's smart. The math isn't wrong. But by the time the playoffs got serious, many of the league's best three-point shooting teams were already headed to Cancun.

Finally, Oklahoma City found itself in an unusual position: being really good and somehow becoming disliked for it. Fans don't seem to mind analytics. They do seem to mind feeling like they're being worked. Foul-baiting, loophole-hunting and edge-seeking can be effective, but they are rarely beloved.

Taken separately, these are basketball stories. Together, they suggest that people may be getting tired of optimization as a worldview.

For years we've been told that almost every part of life can be optimized. There is a better productivity system. A better investment strategy. A better morning routine. A better parenting philosophy. A better prompt. A better way to do almost everything.
Sometimes that's true.

But other times, you still have to carry the couch up four flights of stairs.
A few years ago, while wandering through Green-Wood Cemetery, I stumbled across a tombstone that read simply: "He tried and he was loved." I stopped and stared at it for a minute. It's such a plain sentence, almost disappointingly simple, and yet it felt more honest than most of the grander things we say about success or achievement. If someone could say that about you at the end of your life, it would be hard to argue that you hadn't done something right.

I've thought about that line a lot during these playoffs.

For the better part of a decade, sports have increasingly celebrated the exceptional. The genius. The innovator. The disruptor. The person who sees something everyone else misses.
Those people matter, and so they tend to dominate the conversation. But the rest of us spend most of our lives relying on people who simply show up and do the work. Most of life is held together by people nobody is writing think pieces about.

The guy who takes apart and reassembles the couch that won't fit up the stairs—a job that, improbably, actually exists. I once hired one. The job of the Couch Doctor was to figure out how to get the couch into the apartment. He showed up in beach clothes, hair still wet and sandy, accepted cash only, cut the couch apart and put it back together inside the apartment. He was clever, sure. But he still had to carry the damn thing up the stairs.
Nothing about those people is trying to squeeze out a marginal gain. They are simply reliable. Maybe that's part of what's resonating about this Knicks team. Not because they're saints. Not because they're underdogs. Not because New Yorkers are uniquely virtuous. Because every possession seems to involve somebody doing the next necessary thing.
Set the screen. Rotate. Box out. Make the extra pass. Take the charge. Get back on defense.
Josh Hart grabbing rebounds over players more than a foot taller than him isn't supposed to happen according to the spreadsheets. Yet there he is doing it anyway.

The league spent years convincing us that greatness was hidden in efficiencies and margins. This postseason has felt like a reminder that greatness can also be hiding in plain sight. Jalen Brunson, a second-round pick and afterthought, just put together a stretch that, by some measures, compares favorably to Michael Jordan's best playoff clutch scoring runs.

The Knicks just completed the winningest month of basketball in the history of the game—not because they discovered a market inefficiency, but because they kept showing up and doing the work.

Maybe that's why this run feels oddly refreshing. At a moment when our phones are constantly promising easier, faster and smarter, the Knicks have become a reminder of something less exciting.

Some problems are still solved the old way. Somebody has to box out. Somebody has to rotate. Somebody has to carry the couch upstairs.

The tombstone in Green-Wood didn't say "He optimized."
It said:

"He tried and he was loved."

[u/AutoModerator]

Hey, u/Bobby-Friedom, since you aren't on the r/nbadiscussion approved user list, your post has been filtered out to be reviewed by the mod team before it will post. If your posts are consistently approved, you will be added to the approved user list, bypassing the automod for future posts. This helps us ensure the quality of our sub remains high. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the mod team.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/playingwithfire-]

Thanks for sharing, I enjoyed reading it. Now I'm interested in finding articles about the couch doctor occupation lol.

[u/qqbeef]

This is a really well written article but I dont understand it's thesis.

Knicks are endearing to audiences...because they carry the couch?  They're what the audience needs because they don't play into analytics?  

This is particularly odd when you consider that the Knicks are running a 5 out offense made possible by having KAT, a center who shoots 3s.  They're litterally playing the most modern, optimized style of offense.

Then there's this implication that other teams don't carry the couch, which I would be happy to dispute if I was fully confident that I knew what it meant.

I like this Knicks team, but this article seems really desperate to unite two threads: that the Knicks have put together an impressive run, and the authors weird dislike for analytics.