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Brandon Knight: The Evolution of a Point Guard
Posted by: Mac_Diego on June 15th, 2011
The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of the Utah Jazz.I don’t need to post the quotes. If you’re on this site, you’ve read somewhere that the problem with Brandon Knight is that he’s not a “true” point guard, but a scoring-first PG, or a SG trapped in a PGs body. (Admittedly, I think that saying is more of a cliche than anything, but I digress…)
It’s one thing to look at Knight’s end-of-season averages and make a judgment about what kind of a player he is, but I feel like that analysis doesn’t tell the whole story. What it fails to show is Knight’s progression throughout the season.
I broke Knight’s season into thirds. Then I took his averages for each third and compared it to his season averages. The idea is that if Knight was improving in an area, his average for the last 1/3 of the season would be higher than his average for the season (and vice versa). There are more complicated ways to do this, but for the sake of time, this is what you get. Here are the results:
1/3 FGM FGA FG% FTA FT% 3pt Attempt 3pt% Points Reb Ast TO Fouls
First 1.05 .99 1.05 .93 .94 1.03 .97 1.01 .89 .94 1.16 1.11
Middle 1.03 .90 1.05 .90 .92 .95 1.12 1.01 1.08 .97 .95 .98
End .94 1.08 .85 1.25 1.1 1.00 .84 .99 1.03 1.21 .88 .92
(I’d give anything to know how to post a freaking table in here.)
What the numbers mean:
Each number is a ratio for that 1/3 of the season to the overall season average. I didn’t invert the TO Fouls numbers, so a number less than 1 indicates a positive trend. For everything else, a number greater than 1 is what you want.
A few observations:
The assist and turnover trends are pretty remarkable. These show that as the season progressed, Knight became a significantly better distributor, and did a much better job taking care of the ball. IMO, this progression shows Knight’s evolution into a point guard.
It’s also significant, I think, that Knight cut down pretty significantly on his fouling.
The troubling thing from this is that while Knight’s scoring stayed remarkably consistent throughout the year, he took more shots, and his shooting percentages went down. On the other hand, though, Knight got to the line at a much higher rate, and converted more of his FT attempts.
But I think the thing that sticks out the most to me is this: Brandon Knight didn’t become less effective when his shooting got worse. In fact, you could argue that his team got better when he became more of a “pure PG” (i.e., as his assist:turnover ratio shot up), despite the fact that his shooting was declining. Even though Knight took more shots and shot a worse % in the final 1/3rd of his season, his team became more successful as he became a better PG. Over the last 1/3 of the season, Kentucky only had 2 losses. One was an OT game in Arkansas (lost by 1 point), and one was in the Final Four to eventual champion UConn (again, by only 1 point).
It’s true that Kentucky also only had two losses in the first 1/3 of the season (UConn and UNC), but those losses were worse than the losses in the final 1/3, and their wins during the final 1/3 were much better than their wins during the first 1/3. This was when they were running through the SEC tournament and advancing to the Final Four.
Despite the shooting regression, you have to be encouraged with Knight’s evolution as a PG. He’s certainly not going to be required to take the same scoring role with the Jazz that he did with UK, and perhaps better shots and spacing will get those shooting numbers back up to beginning-of-the-season averages. But in my opinion, the assist:turnover improvement shows that he can most definitely become a great PG in the NBA.
Replies: 20
Views: 1039
20 Responses
Any team that gets him will be glad they did..
Nice find. Thanks for pointing it out.
#2 guard in the draft. He will go at #5 at the latest IMO.
For comparison’s sake, here are Kemba’s numbers.
Stat first 1/3 second 1/3 final 1/3
FGM 1.11 .88 1.01
FGA 1.05 .96 .99
FG% 1.08 .91 1
FTA 1 .86 1.12
FT% 1.04 .82 1.07
3ptA 1.07 1 .93
3pt% 1.19 1.14 .68
Points 1.09 .85 1.04
Reb 1 .96 1.04
Ast .83 1.2 .99
TO 1.01 .75 1.23
Fouls .99 .96 1.05
And according to this article: http://espn.go.com/blog/TrueHoop/post/_/id/30306/is-kyrie-irving-a-risky-no-1-pick
“But it is more about uncertainty than ability. John Wall and Derrick Rose both dramatically improved their assist numbers and turned the ball over more when they first started as freshmen at Kentucky and Memphis, respectively. But by the end of his only college season, Irving’s assists decreased — he averaged 9.9 assists per 40 minutes in his first five games, but just 3.3 assists per 40 minutes in his last six games — and his turnovers increased.”
that is really interesting. Mac Diego. Interesting that shooting increased and his assists, shows that he was taking charge of his team. If he can improve within 3rds of the seasons imagine how he can improve over a season or two.
So you think Knight is worth the 3rd pick?
Absolutely. I’d draft him at #2. And maybe even ahead of Irving. I’ve been going on a twitter rant about Irving. Here:
Why does Kyrie Irving get a pass for his post-injury numbers? He averaged 2 assists a game in the tournament!
And Irving only averaged 4.2 assists per game against non mid-majors before his injury!
Irving’s pre-injury assist-to-turnover ratio against non mid-majors was only 1.10 … Yet this guy is undoubtedly the #1pg? I don’t get it
I don’t understand how people can be hesitant about Kanter’s or Biyombo’s production, but not even question Irving’s
In games played, Irving had 47/175 26.8% of Duke’s total assists. Brandon Knight had 159/428 37% of Kentucky’s.
So I’m not trying to hate on Irving–just want to know why he is clearly the #1 pg & why we don’t question his production like we do Kanter’s
You are very quickly becoming one of my favorite posters on this site. You definitely provide us some of the best statistically based content.
No offense to anybody else.
I understand that his stats are good, but the one stat that is missing in this post is the fact that the Jazz were almost last in the league last year in rebounding. The Jazz don’t need a Point Guard, they need a big man who can pull down the boards. KOC and Greg Miller have said it many times in interviews that the Jazz number one focus in this draft is size, and that reason is because the Jazz were horrible last year in rebounding.
Well Kanter had Rodman’s sophomore rebound numbers as a freshman, so…
@spencer – thanks a lot.
@pirate – Derrick Favors was a top-notch per-minute rebounder in the league last year. As his minutes go up, our rebounding problems will go down. We can still address rebounding at #12. But I don’t know if we’d find a PG like Knight at #12.
I really, really like the idea of drafting Brandon Knight. I think he’ll be pretty good. If we get Knight and Burks in the draft then I’ll be ecstatic.
I agree that Favors is a good rebounder, but we also need someone who can rebound when he is not on the floor. Harris is a good Point Guard and the Jazz need to give him a chance to be the starter that he can be. The only rebounders in the draft that would be availible at at the #12 pick would be guys that would be 6′8″ PF’s. We have already seen that a 6′8″ PF cannot be a dominant rebounder in this league. We need a guy like Kanter at the #3.
One guy won’t fix the rebounding problems. The Jazz got very poor rebounding from the everyone except Favors, Millsap, and Jefferson. Cuz getting a big guy would take minutes away from one of those 3 guys. The extra boards need to come from the 1-3 positions.
@ James Taylor: Agree with you that rebounding needs to come from the other positions…..especially the 3 spot. That’s why I think Singleton would be a good pick at 12. He’s a solid rebounder and even better defender which should translate to him keeping his man off the boards.
Knight or Kanter are both good players and would fit well with Utah at #3. Knight/Singleton or Kanter/Fredette or Walker would make our team better. We also have FA and trades to fill gaps. Everything won’t be fixed through the draft.
James and Shane, awesome points. Everyone seems to think rebounding is only done by bigs, but that simply is not true. It would help our bigs if we could spread the floor a bit for offensive rebounding as well. If you look are our two best rebounders and LA’s or Dallas, they are pulling down the same reb per game. So James statement about the reb’s need to come from 1-3 is very correct.
Our holes are perimeter defense and shooting too. How many bigs defend the perimeter effectively? Not many shoot 3’s either, and Biyombo will never be one of them. I think Knight or Kanter and Singleton or Hamilton would be great. T Harris might be a guy to look at too. His Freshman and combine numbers are very similar to Williams Numbers. So if Derrick Williams can play the 3 effectively, I think Tobias could be a steal…
One other scenerio that no one has looked at might be trading down and gathering that extra pick. You could draft Leonard, Fredette, and Harris. You pick up two solid defending SF’s who can both score and rebound, and you still get your PG. Sorry, but I like tossing wrenches.. LOL
Maybe you trade down and get Leonard, Biyombo, and Harris. You could then start Favors with Al picking up your rebounding and D in the starting lineup, and totally dominate with a bench of Millsap and Biyombo. You still get your scoring and perimeter Defense from Leonard and harris. It means you have to have faith in Harris and Watson though. Maybe you could trade Miles for Sessions to get another PG. Dunno. Just what iffing.. lol
(1) Reggie Evans 6′8″
(7) Humphries 6′9″
(9) Joey Dorsey 6′8″
(14) DeJuan Blair 6′7″
these guys are all in the top 15 for per-minute rebounding in the NBA.
Pirate: Millsap is a really good rebounder when he’s coming in off the bench and rebounding against bench players. Favors and Jefferson starting then bringing in Millsap off the bench would solve the rebounding problem we had with our bigs last year. Locke talked about how Millsap was one of the worst starting PF rebounders in the league last year, so that was a big part of our rebounding problem.
I think that we will draft knight, but I don’t think he’ll be the starting PG next year. Him being a combo guard is a big advantage for us, he can start at SG so that we can keep our solid veteran at the PG position. Starting a rookie PG is the most sure fire way to get another lottery pick next year.
nothing wrong with another lotto pick next year though, right? that’s at least what i’m hoping for…
does that make me a bad person?
Like James Taylor said the rebounding needs to get better from positions 1-3. If you look at the best rebounding teams like the bulls or lakers their bigs numbers are only a little better than ours. the big difference is at the other positions.