New York Knicks

Should the Knicks play Derrick Williams more?

Published Dec. 15, 2015 3:32 p.m. ET

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The Knicks are playing at one of the slowest paces in the NBA, and their viscous game has become a running theme this season. Actually, it's about all that's running in New York.

Knicks players have a tendency to walk the ball up the court and get into their sets far later than your average NBA player. Guards like Jose Calderon, Arron Afflao and Sasha Vujacic are usually slow to bring the rock up the court. Carmelo Anthony, meanwhile, might be the biggest culprit of them all.

Slow pace isn't necessarily a bad thing though. Some of the slowest offenses in the NBA are also the league's the most efficient, a list that includes the Spurs, Cavaliers and Raptors amongst others. No, the Knicks' biggest problem on offense is that they just aren't very good. Posting and Toasting offers a possible outside-the-box solution to New York's efficiency problems: Derrick Williams.

The Knicks' larger offensive issues may actually come more in style than in personnel. The team doesn't seem to know how to use its pieces to their full extent.

For example, New York signed Robin Lopez away from Portland last year, when Lopez was a legitimate offensive contributor because of his offensive rebounding and superb screen-setting. Now, though, inside an offense mostly devoid of picks, Lopez is posting up on the low block more than ever, shooting those ugly, sometimes-effective hook shots that start from his hip and usually end up on iron. He's not setting many screens. It's not happening on the ball, off the ball, anywhere.

It's been the same story for Kyle O'Quinn, too, a big, physical offensive player who hasn't been given the opportunity to make a difference in the screening game. Player movement has been a major issue for the Knicks. They space strangely and often end up with three guys who are trying to run a triangle set instead standing too close to each other on the wing or near the corner. It's awkward, choppy. It's not working well, and for all these reasons, the Knicks find themselves in the bottom half of the league and falling in points per possession.

Williams may be a help. He may not. But he's most certainly not the answer. No, the answer is a far more complicated one than just a quick rotational adjustment.

The obvious advantage of the Knicks pushing the pace is getting more opportunities for easier buckets. The perhaps non-obvious answer to this problem? Derrick Williams.

Consternation rang throughout the land when Phil Jackson gave Williams a two-year, $10M deal last summer. And if you study the conventional numbers, Williams doesn't appear to be doing anything special: 7 points in 13 minutes a game while shooting below average from the field and from distance (41% and 32%, respectively) is nothing to write home about. But numbers have been known to lie, so if we talk to some other numbers and look at some film, we see Williams is already one of the Knicks' most impactful players and could be a big part of a more efficient team offense.

Per 100 possessions, Williams leads the Knicks in free throw attempts at 10.5; the only other players averaging more than 6 are Carmelo Anthony and Lou Amundson. This has helped the team raise their percentage of points off free throws from 16.1% last year to 18.7% this year. Maybe with more playing time, he could help their fast break numbers too: New York's percentage of points off fast breaks has actually dropped from 9.1% during The Tankening to 8.3% this season.

Over the past few weeks, Williams' shooting numbers have been on the rise. Since being benched in Orlando the night before Thanksgiving, he's hit 47% from the field and 37% on three-pointers (shout out to Joe Flynn for this fun detail). In Saturday's 112-110 win over Portland, the Knicks had 12 points in transition. Not an epic number, and one game does not a messiah make. Yet Williams was involved in much of that action, some of which came in secondary transition that was often the result of Williams pushing the pace.