The Curious Case of Amar’e Stoudemire

As any Knicks fans or basketball fan who’s watched just about any Knicks game so far this season knows Amar’e Stoudemire has not been the player he was last year or at any point in his career.

There are a multitude of reasons for the poor play that we’ve seen Amar’e exhibit so far.

They are as follows:

1. Lack of a true point guard

2. Lack of spacing for Amar’e to work with

3. Almost non-existent use of the Pick and Roll (his forte)

4. More of his shots coming from out of his high percentage range

The start to this season for Amar’e has essentially been a perfect storm of everything that could have possibly gone wrong.  Though his shot attempts are down compared to last years they are actually in line with the rest of his career.  What is down in a glaring way is his FG percentage.  Amar’e coming into this year had 6 straight years of above 50% FG percentage if you skip over his injury plagued 05/06.  That FG percentage is a direct result of everything mentioned above and is also why his scoring average has dipped below 20 a game so far for the first time in 8 seasons.

The lack of a true point guard is what has really brought Amar’e down to earth this year and is also a direct result of the lack of pick and rolls.  For the first 8 years of his career he was graced by playing along side one of the best point guards ever in Steve Nash.  This scenario helped Amar’e morph into the player he is today.  Then last year he got to play with Ray Felton who also could play up  Amar’e's abilities the way Nash did.  It wasn’t until the Carmelo Anthony trade that he didn’t fully mesh with Billups and his numbers began to trend downward.

Amar’e knows how to play one type of offense and one type only.  An offense in which he has a true point guard to run the pick and roll with.  Amar’e is one of the best forwards in the league at rolling off the pick and barreling through the lane.

So far this season it’s more than safe to say that Toney Douglas, Mike Bibby and Iman Shumpert haven’t filled the void.  Baron Davis might not be the answer but at this juncture any point guard that understands how to distribute to Amar’e in the way he’s used to will be a major improvement.

Lack of spacing for Amar’e to work with.  This simply comes down to learning to play on the offensive side of the ball along side Tyson Chandler.  With an extremely brief training camp and only a few preseason games there was little time to work out the kinks between the two.

Amar’e thrives in an offense with tons of open space.  Being able to post up and drive or run the pick and roll and glide effortlessly through an open lane has been the key to his success and field goal percentage his entire career.  Never before has he played with a space eater like Tyson Chandler( let’s just not count that Phoenix Sun Shaq experiment).

Amar’e himself spoke about the spacing issues recently,

“Right now it’s kind of hard to judge because as a team we don’t have great spacing, so whenever we do roll, Tyson or myself is running into three or four opposing players in the lane. I think once we get better spacing, it will open the court for Tyson and I to get baskets in the paint. We’ll get it together.”

When Chandler is on the floor with Amar’e he has trouble working the way that he’s used to.  His greatest weapon in the past has been facing up his defender and having two options.  Popping a mid range jumper or a shot fake and drive to the basket for a higher percentage shot.  But with Chandler on the floor this process begins out further than usual and has also forced Amar’e to settle for those deeper jumpers on a more frequent basis.

To steal some great stat work from ESPN New York, Amar’e has had the most success with Josh Harrellson so far and to a lesser extent Jared Jeffries, here are the stats.

Minutes Points Per 40 Rebs per 40 FG% +/-

Chandler 289 18.4 8.9 35.9 -57

Harrellson 57 33.0 9.1 51.6 +23

Jeffries 30 28.0 4.0 47.1 -6

As most of you have already figured out there’s a simple reason for these very troubling stats.  Chandler plays a rough in the paint style of basketball.  While Jeffries strays outside of the paint more than Chandler.  Even more so of the three, Harrellson plays much more outside of the paint.  Frequently spotting up for threes and leaving Amar’e all the floor space he needs to go to work.

As for the pick and roll situation this one has many different causes.  For starters the lack of a true point guard has made this more difficult.  The most dangerous pick and roll partners have a few assets.  The point guard is dangerous on the pull up and capable of breaking it down and getting to the hole off the pick.  While the big man can pick and pop from 18 feet out or so and can terrorize his way through the paint on the roll.

For his entire career he had that in Nash and even last season he had that with Felton and then to some extent Billups.  But this season he has had nothing of the kind.  If Douglas is on the floor he’s capable of knocking down a deep ball but not at truly being a threat to get to the hole.  While Iman Shumpert is on the floor you have the opposite, he’s more than capable of breaking his defender down but is no where near a threat from the outside.  Bibby on the other hand is really neither at this point in his career.  He’s far to slow to break a defender down and he can spot up but can’t necessarily get an effective long range shot off of his own dribble.

That leaves only Melo as the next Knicks consistent ball handler.

There’s no question that Melo has both of those assets, he’s at the top of the league in breaking a defender down and shooting off the dribble.  But there’s two major problems with them running the pick and roll.

For starters Melo isn’t used to running the pick and roll as the ball handler.  For most of his career the offenses he played in consisted of feeding him the ball and letting him go to work on his defender.

Meanwhile D’Antoni doesn’t seem to be calling for pick and rolls with any frequency at all.  If only there was a statistic to measure the amount of pick and roll plays the Knicks have run.  But having watched every Knicks game and just about every play I can say that the amount of pick and rolls called has been near nonexistent.  There’s a major problem offensively when you aren’t calling the play that utilizes your second best scorer in the most effective manner.

This is why Knicks fans are calling for his head.  He clearly doesn’t have his finger on the pulse of this offense even though he’s considered an offensive mastermind.  Any coach from high school basketball to the pros understands the necessity of the pick and roll.  Even with poor players it’s still an effective play call.

Last but not least, the issue that more of Amar’e's field goals are coming from further outside his comfort range.  We know Amar’e can shoot from beyond the arch but by no means is it where he’s most effective.

The lack of spacing coupled with the lack of pick and roll play calls have pushed out the location where Amar’e has been taking most of his shots.

When in the past he’d have set a pick and rolled for a shot in the lane or pulled up over the defender at 18 feet that’s not happening anymore.  Due to the lack of pick and rolls the majority of the time Amar’e sees the ball is in an isolation manner.  He receives the ball about 18 feet out in close proximity to one of the elbows.  He’s very capable of driving or pulling up for an 18 footer in these cases but his threat of driving is depleted by Tyson’s presence in the middle.

With one of his major threats downplayed he’s been forced to pull up outside much more.  But another aspect of Tyson’s presence that is overlooked has been the matchup that Amar’e draws on a nightly basis.

When in the past Amar’e drew the opposing teams center it allowed him to use his speed and athleticism to blow by the defender.  But now that Tyson is commanding the opposing teams center on the Knicks offensive side of the ball, Amar’e is matched up with the opposing team’s power forward.

For quite some time it was said that Amar’e needed to get back to playing his natural position of power forward.  But one of his greatest advantages was being that much quicker than the opponents center.

All in all there are an unbelievable amount of reasons why Amar’e is struggling so mightily so far this season.

Will the return of Baron Davis change the circumstances or is Amar’e just not cut out to produce at his previous level on an offense with Tyson and Melo?

Knicks fans better hope that the presence of a capable point guard will be the answer, if not then this Knicks team has been assembled in a manner that no small tweak is going to fix.