NBA analytics expert breaks down Jalen Brunson's fit with Knicks

It’s too early to make projections about the overall Knicks roster in 2022-23. It’s best to wait until the Donovan Mitchell situation shakes out before you analyze different lineups and player combinations.

No matter what happens with Mitchell in Utah, we know that Jalen Brunson will have a big impact on the 2022-23 Knicks team.

He’ll start at lead guard and play significant minutes for New York. So with or without Mitchell, it’s fair to say that Brunson’s play will help determine the trajectory of the coming Knicks season.

It’s also fair to say that, based on his history, Brunson should help the Knicks win games.

For more on what he brings to New York, we reached out to Joseph Gill for his analysis of the point guard.

Gill is an analytics consultant for several NBA players, agents, and trainers, including NBA trainer Packie Turner. (Here is more on Gill’s background.)

Below, Gill offers his analysis of Brunson’s strengths, where he can improve, the best backcourt pairings for the 26-year-old and more:

In what ways will Brunson impact the Knicks’ offense?

GILL: Jalen Brunson is an immediate value-add to the Knicks' offense in the loudest area of guard play by providing the team with a bonafide, high-efficiency threat in pick-and-roll. While comparing players from two different situations is never an air-tight science, based on the information available to me from Synergy, it’s clear that when the Knicks added Brunson, they did so with the understanding that he was now the most efficient option on the team in pick-and-roll.

In pick-and-roll, Brunson’s actions led to a scoring rate of 1.03 points per play (PPP) on over nine tracked pick-and-roll possessions a game in Dallas, a number which ranked 12th out of 31 qualified players with at least nine tracked pick-and-roll possessions a game. The lone qualified Knick (RJ Barrett) finished 31st by a significant margin. While, obviously, the caliber of the screen-setter and spot-up shooters that a player shares the court with influences this number, of most interest to me about Brunson’s pick-and-roll profile is how effectively he scores when calling his own number.

On the 393 possessions that Brunson terminated the possession himself with a shot attempt, free-throw line trip, or turnover, Brunson scored at a PPP of 1.06, which ranked first out of the 29 players with at least as many possessions. As in the first example, Barrett was the only Knick to qualify with enough possessions, and finished again in last position. Considering that the average NBA half-court play ended with 0.98 points scored, having a guard who can manufacture an above-average look for himself in pick-and-roll helps to establish a floor of offense, especially in the critical, late in the shot-clock possessions that the Knicks ranked 23rd in during the 2021-22 season.

Who is the best backcourt pairing with Brunson on the current roster?

GILL: Realistically, there are four options for starting shooting guard: Evan Fournier, Immanuel Quickley, Barrett and Quentin Grimes.

Brunson is a well-rounded point guard, and the Mavericks, or at least the non-Luka Doncic lineups that the Mavericks used with Brunson, provided the blueprint to using him most effectively: A lot of shooting to space the floor, and lineups without a ball-pounding teammate who will usurp possessions away from Brunson by forcing low-efficiency attempts before Brunson has had a chance to work the defense in pick-and-roll. While Brunson did play 52 percent of his minutes last season with Doncic, it was in the other 48 percent that he showed why he will be worth the money. From a net-rating standpoint, the best of those five-man lineups often followed a similar composition: Brunson, three off-ball-oriented shooters at the 2 through the 4, and a catch-and-finish 5.

Two of them can be quickly eliminated from a fit standpoint. Having worked with several Orlando Magic players over the years, I can bluntly say that Fournier has never had much of a desire to be an off-ball player and was of dubious value on the court when he initially signed his four-year, $73 million contract last summer. His overall fit makes less and less sense as time passes and this Knicks roster evolves. Sure, he takes a lot of threes and makes 39 percent of them, but entirely too often Fournier acts as a ball stop, ignoring open teammates in favor of his own shot or dribble combo at simply indefensible times.

(Editor’s note from Begley: I think Fournier would fit well in the second unit if New York decides to change its starting lineup. I can’t speak to the former Magic players that Joseph references, but I think Fournier played well overall last season and can continue to thrive with the club in 2022-23. To me, it doesn’t make sense for New York to trade Fournier because the club needs more perimeter shooting, not less.)  

Quickley will figure to be a nice change-of-pace battery mate for Brunson when opposing teams throw a lockdown defender at Brunson but have a subpar defender at the other guard position. But, as an every-night starter, Quickley figures to add too much value and versatility off the bench as the rare combo guard who can truly seamlessly play either position, and Quickley’s 22 percent usage rate is a poor fit with Brunson’s 27 percent usage rate in the minutes when Luka was off the court in the 2021-22 regular season (within those minutes it’s worth noting that Brunson averaged 22 points and seven assists per 36 minutes played, while maintaining his 54 percent 2P%). While I view Quickley as a very useful offensive player, there just aren’t enough shots to go around between Brunson, Quickley, Barrett, and Randle to allow all four to start together.

This leaves just two options: Barrett and Grimes.

I rarely advocate for players to slide “down” in position, going from a taller position to a shorter one, but I think that in an ideal scenario, it would be best for Barrett to try his hand at shooting guard again after a year of primarily small forward. The reasoning for this would be entirely for the benefit of Barrett. While Barrett puts up impressive volume statistics, on a per-possession basis, Barrett ranks below-league average in spot-up (36th percentile), pick-and-roll (29th percentile), and isolation situations (43rd percentile), as well as overall in the half court (25th percentile). However, he does shoot 42 percent on his half-court unguarded catch-and-shoot possessions, which is clearly deep into the percentages that a player would be considered dangerous from deep.

When I watch the film of Barrett, I see a player who is at his best when he’s leveraging a strength advantage over smaller players, a rare situation when starting at small forward to accommodate Fournier. As much as I would love to see Barrett slide back down to the 2, with a directive from the coaching staff to focus on off-ball shooting (a sure-fire helpful aspect of his play) and embrace the reality that his high-usage, low-efficiency on-ball role has run its course with the arrival of Brunson and he should focus on an opportunistic-oriented catch-and-shoot role with isolation possessions mixed in only when the matchup demands it.

However, that isn’t possible currently because if Barrett starts at the 2, who is left to start at the 3? The roster’s lack of an unsexy 3-and-D true small forward demolishes all lineup versatility and hinders the Knicks here. Both (Julius) Randle and (Obi) Toppin are all but hard-locked to the power-forward spot, as neither space the floor or defend well enough on the perimeter to merit starting consideration at the 3, and either “solution” would kill the spacing of the starting lineup, which is integral to Brunson’s success. While I am one of the few analytics professionals who still finds reason for optimism within Cam Reddish’s analytical profile, penciling him in as an every-night starter often exacerbates the shot selection and turnover issues that have held him back in the NBA.

This process only leaves one logical option: Grimes.

Though I have arrived at this destination due to a deductive, process of elimination, reasoning string, Grimes’ contributions on the court during his rookie season don’t just make him the best possible fit with Brunson, but a pretty solid fit regardless of other options.

Foremost, Grimes is a legitimate threat to space the floor, making 38 percent of his three-pointers on the season (including 45 percent of his open, catch-and-shoot attempts and 47 percent overall from the corners). Secondarily, Grimes understands his role: He turned the ball over less than two times per 100 possessions played, over 65 percent of his half-court possessions came in spot-up situations, and he shot 50 percent on his two-point shots (due in large part to only attempting 25 non-at-rim two-pointers on the season).

While Grimes isn’t fleshed out to the point that Fournier is in offensive versatility, if the Knicks planned on allowing their high-efficiency, high-price-tag free agent to maintain his 27 percent non-Luka usage rate, concessions need to come from somewhere.

I would even go as far as to say that if (when) Fournier’s ball-stopping habits don’t mesh well with the bench unit of (Derrick) Rose and Quickley, that’s hardly a problem worth outsourcing to the starting lineup, as it was in 2021-22. It might be time to consider that Fournier’s on-court production and fit isn’t as good as his stat line would imply. (Editor’s note from Begley: I disagree here, for reasons stated in previous editor’s note). Inversely, players like Grimes, who add a sought-after skill set that can only make life easier for their teammates and embody their role without fail, add far more value than points per game can capture.

Brunson is 26. What are realistic areas for growth for the player?

GILL: Brunson is a unique player in today’s NBA; not only does he take a large number of mid-ranges and floaters, but he’s actually efficient at taking them. So many analysts, pundits, and fans fall into the trap of weighing relative effectiveness against absolute effectiveness. In a league where the average points scored per play was 1.00 in the 2021-22 season, I would be laughed out of a room if I said that a player who made 28 percent of their three-point shots was an elite scorer overall. But that is an attitude that some take in praise of a high-volume, 42 percent mid-range shooter. Brunson smashes through the glass ceiling of mid-range and floater efficiency; his 1.03 PPP on mid-ranges and floaters in the half-court are very good in a league where only roughly 3-4 percent of high-volume shooters score about 0.90 PPP on all their mid-range attempts in a given year. Even though Brunson’s rate of floater and mid-range attempts doesn’t fit with the current, analytics-driven paradigm of the NBA, efficiency is all that matters in relation to shot attempts. Here, Brunson has a multiyear body of work that proves that he is the one-in-a-hundred NBA player who should be encouraged to hunt floaters and mid-ranges at his own discretion. However, there is a downside to this shot selection.

While a 1.03 PPP shot is slightly more efficient than the average NBA possession, it isn’t the same earth-shattering efficiency as a Steph Curry three-pointer (1.14) or a LeBron James half-court, at-rim shot attempt (1.42). It always takes a well-constructed team and a little bit of luck to win an NBA championship, but the 2019 Toronto Raptors showed that teams constructed around even the most elite mid-range shooters need to be even better built with a strong supporting cast and even luckier than the average title team to grab the title.

With Brunson, I’m concerned that without superhuman strength, balance, hand size and better than average positional size (like found with Kawhi Leonard and DeMar DeRozan), he’ll age out of elite efficiency mid-ranges quicker than the two previously mentioned. Therefore, I would love to see Brunson begin to allocate some of his offseason work and shot hunting out of the mid-range and into hunting more three-pointers off the dribble.

At the age of 26, it’s not likely that Brunson will become much quicker or stronger in the remainder of his NBA career, but he can always become more skilled at shooting and hunting shots from deep.