Scouting one-pager: New York Knicks (NYK)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,328 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
- corner three: A three-pointer from the corner, where the NBA line is roughly 3 ft closer than the arc - the geometry discount that makes it the cheapest three.
Keys
- They hunt corner threes: 31.4% of their threes come from the corners (league 25.9%). Run shooters off the corner line first.
- Jalen Brunson is a genuine shot-maker: +5.4 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: OG Anunoby (1.22 xPPS on 804 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: K. Towns - J. Hart - M. Bridges - J. Brunson - M. McBride (+18.7/100 over 246 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| NYK | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.115 | 1.091 | +0.023 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.115 | 1.097 | +0.018 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | +0.0 | -0.5 | +0.5 |
| Rim share | 28.2% | 28.4% | -0.2 pp |
| Mid-range share | 11.4% | 10.0% | +1.3 pp |
| Three share | 42.8% | 41.5% | +1.2 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 31.4% | 25.9% | +5.5 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.8% | 1.8% | -0.1 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Jalen Brunson | 1,475 | 1.066 | 1.000 | +6.6 | +5.4 | +1.6 |
| Karl-Anthony Towns | 1,032 | 1.111 | 1.141 | -3.0 | -2.5 | +2.3 |
| Mikal Bridges | 963 | 1.142 | 1.125 | +1.7 | +1.2 | +0.1 |
| OG Anunoby | 804 | 1.163 | 1.217 | -5.4 | -4.1 | +3.2 |
| Josh Hart | 592 | 1.186 | 1.132 | +5.4 | +3.4 | +0.1 |
| Jordan Clarkson | 526 | 1.034 | 1.066 | -3.1 | -2.2 | +0.2 |
| Miles McBride | 404 | 1.124 | 1.066 | +5.8 | +2.7 | +2.7 |
| Landry Shamet | 364 | 1.157 | 1.151 | +0.5 | -0.1 | +1.8 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| K. Towns - O. Anunoby - J. Hart - M. Bridges - J. Brunson | 541 | 1,131 | +1.8 |
| K. Towns - O. Anunoby - M. Bridges - J. Brunson - L. Shamet | 119 | 262 | +2.3 |
| K. Towns - J. Hart - M. Bridges - J. Brunson - M. McBride | 123 | 246 | +18.7 |