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- Cutting Cavs, Knicks Garbage Time Grind, Ware's ROY Push & Scoot's Hot Streak
Cutting Cavs, Knicks Garbage Time Grind, Ware's ROY Push & Scoot's Hot Streak
Curating and Summarizing the Best NBA Content Every Week
Vikram Dimba
January 24, 2025
Welcome to the NBA Librarian Weekly, where we curate and summarize the best NBA content of the week.
<1000 words each week. I consume so you don’t have to.
In Today's Edition:
Cavs Are Cutting Machines
The Cavs are cutting machines.
They're currently averaging 1.45 PPP on cuts, the most efficent mark since the league began tracking play types in the 2015-16 season.
For reference, league average on cuts is ~1.29 PPP this season.
— AOP_NBA (@aop_nba)
6:32 PM • Jan 23, 2025
Cool graphic. The Cavs are officially the most efficient cutting team we’ve seen since tracking began in 2016. What really stands out here, though, is just how much the Warriors dominate this stat too. By my count, there are eight different Warriors teams (since 2016) that rank higher in total cutting possessions with at least 1.25 PPP. The Nuggets with Jokic also show up here as well.
For the Warriors, it makes sense: their off-ball shooting combined with their system of constant screening, re-screening, and high-post passing creates a cutting machine. Jokic, on the other hand, is the system with his elite playmaking. But the Cavs doing this by committee, without the all-time talents of Curry or Jokic, is a feat in itself.
Knicks Playing Starters in Garbage Time
unusual to see a lineup with this many total minutes and this many low leverage (aka, garbage time) minutes at any point in the season, let alone halfway through
per @tomhaberstroh
— Owen Phillips (@owenlhjphillips)
9:20 PM • Jan 22, 2025
The "Thibs plays his starters too much" discourse is an annual tradition, so I usually tune it out—but this analysis caught my attention. It focuses on low-leverage minutes (blowout situations), and the Knicks' starting lineup stands out—playing significantly more of these minutes than any other lineup, by a wide margin.
The Knicks starters have already logged more low-leverage minutes this season than most teams do across an entire season. This isn’t just a quirk; it’s a long-running pattern with Thibs, but seeing the data laid out this clearly makes it even more striking.