J.R. Smith a mixed bag for Knicks

J.R. Smith electrifies fans with his shooting -- and aggravates coaches with his shot selection and defense. (US Presswire)

You have to love the Knicks. They’ve won seven consecutive games, possess the league’s sixth-stingiest defense (in terms of points allowed per possession) and have scored at an elite level with Jeremy Lin on the floor (in a limited sample size, of course). Landry Fields is finding his game (if not his three-point shot, at least consistently), Tyson Chandler is playing All-Star ball on both ends of the court and Carmelo Anthony is due back from a groin injury any day now. Things are generally humming.

So, of course, the Knicks on Friday were set to sign J.R. Smith, one of the league’s most mercurial players, to a one-year deal worth the prorated portion of their $2.5 million “room” cap exception.  (Update: Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reports that the deal includes a second-year player option worth around $2 million, which has little impact on New York’s 2012-13 cap situation). He chose the Knicks over the Clippers, who could have used the 6-foot-6 Smith, if only for his legitimate shooting-guard size. Los Angeles had only the veteran’s minimum salary to offer.

Smith has been frustrating over the last few seasons precisely because you can see the player he could be if he just eliminated all the needless chaos that blurs an otherwise fine game — the ill-advised heat-check shots, the gambling on defense, the out-and-out wandering on defense that causes him to lose track of shooters. You want to shout at Smith, “Just do a little less, and you’ll find more!” But he has never done it, and he’s 26, about to start his eighth NBA season after a stint in China.

And you know what? This could still work for New York, which desperately needs reliable outside shooting to stretch the floor around its pick-and-roll attack. The Knicks are shooting only 30.3 percent from three-point range, the fifth-worst mark in the league. They’ll need to be better as what has been the league’s easiest schedule gets brutally tough.

Lin has thrived for a lot of reasons, including Chandler’s ability as a pick-and-roll threat; the 23-year-old point guard’s startling talent and vision; a schedule heavy on patsy defenses; and the fact that New York has been able to keep the middle of the floor very clear of late. Bill Walker, playing Anthony’s minutes, is happy to park himself in the corner and wait for his chance as a stand-still shooter. When Amar’e Stoudemire was out, the Knicks turned to Steve Novak, perhaps the best pure shooter in the league and the ultimate stretch power forward — provided you need shooting and nothing else. Fields, after an icy start, has hit 40 percent (10-of-25) from deep in the last 10 games, but eight of those makes came before the start of Linsanity on Feb. 4. Still, defenses give Fields some respect, and he has been able to hurt teams by driving when the ball swings his way.

Stoudemire is a good enough shooter to keep the floor fairly well-spread when he’s not involved in the pick-and-roll. But he’s not Novak-level, and he has slumped from the perimeter this year. You don’t worry about Stoudemire, though; he’ll find his way with Lin. But when New York starts shuttling in some combination of Stoudemire, Jared Jeffries, Fields and Iman Shumpert (27 percent from three-point range), you can see defenses squeeze the middle the court. Guards and wing players are more willing to sag down toward the edge of the paint on pick-and-rolls, bumping Chandler (or Stoudemire) and cutting off passing lanes, confident the math favors that tactic over sticking closer to non-threatening shooters.

Smith, for all his warts, is a very threatening shooter. He’s a 40 percent shooter from beyond the arc, once you remove an outlier 33.8 percent season for Denver in 2009-10. Defenses will respect him, and if they don’t, Smith will punish them with open threes. And Smith has always been an underrated passer, capable of creating open looks for teammates off the dribble and on pick-and-roll plays. If an initial Lin pick-and-roll yields nothing and Anthony is well-covered as an outlet, you can do worse than kicking to Smith and running and impromptu pick-and-roll. He’s a gunner, but Smith has managed about three assists per 36 minutes in his career — and he’s done it with a low turnover rate.

The Knicks can use Smith’s skill set, especially given the surrounding talent. That cuts both ways. There is a ton of competition here for wing minutes, and if Smith overextends himself, the Knicks can probably afford to give him a reduced role. When Anthony comes back to join Walker and Shumpert, the Knicks won’t have a need for Smith to work as a backup small forward–something he did on occasion with the Nuggets, both before and after Anthony was traded to New York. Fields and Shumpert provide competition at shooting guard, and even Smith has to understand that a team with Anthony, Stoudemire, Chandler and a solid distributor in Lin doesn’t need him dominating the ball or the shot chart.

The flip side is that Smith can fill a need and is thus worth a relatively low-risk gamble. And with more wing players, the Knicks can experiment more with Anthony as a small-ball power forward if they wish to try that as a way of shaking up the offense when it goes stagnant.

The danger might come at the other end, where it increasingly feels as if the Knicks are playing a practical joke on Chandler. There must come a point at which you put so many subpar defenders on the floor that Chandler can no longer save you, right? This isn’t Orlando, where the subpar defenders surrounding the star defender work hard, play smart and can hold their own on the right night. In Anthony, Stoudemire and Smith, the Knicks have accumulated three of the league’s shakiest defenders, all with different but glaring flaws. Luckily, coach Mike D’Antoni has other rotation players in Fields, Shumpert and Jeffries who fall anywhere from “average” to “spectacular” defensively, depending on the night and the opponent. Mixing and matching will be crucial, unless the Knicks just want Chandler to keel over.

In all seriousness, the Knicks are putting together something interesting. They are only one-half game behind Boston for the No. 7 seed and sit three games behind the flailing Pacers for the No. 6 spot, otherwise known as the “avoid Miami and Chicago for one round” sweepstakes. The schedule is about get much tougher, and we’re about to learn how intriguing the Knicks really can be.