No matter how worried, or not worried, you are about the Knicks' auspicious start, one thing is clear. This is not the start that fans expected. It's been a rollercoaster start loaded with underperforming players and inexplicable mistakes.
So you'd think head coach Mike Brown would do whatever it took to get the team out of the gutter. While he's done some nice things, Brown has seemingly forgotten about one of the few players on the Knicks who has consistently been good on the court this season.
Jordan Clarkson is currently averaging 5.2 ppg, which doesn't necessarily scream elite. But let's dig a bit deeper. Clarkson, despite being an imperfect player, currently has the highest plus-minus at plus-32, which is 12 points higher than Landry Shamet's plus-20. The team also has an incredible net rating of +38.1 in the 43 minutes he's played this season, while having a rating of minus-7.9 in the 245 minutes that he's been off the court.
That is admittedly a pretty small sample size, with some of those minutes coming against lesser competition or during garbage time. Some of Clarkson's stats are also skewed by his one standout performance against the Bulls, but he has seemingly done everything he can to earn more minutes.
Thanks to the often lauded reinvention of his game, Clarkson has become less of a heliocentric shot checker and more of a synergistic role player. But one that still possesses the ability to take over games for stretches and completely flip the tide of a game. That was on full display in one of the Knicks' only two wins this season on Wednesday night.
When New York got off to a slow start against a weak Bulls team, he changed the momentum of the game in the second half and was a major catalyst in the win, scoring 18 points on 7-for-11 shooting in just 17 minutes. And even on Friday night against the 76ers, he gave the Knicks a much-needed burst of energy and changed the momentum. Hindsight is 20/20, but one has to wonder if the results of the game might have changed had Brown turned to his veteran a bit earlier.
After his impressive outing in Chicago, some wondered whether Clarkson had changed his Knicks outlook . Surprisingly, and as evidenced by the 76ers game, that seems not to have been the case. Outside of the aforementioned Bulls game, Clarkson has played just 25 total minutes across four games this season. And his season even includes a CD-DNP against the Pistons last week. He's now played more than 10 minutes just once and is averaging just 8.6 mpg.
With many of the Knicks not playing up to their usual standards and the bench struggling to find any form of consistency, Clarkson deserves to have a larger role. Brown alluded to forgoing his plans to play Mohamed Diawara more due to the team's early struggles.
If developing Diawara right now isn't a priority and getting the team back on track is, then there really is no reason for Clarkson to be playing so little. He, like many of the other reserves, will have his struggles. But on a team in contention for the most disappointing start to the season, it's confounding why the veteran has played so little.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/nba/knicks/onsi as Knicks Are Ignoring the Jordan Clarkson Gold Mine Right in Front of Them .
