Early in the fourth quarter of the Knicks' blowout win on Sunday, New Orleans guard Antonio Reeves stepped on Josh Hart, who was running toward the bucket.
Reaves was followed by Jericho Sims, who jumped with both feet for a rejection, rising so high that he had to duck under and around the rim.
As Jalen Brunson said, that height was “ridiculous.” And even though Sims was given the goaltending whistle, the play perfectly summed up the 26-year-old's biggest NBA strengths: athleticism and rim protection.
In that order.
“His chin was on the rim,” Brunson said. “That was crazy.”
It's easy to fire a Sim. The numbers on the back of his card are overwhelming. His attitude is modest. His offensive contributions are limited to setting screens and dunks.
But as Tom Thibodeau and his teammates have emphasized for weeks, evaluating Sims requires a deeper look into advanced stats.
According to NBA.com, opponents only shoot 33 percent of the time against Sims when he's within six feet of the rim. This makes Sims the NBA's top paint defender among players who appeared in at least 11 games heading into Monday.
No one else was nearby.
By contrast, opposing teams are shooting starting center Karl-Anthony Towns 73.2 percent from within six feet of the rim, according to NBA.com. That's one of the worst numbers in the league, and while he doesn't have that many rejections (1.2 per 36 minutes), it's a far cry from Sims, who forces his shooters to fumble two-thirds of his chances.
“He's worked really hard,” Tom Thibodeau said. “Very athletic. Great feet. And makes the right decisions at the right times. His athleticism is off the charts. He can react very quickly, and that's what you need. Rim protection. Very powerful.”
Sims, who was selected 58th overall in 2021 and has participated in the NBA Slam Dunk Contest, is currently the longest-tenured Knick behind Mitchell Robinson and Miles McBride.
However, his role always seems to be in flux. Before the Towns trade, the Texas product was competing for the starting center spot heading into the season. He may fall out of the rotation. Part of the roller coaster was Sims getting into foul trouble too easily and struggling to figure out the scheme. He has improved in both areas, especially with a string of positive defensive performances recently.
The lack of offense by design of the Knicks' system makes Sims an easy scapegoat for the team's scoring problems. It's hard to understand the nuances of a player who averages less than two points in 13.9 minutes per game. At the beginning of the season, fans were calling for the more offensively flashy rookie Ariel Hukporti to replace Sims in the rotation.
But my teammates understand.
“I think this is undervalued among casual basketball fans who just look at the stats and don’t understand the game or what it is. [Sims] Yes, there is,” Hart said. “At the beginning of the year, he was trying to figure out what to do, how to play, his position. But in the last 10 to 12 games he's been huge for us. He's a player who came in and rebounded at a high level. He guarded Quandrol well. He protected the rim at a high level. Casual basketball fans don't really understand his value, but we know what he is. I know exactly what to bring.”
With Precious Achiuwa out all season with a hamstring strain (Thirbodeau said Monday he expects to return within a week), Sims will be the Knicks' only frontcourt backup for the season. serves a quarter of the total. Still, his minutes have been relatively short, due in part to Thibodeau's reluctance to play Sims alongside Towns.
If anything, Towns is averaging 33.4 minutes.
Interestingly, the coach revealed Monday that Towns was experimenting with a two-center lineup in practice before suffering the foot contusion.
At least Thibodeau accepts that. A similar setup worked in Minnesota, with Towns playing alongside Rudy Gobert's elite rim protection and covering Towns' weaknesses.
“We’ll see how it plays out,” Thibodeau said. “That's a big thing because we didn't have a lot of practice time. We started working on it, but then KAT broke down, so we didn't get to do as much as we would have liked. .”
No matter where the Knicks fall in the future with the return of Achiuwa (probably soon) and Robinson (who won't be back for a while to work on his conditioning), they know they've found a reliable paint defender in Sims.
He's an underrated piece of the puzzle, but now represents the best paint defender in the NBA.
“When Mitch comes back, hopefully in January or whenever– [Sims] We can now have a diverse lineup,” Hart said. “And there’s two bigs and stuff like that.”
“Jericho is a difficult player to measure statistically,” Thibodeau added. “Because we're talking about screening, offensive rebounding, pressure on the rim, decision-making in the pick-and-roll, when to switch, when not to switch, when to make decisions to chase the ball. And a lot of times he's not getting blocks, but he's making people miss.”
