Raymond Felton: 2013-14 Season Review and Analysis

Dec 6, 2013; New York, NY, USA; New York Knicks point guard Raymond Felton (2) drives the lane against the Orlando Magic during the second half at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks won the game 121-83. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

From missing (and airballing) floaters in repetitions (like he has for the past two seasons), to getting incinerated by swift point guards; to putting up alarmingly substandard numbers; to putting himself in hot, hot water, due to his legal troubles (more on all of this soon), Raymond Felton’s 2013-14 campaign was a campaign he hopes to forget. It was tough taking the Knicks’ crap as an entire team this season. But, individually, Felton was a whole ‘nother story. He barely gave Knick fans any hope in the 65 games he started. Even his most staunch defenders couldn’t contain themselves from laughing and purging at the same time.

Offense:

To put Felton’s feeble offensive output in perspective, he shot 39% from the field, 31% from downtown, including shooting sub-30% from three in 4 months of the season (we’ll exclude October, because two games is a small sample size to the max, I think) and brandished a .476 TS%, his career-worst, on nearly 10 FGA a game, while logging 31 minutes per night. His basic core line consists of 9.7 points, 5.6 assists, 3 rebounds and 1.2 steals a contest.

But wait, there’s more (R.I.P Billy Mays)! He committed 3.4 turnovers per 100 team possessions and the Knicks’ team defensive efficiency stalled at 106.7 for the season on 92.6 defensive possessions, which ranked 24th. Felton’s net rating was -3.7 and his simple rating was -1.0. He posted his career-worst PER at 12.8, as well as posting his second worst 28.1 AST%, his lowest AST% being last year, because he essentially fed the ball to Carmelo Anthony every other possession, hence his career-low 18.2 USG% he attained this season. And, according to Synergy Sports, Felton ranked 385th in overall points per possession, scoring 0.80.

I sorted all guards that played at least 2000 total minutes this season on basketball-reference.com. In this case, I used win shares, probably the best way to evaluate a player’s overall performance on the floor, as the stat of choice: Out of the 55 guards on that list, Felton ranked 47th in the win shares category with 2.2, with rookies Michael Carter-Williams, Victor Oladipo, Trey Burke and Ben McLemore right below him. Also, Norris Cole, the Heat’s full-time bench point guard, was in that company.

You know how I was mentioning Felton’s abysmal true shooting percentage before? Using the same exact list from before, but with TS%, Felton ranked 54th out of 55 in that category, only to be beaten for the worst percentage by…Trey Burke, by .3 points.

That’s just plain bad. Bad to a point where it’s hard to fathom how he still has a starting job. Combine his mismanaging of the offense when being the primary ball-handler, taking a copious amount of ill-advised shots, and Mike Woodson’s incompetency resulted in a very lethal combo. If Felton was on another team, he would’ve been relegated to a bench role right away. At this point, no Knick or NBA fan should dispute with that. There’s no way a coach like Rick Carlisle or Tom Thibodeau would’ve dealt with continual, abysmal play (then again, Kirk Hinrich plays for the Bulls).

Alas, this season was indicative of Felton being massively erratic with his offensive numbers and it may look like that for the rest of his career if he keeps 2013-14 season kinds of numbers constant.