People here love Frank Ntilikina. They see on him the best defensive guard in the league, future multiple all-defense team, and the PG of the future for the Knicks. All I see is a really bad player, who in many ways didn't evolve at all since entering the league in 2017. So I went to the (available) numbers to see if I'm crazy, if I'm missing a gem of a player. After some analysis, I believe I'm not - he's pretty bad.

All the stats presented here are from NBA.com, from the 2017/18, 2018/19, and 2019/20 seasons (for the present season the numbers were collected on 12/19). When possible, all numbers are presented as per 100 possessions. I'm considering only players that played 300+ minutes in a full season, or 75+ minutes in 19/20. I compared Frank's numbers with the numbers from players classified as guards or guards-forwards by the NBA. With these two cuts, we have around 200 players each season (edit: all numbers are public, but I don't mind sharing the compiled data).

Let's start with the fact the he plays regularly. His playing time for the 3 years window is 21.9, 21.0, and 24.3 minutes per game - there is no boycott against him. What else happens regularly? The fact that he just doesn't score, and he's getting worse at it by the year. His points/100 poss. in his three years in the league are 13.2, 12.9, and 12.1, good for something around the 10th percentile for guards. By comparison, Elfrid Payton is a median guard this year in this particular metric, scoring 18 points/100 poss. He did improve in his true shooting, going from the worst in the league last year, to the 23rd percentile (yay, only really bad!). His TS is improved because he has improved a little bit his FG %, going from one of the worst 2pt shooters in the league to a merely really bad one, and getting to a mediocre (but not horrid) level of 3pt shooting.

Besides combining low volume and inefficiency (a real wonder), he also doesn't create for himself. 32.4% of his 2pt FGM and 90.9% of his 3pt FGM are assisted, by far the worst mark among guards on the team this year, and he's regressing compared to his first 2 years. He drives to the hoop 6.7 times every 100 times he touches the ball, good for the 10th percentile of the league (a worse number compared to his first 2 years). Payton drives 17.6 times every 100 touches. Perhaps it's good that Frank doesn't drive a lot, since each drive generates 0.27 points, one of the worst marks of the league (6th percentile), and he's really turnover prone when going to the hoop (7.3% of his drives end up as a turnover, not terribly bad, but below the median). Oh, his shots are blocked 6.5% of the time, one of the worst marks among guards.

His shot selection is bad in general: 28% of his shots are from mid-range good for the 95th percentile among guards this year (for comparison, only 8% of Payton's shots are from the mid-range). Analysing the type of play, most of his shots come as the ball handler on a P&R (but the Knicks don't employ P&Rs, funny thing). These shots generate 0.6 points per attempt (27th percentile). His second most common shot is spotting up, a play where he actually is a little above average, generating 1.04 points per shot (62th percentile).

He's really bad at shooting. But does he create to others? Not really! People here loves to say that Frank doesn't create because..... Fizdale? He has the ball in his hands, contrary to the whole legend around P&T. He touches the ball 111 times/100 poss., good for 88th percentile among guards. And he stays with the ball 4.2 seconds every touch, good for the 67th percentile among guards. But he assists only 6.2 times/100 poss. (compared to Payton's 11.2). At least he doesn't turn the ball that much (2.4/100 poss., 60th percentile among guards), right?

Finally, let's look at his so vaunted defense. Though he's relatively tall and has long arms, he's one of the worst rebounding guards in the league (4.2/100 poss, 10th percentile). He's good at stealing and deflecting passes (both marks in the 90th percentile among guards this year), but his defense per se, not a world destroyer, actually!! With the exception of defending shots in the paint, non-restricted area, he's below average among guards defending in the restricted area (41st percentile), mid-range (22nd percentile), corner 3s (20th percentile), and above the break 3s (10th percentile). And he got really worse compared to last year across all these numbers.

Edit: I remembered that some people were saying on threads that teams are scheming to get plays away from Frank and his "great" defense. Also BS. People are going at him more this year than the prior ones, per minutes or possessions. And they are shooting better against him. Soooo......

So, Frank is horrid at shooting, doesn't create for himself and others, and his defense (which was pretty good last year) is actually below average this year. And he's regressing all around - in his third year. I'm not crazy, indeed.