Hardaway receives a cross-court pass from Lee after calling for the ball. For starters, Hardaway takes the shot without going into a full shooting motion. Look at how awkward his elbows are upon release. Second, Hardaway gets the ball with 19 seconds left on the shot clock and releases it instantly. There was more than enough time to create something else. Third, he had O.G. Anunoby, a solid defender even with his rookie status, close in on him quickly. Hardaway’s desire to shoot the ball and Anunoby’s close out likely forced the poor shooting motion. Fourth, as we know from before, Hardaway hadn’t hit a shot from the strong side corner all season. Why choose that moment to hit that shot when you’re no longer open? And fifth, he shoots it so quickly that no one is available to rebound the ball, except for Enes Kanter. Hardaway misses, three other Raptors converge and no other Knick is there for the rebound.

Almost half of Hardaway’s shots have come when the shot clock is between 15 and 7, and his field goal, three point percentage and effective field goal percentages are 41.7%, 34.4% and 50.4%, respectively. Meanwhile, Hardaway has found success when the shot clock is 22 to 18. A quarter of his shots have come during this time and he’s sporting a 47.1 FG%, 34.1 3FG% and a 57.4 eFG%. One possible reason for his shooting success with the clock from 22 to 18 could be that 22.4% of Hardaway’s field goal attempts are taken on the fastbreak. Hardaway has much higher odds of scoring closer to the rim than further away from it, so the increased percentages make sense.

Defense

The Knicks didn’t sign Hardaway for his defensive capabilities but there’s reason for optimism. Hardaway has the fifth-best net rating on the team (+0.7) and has the fourth-best defensive rating of Knicks to play more than 100 minutes (106.3).

Here’s how Hardaway stacked up against other shooting guards as an individual defender last season.

Credit has to be given to the Hawks’ defensive scheme, but even so, Hardaway was above average compared to the other guards in this sample. Unfortunately, there isn’t a sufficient enough amount of data yet to see how Hardaway and the other players are performing this season.

Players are shooting 0.7% better when guarded by Hardaway than by anyone else, a number that is slightly below average. For the first half of this young season, Hardaway posted a -2.7% differential. Since then, Hardaway’s defense has regressed, with a differential of 2.9%. Mind you that both results are part of an already small sample size, so it’s important to not read too much into it. The fact that Hardaway is close to being an average defender almost a quarter of the way through the season is promising. After all, Hardaway recorded a -3.5% differential last year. With that said, he mostly played against bench players and the Atlanta Hawks were a better team defensively.

So we know some statistics, but what about sequences that aren’t as quantifiable? Here’s a play involving Hardaway that led to a wide-open three-pointer by Thabo Sefolosha.