These one-dimensional Knicks teams were so bad that only two teams had a worse record during the same stretch. The jaggedness principle makes it easy to see why they failed so badly: because basketball talent is multidimensional. One mathematical analysis of basketball performance suggests that at least five dimensions have a clear effect on the outcome of a game: scoring, rebounds, steals, assists, and blocks.24 And most of these five dimensions are not strongly related to one another—players who are great at steals, for instance, are usually not so great at blocking. Indeed, it is
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