2017-18 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Wizards

The Wizards have been playing fascinating basketball since John Wall received his significant injury that will keep him out of the lineup for almost two months. Tomas Satoransky has really excelled in the starting lineup, but really, they’ve just been passing the ball better as a team. This has led to some pissiness between John Wall and Marcin Gortat with Gortat talking about how much better the team has been (which is a total dick move, really).

Let’s see how the home crowd treats Emmanuel Mudiay when he makes his debut on the court!

Let’s go, Luke Kornet’s awesome practice skills!

107 replies on “2017-18 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Wizards”

Tank stuck in reverse. Horny, throw a sticky bomb already before you run over your own troops!

Here comes Hardaway doing what he does best: destroying tanks contributing to useless wins!

Knicks are efficient af tonight. I hate it when they play just well enough to annoy me

I’m guessing the wiz had a late one last night

Gortat and Wall had a meeting and Gortat agreed to make them play worse tonight so that they stop making Wall look bad.

holy cow – just looked at the box score – mudiay has 3 turnovers in 8 minutes – damn…who’d have thought that was even possible…

Well, at least we know that Hardaway isn’t broken.

That legitimately is a positive that they could take from this, even if they win this one.

I mean, how can anyone argue that the “Knicksy” thing isn’t real when shit like this happens?

Truly unbelievable.

Make that 12 for 14. 😉

But seriously, shooters tend to bust out of slumps sooner or later. We’re not going to lose EVERY game from here on to the end of the season; might as well enjoy the Tim Hardaway Jr Comeback Game.

i’m ok with winning if th2 is playing like this…. i wouldn’t be able to keep living if we kept getting the th2 of the past ten games…

But seriously, shooters tend to bust out of slumps sooner or later. We’re not going to lose EVERY game from here on to the end of the season; might as well enjoy the Tim Hardaway Jr Comeback Game.

I’m fine with THJ getting crazy hot and them winning because of it (as really, whaddayagonnado?), I’m less fine with Horny riding the starters for some bizarre reason.

It’d be pretty amazing if Tim Hardaway Jr. was the Knicks’ all-time single game points leader. 🙂

I’m fine with Timmy having a career game out of absolutely nowhere, but having it happen against one of the most expected losses in the schedule as we’re trying to tank is the Knicksy as hell part.

I know you guys want us to tank; but I can’t realistically see how more than 1 team catches up to us. Even if we only win this game and 4 more, that would be 28. The teams below us would have to go 10-14 or 11-13.

This enormous lead is upsetting.

It’s like Euro-WWF with Gortat and Kanter tonight, complete with flexing and begging for mercy!

I mean, how can anyone argue that the “Knicksy” thing isn’t real when shit like this happens?

Truly unbelievable.

crazier still that now that we’ve all accepted another lost season – a bunch of posters have been talking about this exact scenario occurring…

very believable – cuz, well – knicks…

I know you guys want us to tank; but I can’t realistically see how more than 1 team catches up to us. Even if we only win this game and 4 more, that would be 28. The teams below us would have to go 10-14 or 11-13.

Oh sure, realistically they’re screwed (because Knicks), but it’d be nice to at least have some hope, ya know?

Guys, I know it’s all about losing for the rest of the season and rightfully so. But this team is not going to come close to losing enough to get any lower than 8th and they probably won’t even get that low. As bad as the Knicks are, especially without KP, they still have enough good players to win some games. The only way this team can truly tank is for TH, Kanter and Lee to sit and I don’t see them doing that until maybe the final few games.

I guess I was one game early in my pronouncement that Hardaway was going break out and become the anti-tank. #SuperVolatile

@ 44 “As bad as the Knicks are, especially without KP, they still have enough good players to win some games. ”

They do?

We all know the chances of ending lower than all those crap teams is low, there’s some fierce competition in the horrible team department… but still, better to at least try to do it while playing young dudes.

Well, let’s add another very meaningful game to the beautiful list of memories we’ve had over the last couple of years.

Just cutting Beasley and O’Quinn (expirings) and replacing their minutes with Kornet, Thomas and Dotson would be a huge difference. I appreciate that Beasley and Kyle aren’t great players, but if you paid attention during the 6ers tank seasons, they actually had 4 or 5 solid rotation players usually. They lost because they gave 60-80 minutes a game to guys who were just god awful.

The front office already proved they’re stupid enough to not do this by not moving Lee and O’Quinn at the deadline, but it’s still possible reality penetrates through the powerful sphere of ignorance in the MSG front office.

@54

He had surgery on his knee and will be out for a while still.

I guess we vastly underestimated the Knicks ability to just be terrible, thankfully!

The Knicks defense is bad enough to make ANY game losable. Kanter, Hardaway, and Lee can’t help with that.

This is hysterical. I shut it off for a quarter to finish dinner. What the hell happened? lmao Tank back on?

It’s a shame Kanter is so bad on defense because he plays so hard on the other end.

Why the fuck are Jack and Lance playing and why the fuck is Hornacek still the coach.

This team has what it takes to go all the way down

Looks like DNPs tonight for Burke, Dotson, Hicks, and Kornett. 10 minutes for Frank, who is 2-2 with 2 steals. Unreal.

@69

About the loss, surely no, but I’d much rather be losing anyway with Frank + Dotson on the court than with the old garbage.

Kanter may be the worst rim protecting C in the league. He’s unplayable without KP there to make up for his utter uselessness.

Don’t think hornacek can be trusted with lineup decisions if he thinks Lance Thomas Jarrett Jack and Kanter give you a better chance to win than KOQ, Willy, Burke, Frank, or Dotson

Fire him at the end of the season.

Stat of the Night: Hardaway and Beasley took 48 of the Knicks 97 shots.

The other stats of the night are the minutes for the young players that I noted above.

Man, can’t believe we didn’t get that win. I thought for sure we were about to turn a corner and become title contenders.

On the real, if the front office didn’t instruct Hornacek to play the young players, they are morons, and if they did and Hornacek decided to ignore them and chase a meaningless win, that seems like a fireable offense. I’m not one to create drama about how coaches are the root of a team’s problems, but this was a sad game for so many reasons.

I blame them both. The FO could simply release Jack and Beasley to simply force H’s hand, and they could even sell it to the media as doing so to get them a chance to catch on with a playoff team.

But even then, Lee and LT would probably log huge minutes like the 40 Beas got tonight.

Horny should be fired tonight before midnight. This game was a perfect opportunity to plat Frank at the point rather than Jack during the 4th quarter. 10 min…wtf??? No Dotson, no Burke, no Kornet.

WTF is the plan????

They are probably not going to release Jack because they want to keep him around as a cheap mentor. In Beasley’s case they may want to bring him back as a 6th man type player off the bench if he’s cheap enough again. All that said, there’s no point in playing them more than courtesy minutes on merit at this stage. Hornacek already said they are going change things up after the all-star break. We’ll see.

Wow, the tank is going totally according to plan and folks here are upset. There’s just no pleasing some people.

@Z-Man,

Imagine if you wanted to go to the movies, and your buddy wanted to go to the mall. Your buddy’s driving and states that he doesn’t GAF about your desire to go to the movies. He’s driving to the mall. Unfortunately for him, he has such a poor sense of direction that for the first 10 minutes of your drive and completely by accident, he ends up driving in the direction of the theater and away from the mall.

I guess you feel kinda happy that maybe because you’re closer to the theater than the mall, your buddy will change his mind, but you’re still annoyed I imagine that your buddy doesn’t realize how awesome it’d be to go see the new Star Wars, right?

That’s how I’m feeling right now about this front office. This game proves they’re still committed to trying to win games even at the expense of player development so it’s nice that the team still lost since maybe it improves the chance the front office sees the light, but at the moment, it’s still apparently trying to take us to the mall, and I don’t count on the happy accidents that have over the last couple weeks kept us heading towards the theater continuing.

We should all be glad April’s Tim Hardaway Jr showed up but didn’t cost us a loss.

I think even if Tim averages 30 ppgs on a 60+ ts for the remainder of the season we still have a good shot at losing any given game

Our defense is that abysmal

Well, when you’re starting Jarret Jack, Mike Beasley, and Enes Kanter, defense becomes a mythical concept.

I’m not all that excited about playing the young guys. Playing now is not critical to their development. I’m rooting for the 8th spot or better, and that’s about it.

Horny is a bit damned if you do, damned if you don’t I feel. I don’t envy a coach in the position where his FO takes the tanking route mid-season. Probably easier to take the hits when you know that is the MO from training camp.

I was at work – turned away from Gamecast at the half to get some scheduling done. Checked back before I left and literally lol’d when I saw the final score.

throw Hornacek in the fucking East River

garbage coach short-term, garbage coach long-term

So funny people don’t realize that Horny knew if he played Dotson and Frank he’d win!!!

Hornacek should be fired yesterday. He’s wasting a season of development for our youngsters. Fire him now

@99 – not sure that’s true but it certainly isn’t the point. Horny wasn’t holding them out so that we lost, he was holding them out to preserve a hollow win. The fact that it didn’t work gives him no credit whatsoever.

No team goes out on the floor – coach included – and actively tries to throw games. Maximising our lotto pick is definitely a goal now but the main goal by far is developing the young guys. They won’t win many but if they win a few i’d take that as a sign of growth. Not playing them is unforgiveable in my book. I’ve tried to keep an open mind about him but he should be fired after that set of rotations.

Also FWIW, the tank isn’t all about gaining seeding it’s also about not losing it. Lakers and Hornets both could still be caught. Remember we looked good for top 5 or 6 last year until some hollow late wins caused us to catch the Wolves and pull away from the Sixers and Orlando. We need to ensure 9th is our seeding floor and keeping 8th or even 7th in view is a bonus.

The tank is not the absolut end goal. If we went 12-12 playing a Frank-THJ-Dotson-Hicks-Kornet-Burke-Mudiay-Lee-KOQ-Kanter rotation I wouldn’t be this much upset.

Exactly. That’s what I was trying to say. As it happens I doubt they are a trade off. But playing the young guys should be the primary focus.

The tank is not the absolut end goal. If we went 12-12 playing a Frank-THJ-Dotson-Hicks-Kornet-Burke-Mudiay-Lee-KOQ-Kanter rotation I wouldn’t be this much upset.

I’d be TREMENDOUSLY upset. The tank is the absolut main goal. Or any other brand of vodka.

Imagine if you wanted to go to the movies, and your buddy wanted to go to the mall. Your buddy’s driving and states that he doesn’t GAF about your desire to go to the movies. He’s driving to the mall. Unfortunately for him, he has such a poor sense of direction that for the first 10 minutes of your drive and completely by accident, he ends up driving in the direction of the theater and away from the mall.

I guess you feel kinda happy that maybe because you’re closer to the theater than the mall, your buddy will change his mind, but you’re still annoyed I imagine that your buddy doesn’t realize how awesome it’d be to go see the new Star Wars, right?

That’s how I’m feeling right now about this front office. This game proves they’re still committed to trying to win games even at the expense of player development so it’s nice that the team still lost since maybe it improves the chance the front office sees the light, but at the moment, it’s still apparently trying to take us to the mall, and I don’t count on the happy accidents that have over the last couple weeks kept us heading towards the theater continuing.

to make matters even worse – your buddy has a penchant for old, slow ugly chicks, and, keeps wanting to always bring them along cuz he feels like they’ll put out a little more…

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