Tonight is a huge game. It is the first night of a home and home against the Cleveland “Still in the hunt for the #3 seed and the chance to play the Kyrie-less Boston Celtics in the first round” Cavaliers, which the Knicks should be destroyed by the Cavaliers in both games, leading to a real possibility that the Knicks could end up tied for the #7 seed, by virtue of the Bulls beating the Nets tonight and then the Nets beating the “No reason to care” Celtics in their final game of the season.
Either way, so long as the Knicks lose the next two games, they are guaranteed to at least end up tied for the 8th worst record in the NBA. Which is a heck of a tanking feat.
Let’s go, Nick Fazekas!
40 replies on “2017-18 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Cavaliers”
Trey Norwood
FRANK!
Frankie with the green light, some nice plays!
Hope he just keeps shooting, take like 15 shots in a game, doesn’t matter if he starts missing.
I’m watching the Mets right now, but it looks like Frank is off to a good start!
Frank!
Terrific defense from Dotson in what should’ve been a highlight play for JR
Also: Frank “never will be a PG” Ntilikina is currently manning the point to great effect!
Frank with 9 shots in the first quarter. What a chucker!
Frank’s going for 30 tonight
Only Beasley can stop him!
🙂
Just a friendly reminder, Frank is 19 years old. He’s probably our 2nd best defender and he’s learning how to play offense quickly. #justsayin
It probably goes like this:
(1) Kyle
(2) Kristaps
(3) Ron fucking Baker
(4) Frank
I wouldn’t be surprised if Kristaps was more valuable to the defense than Kyle, but Kristap’s shit rebounding probably makes it a lot closer either way than you’d think.
Also I couldn’t think of another Knick who could plausibly be described as a good defender.
I like this line up.
@11
This is the way I rank them.
1. KP
2. Frank
3. KOQ
4. Baker
5. Dotson.
Baker is a pest and plays his ass off but overall I don’t think he’s as good as Frank. Maybe KOQ is better, but he can’t guard a stretch 5 much at all. So against some matchups he can’t play as much. He’s very good around the basket.
Frank’s shooting inconsistency seems to be about rhythm in the second half of his shooting motion. He usually seems to get a clean lower-body to upper-body weight transfer (unlike say Mudiay who usually just shoots at or past his peak). But he seems to lose his rhythm somewhere between his arm and his wrist release at least half the time. This usually ends up with Clyde saying he’s aiming or lacks confidence (which could a cause). And it makes him miss by more than you’d expect for a shooter with good form. Maybe he just needs time for his brain to catch up with his length or maybe it’ll be a long term problem, who knows.
It’s almost certainly fear of missing.
The Knicks are actually trying HARD to win this game. You can’t make this stuff up.
IDK, I’m kind of digging the effort. A hard fought loss would be fine with me.
Ron gets almost twice the steals and he’s like 30 pounds heavier than Frank. I think Frank can be better in a year or two when he gets stronger and learns the league a little more, but this year I think Ron was better.
How can you tell in the 5 minutes Baker played this season. 🙂
careee hi on the jam for frank now let’s lose this
Lose lose lose!
The Bulls did everything but shoot at their own hoop tonight
Silver won’t do anything to the Bulls because then he has to admit very publicly that there is a problem.
The Nets could beat the Celtics
@23
Since it’s already obvious, maybe just scapegoat them. What can he actually do? Forfeit their pick? Move them to the end of the lottery?
Frank was +3 in 40 minutes. Yet the Knicks lost by 14! So, they were -17 in the 8 minutes that he did not play?? I need to watch the replay.
in 2005 Carmelo dunked the ball 165 times and Lebron dunked 114 times
This season Carmelo has dunked the ball 16 times, and Lebron has dunked it 119 times + whatever he did tonight. However he’s doing it, it’s incredible.
He still won’t punish them. Yes, the league knows it has a problem with tanking, but they’ll never punish a team because it legitimizes the fact that there is a problem.
wade was in that draft and his 05/18 dunk numbers are basically the same as Melo
Frank with 16 shots! That’s the big news. Keep shooting it young fella, it will help the confidence issues massively.
17/6/5 with a steal and a block and only 2 turnovers on 8/16, that’s encouraging.
Since there’s no freaking way Chicago is ever beating Detroit with the way they are tanking, I guess we’ll end up in a coin flip with the Cavs for the 8th. The hope is that the Celtics play the Wizards tomorrow and then the Nets game back to back, so they could rest players as the 2nd seed is guaranteed. Cleveland should go hard on us again next game as they could still be 3rd.
Damn please win Brooklyn I never asked anything of you guys.
16 FGAs is a career high and so are 17 points so he’s peaking
Silver needs to make a phone call to SVG. Somehow, the Pistons need to throw the game. Maybe a forfeit?
If Sinatra was still alive, he could get it done.
🙂
Problem Silver faces is that it makes sense for non-tanking reasons for teams to play their youngins and projects once eliminated from playoffs. That said, after being warned, Chicago’s 4 best players (3 of whom are young) didn’t even show up for the Knick game. Silver dropping them 2 lottery slots would go a long way towards stopping blatant tanking.
If I’m Adam Silver I’m rigging the lottery so that the Chicago Bulls are picking 14th. I think they’ve been the most disgraceful tank job I’ve ever seen from the 2nd half of a season down. We stopped playing Jarret Jack, but we lost KP and had been struggling in the month of January anyway. They won’t even play the young guys and let the chips fall where they may.
Silver gave them a warning. He be within his rights to penalize them the pick. It’s been done before (for the price of Joe Smith).
THAT would send a message. There would be a lot less tanking next year….
How much do you guys think it would cost to trade up for Luka Doncic? The most I offer is expirings, the 2018, the 2020, and swap rights in 2021. You think Memphis would turn down the 2018, 2020, and 2021 pick deal with the ability to dump Chandler Parsons? I’d do that in a heartbeat just because we’d have the opportunity to pick high in the 2019 draft and really build a young group capable of beating Philly.
If we had a starting 5 of Burke, Ntilikina, Doncic, Zion Williamson, and Kristaps Porzingis we’d be really tough to beat.
Manu at 40 with two straight excellent games to get the Spurs into the playoffs. He drove and dunked in traffic in a big fourth quarter possession tonight.
Jokic is trying to do it by himself for Denver. Millsap is not playing well at all.
Jokic shot so badly but he just wouldn’t lose this game, incredible effort. 15 points, 11 assists and 20 rebounds. If the Jazz beat the Warriors the last game between Utah and Portland decides the 3rd seed.
@35
We would have to absorb Parsons 23 million contract in some way, if Kanter opts in his contract + Baker works. If he opts out it gets much tougher to match as the Knicks would probably re-sign O’Quinn in that case… then we would need a team to absorb Noah’s contract pretty much, which would cost more assets.
I would instantly do our 2018, 2020 and swap 2021 plus Kanter and Baker for Doncic + Parsons, and a Ntilikina + Hardaway + Doncic + Porzingis + O’Quinn with Burke and Lee off the bench line up for 2019 would easily be the most exciting Knicks lineup in recent years.
If a team would draft Doncic only to trade him for anything but a super-duper star, we would see a fanbase riot. If Memphis went to use him as a means to get rid of the horrific Parsons’ contract, I would fear for the lives of FO members, ’cause that would be SO, SO, SO, SO DUMB! David Kahn wouldn’t do that.
I agree, but as a counterpoint if there’s one GM dumb enough to do it, it’s probably Chris Wallace.
The guy drafted Conley right as he was signed and then proceeded to draft literally zero useful players for 9 straight years, including trading Love for O.J Mayo and the Thabeet over Harden pick. Looking at his record, the best player he drafted after Conley is DeMarre Carroll, who pretty much didn’t even play with the team.
As much as I think there should be no doubt about Doncic as the top prospect, there is somewhat of a chance that Ayton is gone first overall (the Suns are very likely to choose him instead of Doncic for example) and the team with the second pick is willing to trade down. It’s more wishful thinking obviously than a real discussion.