2019-20 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Trailblazers – The Knicks Haven’t Lost a Single Game in 2020!

Happy New Year, everybody!

The Knicks can’t play Christmas games anymore, but hey, it’s a New Year’s game! That’s something!

The Knicks welcome Melo back to the Garden and it’s funny how, like, NO ONE CARES.

RIP, David Stern.

Let’s go! Knicks?

130 replies on “2019-20 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Trailblazers – The Knicks Haven’t Lost a Single Game in 2020!”

Lillard will get his 40, but I’m debating which of his mediocre teammates will have a career night –

Rodney Hood or Kent Bazemore?

Rodney Hood’s achilles fell off some weeks back, but he could probably still set a career high if he dressed.

Man, Portis just doesn’t care about double-teams or how wide open his teammates are.

For a while I was like man, do I really want to switch over to the Knicks game? Really enjoying these yodeling vids. But I’m glad I joined the Mitch Show.

every possession that’s not a lob to Mitch for a dunk is a waste

DRed for head coach!

Looks like the blazers smoked marijuana and we took speed before the game !

Pretty wild these idiots just stopped passing the ball to Mitch so he could dunk it

“Dare Lillard to shoot from three,” is a novel defensive scheme, but I confess to having doubts as to the long term effectiveness.

Melo has legit hit some tough shots. I want to see Mitch block the shit out of him.

Frank’s figured the Mitch thing out eh

Also Whiteside is totally incapable of sealing off the roll man

RIP David Stern,

This doesn’t look like the November Knicks.

I’m afraid to post anything positive for fear it’ll all suddenly turn to shit…

That’s the most confident shot I think I’ve ever seen from Frank. Lillardesque, in fact!

While the cowardly Blazers doubleteam Mitch in the paint Portis hits a wide open 3 from the corner.

Frank Sucks!

Let’s trade this 21 year old with an improving handle, improving playmaking, improving efficiency, that plays D before he peaks in 4-5 years!

I had to look Bullock’s name to see if it was actually spelled as Bulloq with the way Breen is pronouncing it.

Breen did a thing on his name earlier, apparently it’s Reggie’s preferred pronunciation…

Reggie’s had a very nice game but I need him to get hurt or traded I can’t take this pronunciation

Frank and Mitch are making beautiful music individually and together.

So far I’m loving 2020!

Happy New Year!!!!!

furious mitch isn’t in so he can set the knicks record for baskets without missing

Pretty fun watching the Knicks play good basketball for a decent stretch now. Kinda sucks they go out west for 4 games now where they’ll be lucky to go 1-3. Or good timing for the tank.

I’m going to quickly hate Mike Miller if he doesn’t get RJ Barrett going. I don’t like wins driven by guys we need to be trading.

portland is not a good team…

interesting that frank blows up when DSJ showes up in street clothes…

we were on pace to win 20 or fewer games with fizdale…

portland is not a good team…

It’s funny that just a couple of days ago, I saw someone pooh-poohing the Suns’ recent success by mocking the fact that one of their wins came against Portland.

Well damn..Melo played well and the Knicks lambast Portland? I was only playing this morning when I said I’m rooting for a good Melo game and a Knicks win lmao!

I better play the lottery

I don’t like wins driven by guys we need to be trading.

We need to be trading Mitch and Frank? Or Randle?

I mean, I would trade Randle for the right offer, but he’s also turning out to be the player we’d hoped we’d signed, on the kind of deal where he’d still be useful if/when the kids are better. But this wasn’t a game we won just on the back of the short-term vets, and the performances by Morris and Buh-LOCK may help us trade them.

This was a fun one!

Also, RJ was moving pretty gingerly right before the buzzer sounded. With Bullock back and Dot playing reasonably well, wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to give RJ a breather for a few games.

Bullock looked like a missing link, someone that can come in and rain 3’s at will.
Mitch staying out of foul trouble give the Knicks a chance to win.
Barrett looked like he tweeked an ankle. It’s a good excuse to get him several games off.
Randle has become consistently good.
Ntilikina’s defense buys him time to develop his offense. He just needs to develop more aggression.
Morris should be the third option behind Randle and Robinson but that’s nice to say.

Before the season started, I remember saying I had a tough time seeing this as a bottom five team because Mitch and Julius wouldn’t let that happen. Those two played really well tonight, and I think it’s time to end the Taj Gibson starts. Mitchell Robinson is the future for this team and he’s also our best player.

I just hope somebody stresses to Mike Miller that RJ Barrett is the organizational priority as far as development goes.

Mike Miller being at .500 after 12 games must make Fizdale feel so bad. It’s kind of hilarious.

I just hope somebody stresses to Mike Miller that RJ Barrett is the organizational priority as far as development goes.

Not sure what that means…what do you expect Miller to do? The kid played 25 minutes of suck tonight…a veteran coach might have benched him after the first quarter.

Drafted at No1 or at No60 don’t matter on your minutes, respect and value.
Your game does.
Work Hard, Play Smart>
Get Rewarded.

Next seven games, we’ll probably go 1:6 and go back to tanks discussions.

When we play the Lakers, Clippers and Bucks, (95% loss type games), – think Miller should challenge Frank to achieve 15 FGAs with 1:1 ratio distribution of 3s vs 0-3 feet from rim. Atkinson did something similar with Dinwiddie and the rest is history.

Yeah, it is definitely fair to say that, win or lose, what we should be seeing is stuff like what Atkinson was doing and obviously it was not happening under Fizdale at all.

To Tank…:
Play anti-basketball, fuck the psychology of the youngsters, build losing culture and get rewarded with a high lottery pick.
….Or Not to Tank:
Play good basketball, make your youngsters MAJOR part of that, build winning culture and get rewarded with the best possible development of your past years draft picks ?

Although having Bullock and Payton (my God his last two free throws looked awful) certainly helps performance on the floor, the Knicks certainly have at least a patina of a look of an actual professional team on the floor under Miller.

Randle has played like ….well….Randle the past dozen games.

Mitch has stopped spazzing at every body that comes flying around the basket and has managed to stay on the floor more.

Tonight they learned the PnR is a really good play in the NBA not only because we have a great dive man, but because it causes rotations in the D that yields great open 3 looks if you are willing to move the ball and get the other D running around.

Frank made a big step offensively tonight. His on the ball defense laterally was terrible tonight but his defensive bb IQ made his defense passable overall. He played a terrific game overall and especially offensively actually running the offensive in a controlled and very effective manner.

I, for one, have no problem with Taj starting games and playing 10-20 minutes of smart, veteran basketball. I would also have no problem with having RJ come off the bench.

Now that they are gelling, is it time to break up the team as the trade deadline approaches? What if they’re competitive in some of the games on the road trip? What if they win a couple?

To Tank…:
Play anti-basketball, fuck the psychology of the youngsters, build losing culture and get rewarded with a high lottery pick.
….Or Not to Tank:
Play good basketball, make your youngsters MAJOR part of that, build winning culture and get rewarded with the best possible development of your past years draft picks ?

I don’t think this has ever been the two options the Knicks have had… at least not in the post-Melo era. The choice hte Knicks have made in many of those seasons is

A) To tank and give young players the chance to play a lot of minutes
B) Not to tank and to play veterans who have no future on the team a lot of minutes

Like, the Nets went with option A even though many of their picks were going to Boston, and they won 20, 21 and 28 games their first 3 seasons after giving up on the KG/Pierce/Deron dream.

The Knicks went with option B in that same span and won 32, 31 and 29 games and how are all the young players that supposedly get developed from winning more games? I think they’ve developed a lot less than the young players who learned “losing culture” on the Nets those three years… So… let’s talk about reality instead of invented narratives.

Yes, watched it. It was fun. However, while your joy at watching the Knicks win is a part of reality, it’s not the part you can have a meaningful discussion about.

Now that they are gelling, is it time to break up the team as the trade deadline approaches?

Yep.

What if they’re competitive in some of the games on the road trip?

Yep.

What if they win a couple?

Yep.

If RJ misses a few games, I think we’ll blow our shot at a high pick. Hopefully we’ll lose enough before the deadline for Pills to not be dumb enough to hang onto Morris.

At least this is more fun, even if it’s bad in the longterm.

At least this is more fun, even if it’s bad in the longterm.

Mills is like a cockroach. You can’t kill him. “We’re 10-24, baby! You can’t break up this awesome team! No reason to bring anyone in to replace me!”

They’ve already mostly avoided my big worry, though, which was that they would win, like, 35 games, bring everyone back and make a win-now deal!

Frank/Bullock/Mitch is a strong defensive core on the 2nd unit.

If Bullock really comes back without missing a beat, he probably takes RJs spot within a few games.

Payton isn’t Frank on D but he’s looked solid to me on that side.

Best ball movement I’ve seen this season. Portis took 4 threes partly b/c of it. If he can keep his 3pt rate up, he may turn out to be palatable (if he were on a cheaper contract)

I count 25ish winnable games the rest of the way. Health permitting, we’re better than the Bulls who are currently in 9th.

Only 5 back of Orlando, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

@114
The part of reality I’m talking about is not about the win.
It’s about the way they played to get it.
I’d suggest you to watch it ‘again’.

Before this season started i predicted & wanted 33 wins.
In my ideal scenario I’d love those wins to mean that our youngsters don’t suck but they’re taking the next step.
Tanking means that your current team is shit or injured.
I don’t think we’re shit.
Just wildly badly coached at the start.

@Knew Your Knicks

I’m glad they played well and passed the ball. But I’m not sure how that’s relevant to the fact that your point about tanking was simply inaccurate in regard to the Knicks’ choices and was further inaccurate by referring to the Nets as a counterexample.

@latke

You were right about the meaning of this discussion.

Happy New Year !

So – according to B-R, the last time the Knicks held 3 consecutive opponents to <40% FG% was 2013-14 — that was the team with Tyson, Melo, etc, and that was in the middle of a 16-5 run to close the season before they missed the playoffs by a couple games, Woodson was fired, and Phil was brought on. Before that was freaking 2004.

regardless of the opponents, it is so obvious now that Fizdale was a big part of the problem.

And jesus was Mitchell Robinson amazing last night.

This is the peppiest I have seen the board in a while. Can’t believe I missed the best Mitch game of the year. Also can’t believe Frank missed what probably would have been his first double double by a point.

Also, reiterating a point I made last night, this was close to the platonic ideal of a Knicks win:

* Mitch was godlike, and in a way that suggests he and/or Miller understand how much they should be running PNR with him.
* Frank played as well — both aggressive and under control — on offense as we’ve ever seen him.
* Randle continues his upswing, which matters whether he’s here long-term or we’re trying to trade him
* Morris had a great second half in front of one of the teams we might be able to trade him to
* Bullock spaced the floor, played solid D, and showed no rust, and he’s useful as either an ongoing piece or a trade chit
* Portis played well and mostly under control, though I think his contract is going to be harder to trade than Morris or Bullock’s
* Knox’s shot was a little off, but he was taking good looks and was active on the boards and on D.

It’s not a perfect game because Barrett was so lousy, and probably needs a break now that Bullock has returned. But this was a very nice balance of short and long-term value at play there.

The greatness of Clyde is always on display.

You could tell Clyde’s complete disdain for Me7o’s game as while he was having his most efficient offensive game in years in a feel good night for Me7o, he hammered him mercilessly as he had zero assists a few times….. no steals or blocks either……

Watching a player as talented as Me7o for 6 years refuse to alter his game must have been like grating nails on a chalkboard to a purest like Clyde……

Wins are intoxicating! Enough to make you think you’re not 10-24. From a fans perspective this is not the way to get to a 35 win season. Play yourself into oblivion and then discover yourself in time to put yourself at the back of the lottery. The idea behind being 9, 10 or 11 in the conference is to be dreaming big at this point. Like if we were 15-19 and coming off a stretch like this I’d be dreaming of a 50 win season and feeling like we’re relevant. That’d be fun. This is just, I don’t know, weird. What are we hoping for?

Happy New Year KB!

I haven’t been much of a contributor on this forum, as watching most Knicks games leave me with nothing positive to report. How many times can you call Randle stumblin bumblin? However, without stating a new year resolution, I want to be more positive in general. I won’t have much to contribute with statistical analysis, and I never played organized ball outside of rec leagues. I prefer pickup anyway. I’ve been watching Knicks games since Bill Cartwrright was a rookie. In college I chose cable over phone so I could watch MSG Knicks games (Yankees too in those days). So its basically the eye test. Stating the obvious. That said, last night’s game was pretty fun.
Positives:
Say what you want about New Yorkers, they demonstrated a lot of class cheering for Melo last night.
Mitch jumped impossibly high to one-handed slam that Randle pass. When Randle released it I reacted like it was anther dumb unforced error. That was more impressive than Frank’s Dunk.
Which was impressive on its own. Attitude more than athleticism. We need more of that.
Garden Crew. I was at the New Year’s show at the Garden, so impressed how they convert the place in less than 24 hours whether its ice, concert venue or monster trucks. Also, hate to give Dolan props, but the unenforced no smoking rule is generally appreciated at MSG concerts. Keeping the peace rather than busting balls. Good Policy

Comments are closed.