The second half of the season kicks off tonight in Orlando, where the Knicks take on the Orlando Magic.
Emmanuel Mudiay takes over as the new starter at the point guard position. Maybe it’ll work out somehow!
Luke Kornet has had some more time to practice with the team, so he’s probably ready to score double figures tonight. Let’s go, Kornet!
65 replies on “2017-18 Game Thread: Knicks @ Magic”
Danger game for the tank. Let’s see what the kids have got and hope for the best…..or worst……however you want to look at it.
Having Mudiay, Kanter, and Beasley on the court at the same time may be defensive malpractice.
The more I watch the Knicks without KP the more I think he deserves DPOY votes.
This plan of bit playing defense + fouling them every time it looks like they might miss a shot seems like a good tanking strategy, but I worry the Magic will fuck it up and let us win.
p h y s i c a l t o o l s
u p s i d e
i n t r i g u i n g
They need to get O’Quinn out of there before he ruins the tank. Like, now.
41 1st quarter points to the Orlando Magic. This tank cannot be stopped.
V promising beginning! All-star game defense FTL!
41 points in the first, I’m feeling confident on the ability of this lineup to get destroyed by any team.
Mudiay has literally zero clue how to play anything on defense.
KP should be MVP and DPOY.
I was really, really happy with KP’s defense this season.
Lmao these guys are so fucking bad let’s get Doncic
Burke is scaring me, stop hitting shots please.
How can Burke score in an NBA game? How is this happening? Are you telling me there are rookie min players who can actually make a few shots in a real NBA game? That’s ridiculous.
For all of his offensive talent, Beasley is a transcendentally bad team player.
playing on a transcendentally bad team, playing for a transcendentally bad organization…
the only thing superior about the new york knickerbockers is their fans…and clyde 🙂
They never said that tanking for Doncic would be easy
I suppose it’s possible that a player who’s been as bad as Mudiay over several seasons became a serviceable NBA player, but it seems extremely unlikely.
Good to know that we have this year’s Maurice Ndour in Trey Burke and this year’s Tim Hardaway Jr. in Tim Hardaway Jr.
This will be a tough loss to pull out in the end. Fortunately, we don’t have luck on our side.
@16
I see no path to him being good. He simply has too much to work on, like, my god he’s awful. But if he gets us a few spots better in the draft then he was worth the second, I think.
I’m a bit behind the live action, so I haven’t been commenting, but holy shit Troy Williams looks like he’s 50
Yeah, but prove it won’t happen.
Hornacek should be fired.
Trey Burke’s insistence on quality play is very annoying.
Yeah, on second thought, get Jarret Jack in there!
🙂
For God’s sake, put Beasley back in!
Burke looks tired, we should sit him.
Paul and Harden? Curry and Thompson? Lillard and McCollum?
Who needs those guys, we’ve got Burke and Hardaway, our building blocks for the future!!
Man is this annoying, gain nothing from winning. I know there are some teams that will be hard to lose against but damn burke is killing this. Well its good that the hornets are losing so its not the worst thing but still annoying
Burke is making the Mudiay trade look even that much dumber.
So, who will still be there at 12?
Awful meaningless win. #12 pick here we come
This team is so fucking stupid. I hate Burke’s game so much. Lance Lee and Oquinn with solid play we don’t need. Mudiay conducting layup drillls.
@31
Now THAT’S irony!
🙂
Dolan’s Razor in effect.
burke’s going to have game’s like this where he gets hot…. we just have a lot of guys like that so we’re going to pickup wins just on volatility alone….
it’s going to be pretty hard getting above #10… we’re not league worst level of bad.. we’re sadly just very mediocre…
Future Knick Kevin Knox, come onnnnn downnnnnnnm
Don’t these players understand the lottery implications!?!?
@35
I’m down for Kevin Knox
Kevin Knox would probably be the most talented player on this current team (not counting KP, of course).
Kevin Knox is a bad prospect and I wouldn’t pick him with the #20 pick much less the inevitable #12 pick we will be picking him with
How can something be so fucking annoying and predictable at the same time?
I don’t want Knox, either, but sadly he still would probably be the most talented non-KP player on the team next season (hopefully Frank will improve in the offseason and be better).
It’s like no one on the team gets the fact that every championship team got their pieces in the draft.
When everyone’s tanking, they roll out Courtney fucking Lee.
Trey plays no defense but he’s legitimately been terrific on offense so far. I have my doubts about his ability to keep it going, but what can you do, playing the kids is what we should be doing.
Out tanking teams like Orlando is going to be impossible.
Yeah, I agree that you can be mad about the result, but the process of playing Burke was fine. He really has been electric on offense. The problem with this team was ever trying to compete, not what they’re doing right this moment.
It really doesn’t take much to do the right things in the NBA, you just have to have the right philosophy. You can be practical and do everything else wrong but still end up with Towns or Davis if you decide to tank. Or you can fuck up every damn decision you have like signing Rose, Noah, Hardaway, keeping Lee/Oquinn, playing to win, and giving minutes to non-minus players when there’s no fucking point in doing that.
It’s literally. Every. Damn. Decision. Idiots. AHHHHH
Wait a minute, Trey Burke is good at basketball now?
Burke-9th pick
Porzingis-4th pick
Kanter-3rd pick
Ntilikina-8th pick
Mudiay-7th pick
Pretty wild we have 5 top 10 picks 25 and under and we’re terrible.
What kills me about Mudiay is that so much of his problems are mental. That’s the problem with a lot of guys, of course, but it’s still frustrating. Like he never learned how to play defense. I think Mudiay had as much upside as anyone in the 2015 Draft. He just had to put his shit together and we all knew that it was possible that he would never do so. And, well, he never did so. It sucks to watch.
In fairness, they played Lee 14 minutes, Jack was a DNP and gave bulk minutes to the kids. If we are going to win this way then so be it. We just have to let the cards fall where they may I guess if big minutes are going to the under 25 crew.
Mudiay-22 minutes
Burke-26 minutes
Frank-29 minutes
Dotson-7 minutes
Lee-14 minutes
I mean you can’t be too mad at that.
Yeah, I agree that the process was fine tonight. It just didn’t work out.
For real though, our draft pick this year is gonna be Miles Bridges. It was always going to be him all along, we all know it, so hop on board the inferior M Bridges train while it’s still in the station. I think he’s actually pretty good, so I wouldn’t mind having him on my team, though.
It’s just a pity that we can never have nice things like Luka Doncic
I think Bridges (either one) would also be the most talented player on next year’s team.
Who knows? Maybe we pull a Chicago circa 2008 and win the lottery with a 1.7% chance. It’s been a while since we drafted Ewing, so we are a due a bit of draft “luck”.
i actually like a lot of what hardaway has done and how he’s progressed… recent shooting struggles aside…. he’s a top 15 sg with potential to be a lot better than that…. so i think he would be the 2nd best player on the team….
THJ isn’t useless, but I would really hope that the Bridges would be over .100 WS/48 in their first seasons.
Neither look like they’ll be stars, but both look like the types of guys who can at least crack .100 in their first season.
that’s gotta mean something…
and, cuz knicks, that something can’t be good…
The only thing about Miles Bridges that scares me is that when I watch him I get major flashbacks about watching Marcus Morris in Kansas and thinking he would be a pretty good player in the league, from the underwhelming steals + blocks, the just ok rebounding and the not enough to be a 4 but slow for the 3 size. At least Miles seems to be a more consistent 3 pt shooter already, but I just can’t shake this feeling.
I suppose I shouldn’t expect a good rookie season from anyone outside the top 5-7 guys, really. Like Morris. He grew to become a good player, but he was dreadful to start.
a rookie who posts a ws48 of over .100… and not a big man… is probably going to be a superstar…. miles is probably not that… and i doubt mikal would be either although i think he’s going to be pretty good in his own right….
i keep going back to troy brown as probably the SF with the highest upside…. and the reason why i’m not too worried about falling too far back in the lotto…. but it’s also likely that the knicks have no idea who he is….
Yeah, you’re right. It’s really hard to have a plus .100 season as a rookie. So maybe THJ will be the best player on the Knicks next season. O’Quinn might be back, though!
If we’re going by WS48 the best Knick season, assuming he opts in, will easily be Kanter.
well… looks like michael porter jr might suit up this season….. i think that’s a bad move for him… hopefully he’ll be alright…
We are so fucked
@59
I’m not sure I’d call Morris good, at most he’s decent. A career .085 ws48 guy who has a .529 ts% on a limited role for a top 5 team and is not much of a defender would be a pretty disappointing outcome for this dreadful season.
Like Morris, I feel Miles will get to a point where he either becomes a sharpshooter and is a pretty valuable role player, or he will struggle defending his position and won’t have the size or the shooting consistency to be a very valuable starter.
I might be selling him a bit short as he is a versatile and smart player who is a pretty good athlete, but I don’t see too much to be excited about in his profile.