2017-18 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Mavericks

The Knicks host the Mavericks in one of the most dangerous games to the tanks around, as the Mavericks are three games behind/ahead of the Knicks in the tank and losing this game would be huge for the tank.

The Nets, meanwhile, are up 18-6 on the Raptors, so maybe this could be a doubly good night!

Let’s go, Nick Jonas!

63 replies on “2017-18 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Mavericks”

Kanter is already a problem down low for Dallas. He’ll probably get a rebound per minute tonight.

Bench him!
🙂

You mean the promised land of the 10th pick when someone leaps over the Knicks in the lottery.

I guess Mudiay is just better than Dennis Smith Jr.

This will need to be a very clutch loss, the mavs are just about as terrible as we are.

At least we’ll always have those Michael Beasley memories when we draft Miles Bridges.

Well, we’re only up 1 and we’re hitting almost 70%. That’s pretty encouraging! Bound to regress.

I hope Dougie McBuckets gets into some shouting match a la Nigel Hayes after he hits some threes.

I swear this is every single season. Getting mad at some random scrub for having a hot shooting game and screwing up the tank is like our most proud and noble tradition

Dotson does have such a good looking shot. Frank with some pretty slick passes too.

If you have no answer for Michael Beasley then…well, I guess then you’re just a really bad team and the Mavs are a really bad team, so I guess the math checks out there, actually.

Nice half from Frank

That is the one good thing from the game. I love giving him minutes at the 1.

Keep feeding the Beas, he’s bound to start missing some of those.

We need more Mudiay and THJ, Frank and Dotson are playing too well.

In 1999 Knicks beat Dirk in his MSG debut 107-82 and Ewing didn’t even play that game. Dirk is actually old enough to remember when the Knicks were championship contenders.

I’m liking Troy, he’s athletic and lively and seems to be willing to work hard on defense. Let him get minutes over Lance please.

Frank has more value at PG. When he has the ball more often he at least makes more plays to go along with the plus defense. Frank should be the PG and let Mudiay and Burke fight it out for the backup spot.

If the Knicks win the rest of their games this season cause Williams is dunking putbacks all game long I won’t mind.

I hate the “stepped out of bounds” turnover, but I guess that’s the kind of play you come to expect from guys like Hardaway and Beasley. smh

Dallas is really really bad. Hopefully we keep up with the stupid fouls. Really hoping to see our other proud and noble tradition, the 3rd quarter collapse.

It would be very fitting for the Knicks to lose this tanking battle because of inspired play by the Mavs tanking commander, DSJr

Frank has more value at PG. When he has the ball more often he at least makes more plays to go along with the plus defense. Frank should be the PG and let Mudiay and Burke fight it out for the backup spot.

There’s absolutely no doubt that he has more value if he can play the 1. It’s simply a matter of, “Can he play the 1 in the NBA?”

The Hawks are beating the Thunder by 12 at half time, what the actual hell.

There’s absolutely no doubt that he has more value if he can play the 1. It’s simply a matter of, “Can he play the 1 in the NBA?”

I hear you.

I see the weaknesses with his handle and aggressiveness like everyone else, but he’s averaging 5.3 assists per 36 despite playing some recent games at off guard where he was getting fewer. He’s got 6 today in the first half. That’s not too bad for a guy that also played off the ball a bit in Europe. I can’t see how he doesn’t get better with time as he gets more comfortable with the PG position and improves his handle a little. Maybe he’s never going to be an elite traditional PG or scorer, but if he’s competent, becomes an efficient lower usage scorer, an elite defender, and rebounds well for the position, he’s going to be a very valuable player. Maybe we are all worrying too much about what he can’t do.

Brooklyn is up 13 over Toronto in the 3rd!

Chicago up by 8 right now too

I can’t see how he doesn’t get better with time as he gets more comfortable with the PG position and improves his handle a little.

I’m all for making him the starter and just playing him a ton of minutes at the 1 the rest of this year and all of next year.

This is the worst game we’ve played all year, and I am legitimately worried we’re going to win.

i’m lagging…at least a few minutes behind real time…

more mudiay, less burke…

troy williams looks good, talk about some lively legs…

Atlanta, Brooklyn and Chicago will all end up losing, damn. This could have been the perfect tanking night.

At least we clutched a huge L today, I didn’t think this team was bad enough to lose to the Mavs at home.

Wow, if we can lose to the Mavs at home maybe I should un-resign myself to the 9th slot. I just want to get out of the range in which it would be socially acceptable to take Colin Sexton, is that so much to ask?

Troy Williams looks like a nice little find, and Burke might be able to stick around in some capacity.

i think if there’s one thing that we’ve learned with kp out is that we’ve confirmed that kanter is horrifically bad on defense…. and that we should probably get rid of him at the first opportunity….

Great loss, but I think H was really trying to win again. Playing the “hot hand” approach with Burke and Beasley getting all the crunch time minutes. But since those two guys pretty much give back on D all the points they score, that’s not a winning formula.
🙂

Shut down Timmy for the season before he inevitably goes off in the last 3 games.

The only reason I worry about out-tankin…errr umm I mean blowing a game to the Mavs is this: How many more games in a row do the Knicks lose before Adam Silver gets a lil curious about what’s going on at MSG?

I think the Knicks can prove that, without KP, they really do suck this bad – particularly on defense. It’s not like we’re sitting down Patrick Ewing on DNP-CDs or anything.

I mean, for all we know our coach is actually trying to win as hard as he can, we’re just absolutely terrible at it.

He even benched Mudiay for Burke which is a totally non tanking move and it didn’t work.

If Enes Kanter plays 20 minutes and only takes 4 shots I get suspicious. I mean, Enes isn’t exactly a gunner, but he’s also not out there for defense

Look the Knicks are actually playing everyone who deserves to play. The problem is our roster has so many one way players we could put together a football team. When Beasley, Burke, and Kanter are your best offensive players you’re bound to be the worst defense in the NBA. Kyle O’Quinn and Courtney Lee are the best players on the team and they play. We just have the Big 3 of tank ball with Kanter, Beasley, and Mudiay. There’s nothing else to it other than we are currently the worst team in the NBA. Hopefully that’s enough for us to land Trae Young because that kid is the next Steve Nash. I’d have no problem with Frank Ntilikina turning into Raja Bell if it meant we got this generation’s version of the player who revolutionized basketball.

courtney lee is the best backcourt player we have by a country mile…. we play kanter bigger minutes than koq …. and we play lance thomas…. th2 who is probably our best player now is playing out of position and has been on a persistent cold streak…..

i think i saw somewhere that we’ve trailed for 80% of all the available minutes since the ASB… i don’t find that surprising….

we have bad players and we are playing the worst ones…. whatever hornacek’s strategy is… it’s really good for the tank whether intentional or not….

Yeah, I’m not sure what minute distribution would be “optimal” if the Knicks were trying to win every game but I see no reason to believe it would be radically different than what it is now. For all we know that really is their current goal.

I mean, sure we’re taking it pretty easy with Kanter and Lee. Those guys aren’t exactly Shaq and Kobe though, and who the hell doesn’t give veterans some extra rest towards the end of the season anyway?

@Enes_Kanter
…

– Mar 13, 2018

Kanter opting out would be a double win for the tank.

Yeah, Hornacek might not have been trying super hard to win that game.. If I were trying to avoid giving the impression that I was trying to lose to the Mavs, I would probably not play the new kid down the stretch in the 4th because that would be supicious. But I’d probably leave in guys who were making dumb fouls, keeping the Mavs in the game in the 1st half. I just might give 39 minutes to a starter who’s been ice cold and looked gassed for the crucial last five minutes of the game. I would consider some obviously bad defensive rotations. I might give 33 minutes to the guy who’s been getting called out by his teammate for lack of effort, figuring that he’ll start missing shots eventually.

But if I were Hornacek, I might also do all that shit trying to win the game. This team is poorly constructed, the rotations are gonna look like ass some of the time no matter what. Still..

Dolan’s Razor says that the Knicks are going to get fined ping pong balls in the next week or so for deliberately trying to lose games, despite the fact that they aren’t actually trying to lose games.

The fines for tanking from the NBA seem to be given only when teams are too obvious about; or, worse, actually admit publicly they want to lose. I think as long as the Knicks say they are trying to win, and just jigger their rotations instead of blatantly sitting people, they won’t draw league attention. Everyone expects us to be terrible anyway.

Everyone seems to love when we’re terrible.

Nice loss. This team just might be bad enough to move up in the draft lottery. They are on track to lose most if not all of their remaining games. This would be good

The tanking teams are now 1-432 against non-tanking teams since the ASB.

The Bulls literally took Lopez and Holiday out of the rotation for nothing, called up Cameron Payne, who might be the only guard in the league bad enough to challenge Mudiay and only got a warning for it.

There’s no way the league ever punishes the Knicks for just tweaking the rotation a bit. All the bad veterans are still playing and all the young players have reasons to get minutes.

The Wolves lost 12 straight games to get Towns in 2015 while starting Adreian Payne and Chase Budinger and the league did nothing.

Comments are closed.