Sorry, folks, thought that this was a 10pm game.
The biggest must-lose game of the season has started poorly, as the Knicks lead early.
Sorry, folks, thought that this was a 10pm game.
The biggest must-lose game of the season has started poorly, as the Knicks lead early.
66 replies on “Game Thread: New York Knicks @ Phoenix Suns”
Igor Kokoskov was the coach Phoenix settled for after Fizdale turned them down. I doubt he lasts more than 2 seasons.
Knox is so terrible.
How is Knox still in this game?
The league should fine the Suns for tanking just for playing Jamal Crawford.
Please sit Mudiay and play Allen.
Crap. This is going very well.
Nice job drawing a foul by Mitch on that layup
1. You’re straw manning hard with the “mid tier free agent”. All I’ve been advocating for was “good two way players on nonmax contracts”.
2. As for the extinction of such players, here’s a roster full of them that comprises a team with an SRS to die for:
https://hoopshype.com/salaries/milwaukee_bucks/
3. Here’s another one:
https://hoopshype.com/salaries/toronto_raptors/
@7
He’s so supreme. Dude has 6 points, 3 boards, 2 steals, 1 block and 1 assist in ten minutes and it looks like he’s not even that active.
DSJ has been very sloppy tonight. No bueno.
If DAJ’s return means Mitch gets 10 minutes a half when he has one foul, I’m not a fan.
Someone should probably tell Mudiay that looking for Mitch would actually be beneficial to his free agency!
Hard to be losing when you’re shooting 57% from the field but our boys are getting it done!
Did you forget to switch to the “stratomatic” account? The list of upcoming free agents is public information. Where are all these “good two way players” to be had on “nonmax contracts?” Danny Green is 32 and on a team that will keep him. Robert Covington is signed forever.
Generally, if a guy is on a nonmax contract he’s not a “good two way player.” That’s the trend I’ve been trying to describe to you all day. To the extent that these players exist, they’re on rookie deals or post-RFA contracts (e.g. Middleton) and will soon be max or near-max players.
I love how the ‘impressive’ stat they came up with for Knox is that he’s a rookie that averages 25+ minutes a game. That is accurate, and probably the most favorable number you could find for him.
Lol the end of this Sixers game is batshit insane
Didn’t they finish the pine tar game in front of an empty stadium?
Knox is so bad. When Fizdale says no one will remember in 8 years if the kid shot bad his rookie he didn’t mention that the reason why is because he’ll long gone from the league by then.
@16 to paraphrase a classic Jowles line, the Beijing Ducks don’t get a lot of coverage stateside.
Mitch Rob is must see TV
@18
Too bad we also must see this team as well.
Regarding mid-tier free-agents, Tomáš Satoranský has had a strong 2nd half of the season, since John Wall went down.
I can’t wait for Frank to be back. It would nice to have a player at PG that can do anything well. Smith sucks
Knox is so bad. He does nothing well.
Surely if we go down to the Suns we get a frozen envelope at the lottery right?
@21 I’d hate to disappoint you, but if that’s what you want Frank is not your guy
If Durant wants to play for NY, I don’t want him. Any star player that wants to play on this team is in need of psychiatric attention.
@24
I’d expect Frank to be mostly terrible on offense, but so are Mudiay and Smith. At least Frank will play defense and make rooting for this team less embarrassing,
Yeah but if we can trade Knox for an empty chair, Durant could sit in it, which may appeal to him.
I know we all recognize how shitty Knox is, but I’d like to draw attention to Mudiay’s tanktastic statline so far. He’s 1/4 on shooting with 1 rebound, 1 assist, 1 steal and 5 (!) turnovers in 15 minutes. That’s a statline that’d make Lance Thomas blush.
In contrast, Mitch has 8 points (on 60% shooting), 7 rebounds, 2 steals and 3 blocks in 17 minutes.
If I was Zion Williamson I’d have my agent issue a statement saying that I’ll refuse to work out for the Knicks if they get the #1 pick.
Oh shit, MitchRob grabbing his arm.
Every game that we lose but Robinson looks great in it is a win for me. 2 steals and 4 blocks.
We have the worst perimeter defense in the game, by far.
@27 if we traded for a chair, that would at least demonstrate that we have the foresight to get our defense ready for Yi Jianlin when he inevitably takes the league by storm next year
If Devin Booker could face the Knicks 82 times every season he would be a superstar.
@34 that’s also true of virtually every player in the league
This is honestly a great bit. You’ve inspired me. I think I’m gonna join a Timberwolves message board and just absolutely insist that, like, Jared Terrell has tons of untapped potential.
@36 just be careful to never quantify what you mean by that in any sort of hard terms and insist that conventional methods of evaluation fail to capture Jared Terrell’s imminent ascension to the upper echelons of the league’s talents
@32
I know two players that could help that.
One is on our team now but is injured and the other we could have drafted last year but he plays for the Suns now instead. Of course you have to actually learn to value defense in players before you’ll know to play or draft them.
I’m not watching this game (of course), but with the flattened odds and all, the better team, regardless of tank, should win this. And apparently it’s not even close. Yuck.
It’s games like this that do make me think Fiz is not coaching the team well. It’s one thing to be outplayed by a more talented team, but there’s no way anyone can justify this atrocious quality of play against such a piss poor Suns squad.
DSJ doubled his assist total in the last 2 minutes of garbage time. I missed much of the game, but see that Mudiay had 5 turnovers in 16 minutes. Impressive.
@40
I’d like to think that he’s just fully embraced the tank, but the possibility that he is indeed just a snake oil salesman is still very much on the table.
@36
You’re a funny guy. You don’t know much about basketball, but you make me laugh often enough to kill the pain of watching this team sink further into the abyss.
Maybe some day soon they’ll succeed at their efforts to get better and develop our young players, but I doubt it. I suspect they’ll keep driving our only good players away, adding the same type of stiffs they value now, and making stars reconsider joining this cesspool.
In a just universe the Knicks wouldn’t even get a pick. No one should have to play for this organization.
Fizdale throws spaghetti at the wall hoping something will stick, but “stick” for him is more heavily weighted towards offense instead of defense. Some our best lineups this year have been heavily weighted towards defense but he plays our crappy scorers instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6t9_mfCWlbY
Positively Mitch like at 0:15. I don’t give a damn what the numbers say, you can’t teach that. He just needs to be on the Warriors, Spurs, or Celtics where they actually understand the value of the pinch post!
Knox has now gone three straight games and 70 minutes without an assist. In total he has 55 assists in 1600 minutes for a AST% 5.3%. Compare that to our other chucker Trier, who has nearly double that assist total in 300 less minutes for a AST% 13.0%. What a wasted pick.
Other than dribbling, passing, penetrating, finishing at the rim, shooting threes, shooting twos, drawing fouls, stealing the ball and staying on the court, Frank is totes better than DSJ
Never mind that .400 eFG% y’all, Frank is a good player
#EyeTest
The Celtics continue to play well and win when Kyrie is out for the night.
It makes you wonder.
He’s clearly an elite ball handler, can create his own shot, score efficiently, and make the big shot, but the downside of his defense and ball stopping may be larger than anyone appreciates.
The primary reason this Knicks team is terrible is because for the first time in my life the front office realized wins were detrimental to a team in our position, and thus didn’t do anything to add them during the offseason. That’s it. Noah Vonleh played 31 minutes. Kevin Knox played 25. I’m not sure why anyone is worked up.
I have my problems with Fizdale (stop. fucking. staggering. Mitch. and. DSJ.), but what do people think Popovich’s record with this team would be?
@47
Frank is NOT a good ball player, but he’s way better at defense than DSJ and the team has been better when he’s on the court for close to 2 years now. Smith? Not so much. #NoEyeTest just better stats than the boxscore
@49
The reason they suck is because for two years they mostly added athletic low basketball IQ players that can create their own shot. ( inefficienty) and play no defense.
Now that they are two years into making us worse, they are trying to sell fans on this being a purposeful tank.
They are idiots, but God sometimes protects idiots. He gave our idiots Robinson. Maybe they won’t drive him away.
I had to deal with shit with a couple minutes to go in the 2nd, and came back mid-way through the fourth. Dead impressed with the tank. What the hell? So good, so embarrassing.
I just scrolled up a little bit and this shit again!? Moronic.
back with a fury…hahahahahhaha…
I do knickerblogger and one other social media thing…a mmorpg forum situation for the last few years…in general it’s always interesting to observe the communication patterns of others…
a big hug to those whom really need it…everything’s gonna be alright…except of course for the knicks…
I mean, now that Frank hasn’t played in a while, it’s precisely the best time to spin this argument around.
Yeah, they should have taken the horseshit roster they inherited from Phil Jackson and added a bunch of marginal free agents around the edges, so we’d be winning 30 games this year instead of 17. Then we’d be on our way to glory. If only we had Kentavious Caldwell-Pope up in this bitch. Then we coulda added another sweet #9 pick to slide in next to Frank and Knoxie.
I would like to think we knew what we were getting ourselves into with the quest for Zion, so nights like this shouldn’t come as a shock. If a pantsing by the Suns and Booker scoring 40 on us is the difference between us getting him and not, then I am more than happy to grin and bear it tbh.
I think Frank has a lot of defensive potential but he’s not that better than Smith right now. He allows too much penetration, he fouls too much and gets very little in the way of steals and deflections. He has great possessions here and there but he’s not a big impact defender yet. Smith’s effort level comes and goes but he’s actually good when he’s locked in. He was really good against Sacto (as good as Frank has been in any game this year), tonight- not so much. He’s never going to be as switchable as Frank but he definitely has the ability to be very solid at that end. I’m more concerned with his shooting to be honest.
I hesitate to even respond but I will defend Kyrie here. His DBPM is a positive (0.4), his Ortg (118) and Drtg (107) are very respectable, he contributes a .209 WS/48. The guy is not the problem.
To me it’s not even about results, but the actual process. This team looked so out position and sloppy against the 2nd worst team in the league. It just wasn’t Knox or even Vonleh (who’s been an average player) this season. It was practically everyone who wasn’t playing center for our team who was so so bad.
embrace the tank magic that is fiz…
we’ve consistently loss to those teams which are at the bottom with us…that’s not an easy thing to accomplish…
we may yet get hosed by having to pick fourth or fifth, but, fuck getting stuck with the sixth pick…
How is Kyrie even a ball stopper? He leads his teams in all categories related to assists, while playing with 3 rotation guys (Tatum, Brown and Morris) who are about twice as likely to ever attempt an assist as Kevin Knox is. If anything, he’s the guy who actually creates anything for others. He’s also the most efficient scorer on the team with the highest volume at the same time, so why should he defer to guys who are simply put worse scorers than he is?
This narrative that Irving is somehow responsible for the Celtics struggles is seriously idiotic, unless you somehow think it’s his fault that the negative BPM quartet of Tatum, Brown, Morris and Rozier is playing bad, and spoiler alert, it isn’t.
See, Kyrie Irving, who averages 7.7 assists per 36 and has a 35.7 AST%, is a ball-stopper, but Frank Ntilikina, who averages 4.8 assists per 36 and has a 19.1 AST% is known for “keeping the ball moving.”
Actually scoring a basket or passing to a teammate who scores a basket is highly overrated by these useless boxscore stats. Anybody who is a true student of the game knows that “keeping the ball moving” is really all about dumping the ball off to whoever is standing nearest to you because you are terrified to have the ball in your hands.
From Haley O’Shaughnessy, The Ringer:
Emphasis mine.
How sloppy did they get at that site letting things like those get published? Their cap situation actually got worse thanks to that trade, it’s the Harrison Barnes one that freed up some room!
Frank’s haters are so blinded by rage they won’t even acknowledge he has a higher WS48 than the guy who went #4 in his draft, Josh Jackson.
I’m sure they’ll now respond to me by pointing that he doesn’t have a higher WS48 than literally anyone else in the NBA, as if there’s no more room for him to grow. I could easily see him getting to .000 next season, and we all know at that point the sky is the limit.
If the topic is the cap, then practically every member of the media is just a bit of a fool. It took almost until the trade deadline before most Knick beat writers figured out what Mudiay’s cap hold was!