Knicks vs. Pelicans, Final Preseason Game

The Zion-less Pelicans come to New York for the final preseason game. The problem I’m having with the preseason is that I don’t even know if the guys they’re playing in the preseason matter one way or the other. So what does any of it really matter?

Don’t get me wrong, if you’ve been here long enough, you’ll know that I’ve been rocking “Preseason is meaningless” for years now, so I never take much from it, but it seems ESPECIALLY meaningless now with how Fizdale’s been weaving players in and out of the rotation.

I assume he’ll just pick a few names out of a hat for the first real game of the season.

86 replies on “Knicks vs. Pelicans, Final Preseason Game”

Why the hell start Ellington?! You know who he is already. Trier is bummed. Although it will be interesting to see Barrett at sf.

Why the hell start Ellington?

Well, you’ve only got 13,720 minutes of game tape on him. You don’t know who he’ll be in this system. He could be LeBron. We just don’t know until we see the interaction effects.

I like Ellington at the 2 next to DSJr; let’s stretch the damn floor.

Unfortunately, this team reminds me of one of the New York Knick teams of the 2000’s, I think the one coached by Larry Brown. All season long the announcers kept talking about how the Knicks had so many different starting lineups, the team was setting records for how many different line ups they fielded. Needless to say, it wasn’t a great season and, in retrospect, all the different lineups were because no one was very good despite being supposedly NBA level players. I fear a similar season this year. I was thinking we might win thirty games, now I’m thinking more like twenty five.

I’d rather watch Trier play and find out if maybe he can improve. He showed some promise last year
We already know that Ellington is a limited journeyman, so of course let’s give him lots of minutes and put some other guards on the DNP CD list just for fun.

I put forty pounds on my first year in the NBA too. It happens.

It’s such a bummer. I have been looking forward to Zion’s debut so much.

Somebody should tell Jahlil Okafor that’s not a game he wants to play with Mitch.

Wally sucks. Better at basketball than I realized but so annoying as a play by play guy. I can take him in the studio but it’s just too much having to listen to him all game. When Walt is the standard especially. I mean there are worse guys out there but the Knicks can do much better.

being a knick fan spoils you to how good our announcing team is… as bad as wally is… he is probably the norm if you compare to other teams…

Man, I still would’ve liked to trade down for Coby White and Alexander-Walker, but I GUESS Perry knows what he’s doing…

I think Barrett, Robinson, Knox and Randle have been in every preseason game. I’m not sure about Portis, did he miss a game due to injury? I’m trying to pick through tea leaves to figure out who will actually start and who will be in the rotation. I’m not trying to figure out who I would start, I’m wondering what Fiz is thinking. All these guys are clearly in the rotation, but other than Randle, I just don’t know who will start.

Reggie Miller sometimes makes me want to put a spoon in my eye too. I think I am probably a little pickier than I should be.

Okafor looks great on offense, but he’s invisible on D (it’s why we’re actually scoring inside.)

Miller is not wrong about forcing RJ to his right. But he has looked pretty good so far, no doubt…

Frank has s lot of work to do on offense, but Dennis Smith is bad on both sides of the ball and has a low basketball IQ.

Cuban has to be laughing his ass off at this point. He gave up a bad two way player with a low basketball IQ and a bum back that no one wanted when he tried to trade him as the centerpiece of a deal for Porzingis.

Wally is so bad I actually switched to being tortured by Reggie. He’s worse as an announcer than Dolan, Mills, and Perry are at team building and understanding basketball.

I’m not sure that Frank is winning the starting PG job. It’s more like Smith and Peyton are losing it.

Can’t believe Boone left Paxton in to face Chirinos there. Got away with it.

Paxton had already struck him out twice today and the guy is batting .000 in 5 games and he had just struck out Alverez the batter before….. but he did dodge a bullet.

RJ Barrett is playing basketball like a more athletic version of Landry Fields tonight. If his shot chart as a rookie is all basket cuts and corner 3s I’d be very pleased.

@30 If the KP trade was Smith Jr for Porzingis straight up, I’d agree with you. Cuban gave up two first round picks and then he took on Courtney Lee and Tim Hardaway JR’s contract at a point in time where it looked like a healthy Durant and Irving would be teaming up in New York. Also, Porzingis has never strung together 3 months of good basketball, is anemic, and is a 7’3” guy coming off of a major knee surgery who is now making $30M AAV. If Porzingis turns into the two way star I dreamt he’d be than great for Cuban. All signs point to Porzingis being a good bit better than his .100 WS/48, but he’d have to be playing like KAT, Embiid, and Jokic to be worth the money he’s being paid. I don’t think he’s as good as any of those guys.

Reggie is correct about Barrett’s right hand. It’s not something I’d be overly worried about at 19, but if he starts becoming a centerpiece of the offense defenses are going to make it tougher for him to go left as they start focusing on him.

And I will NEVER listen to Reggie Miller. He’s by far the worst color commentator I’ve ever heard across any sport, and he’s a Knick nemesis on top of that. I don’t hate Paul Pierce in his ESPN gig the way I did when he was a Celtic, but it’s like Reggie Miller never took off that Pacers jersey. It’s disgusting.

I know it sounds nuts but I’d really consider swapping out Sanchez for Romine now…. I know Britton is going to bounce a few 95 mph sinkers here

i mean for all of dsj’s warts… he has 5 boards 4 assists and got to the line 6 times… that might take frank a couple games to accumulate that…

@34

The Dallas picks are most likely going to produce role caliber players. The space is irrelevant. We put garbage into the space as I predicted and Dallas is not worried about it since their team is several years away from being really good anyway.

Lee is off this year anyway and is basically the equivalent of any of our 1 year mercenaries. The only negative in that deal for them is Hardaway, but they can use Hardaway as a 6th man (where he belongs anyway) while KP and Doncic develop and then Hardaway will be gone. That team has a great future if they don’t screw it up and KP stays healthy. KP is a two way impact player

DSjr is a bad basketball player on both sides of the ball at this stage of his development. He’s an elite athlete. So he will have some amazing games and make some highlight plays, but he’s bad at basketball right now.

Mitch seems to be rounding into form. Swallowed Okafor alive there.

DSJ might be a solid guard if he stopped shooting so much.

I swear if we had Jrue Holiday instead of our mess at PG we’d actually make the playoffs

The young lineup plus Ellington is showing some good energy and good passing… the shots aren’t all falling yet, and they get fooled on D because they’re young. Idk but I think DSJ will get the nod as the starter… he needs reps.

They should try to groom Frank behind Ellington and let RJ be the sf.

I really hope Randle doesn’t care for the preseason because he’s doing nothing for me

So in pre-season overall, we split with the Wizards and lost close games to the Hawks and Pelicans. The Pelicans are a good team, the Wiz are probably quite bad and the Hawks might be up and coming. I’d like to think that makes us ok, but it’s more likely we are comparable to the Wizards in quality.

i can live with those kind of mistakes altho they hurt in the moment… he’s trying to expand his game…. most of those turnovers should eventually disappear altho it may take another season…

his handle is good for his size but it’s not that good to be taking anyone and everyone off the dribble… it’s just way way too high and he gets stripped a whole lot…. he’ll either get lower or just pass it off more often…

the thing that bothers me though is that he is pretty casual about alot of things on the court…. just needs to tighten it up…

Look on the bright side. We have so many low basketball IQ players on this team it’s going to be easy to get into mid season tanking form as the season starts falling apart quickly.

We should keep Barrett, Frank, Robinson, and Dotson (maybe Iggy but we haven’t seen much) and blow up the rest. We could also keep Gibson as a vet leader if we want. That wouldn’t be so bad if we still had KP in the mix, but unfortunately KP was too smart to stay in an organization with Dolan, Mills, and Perry. Durant was very generous when he said the Knicks aren’t cool. What he really meant to say was that Dolan, Mills, and Perry (also known as Moe, Larry, and Curly) are dummies and playing for dummies is not cool.

I swear if we had Jrue Holiday instead of our mess at PG we’d actually make the playoffs

Jrue Holiday is a dynamite two way player. He’s one of the most underrated players in the NBA.

Mitch seems to be rounding into form. Swallowed Okafor alive there.

Okafor may be worse than Kanter on D.

Preseason means very little. Whether we went 0-4 or 4-0, it wouldn’t change who we are. Meaning, a team chock full of 7th-10th best players on a good team.

KP was too smart to stay in an organization with Dolan, Mills, and Perry

Your mancrush wanted out of here pretty bad when Zen Mustache was running this ish too, Mr. Revisionist History

Durant was very generous when he said the Knicks aren’t cool. What he really meant to say was that Dolan, Mills, and Perry (also known as Moe, Larry, and Curly) are dummies and playing for dummies is not cool.

Forgive me for leaving out Fizdale (aka Shemp)

final preseason per 36 line from rj:

2p fg %- .512 <- this is very very good
pts – 15.2
reb – 6.5
asts – 3.1
stls – .73
blks – .73
tos – 1.45

if this is the version of rj we get in the reg season we probably have at the very least a pretty good starter on our hands…. something like between a paul pierce and richard jefferson's rookie years only he's doing it at as a teenager….

really good stuff so far… let's hope it continues…

James Harden just played 35 minutes in a preseason shootout against a guy named Kendrick Nunn, who scored 40 points on 27 shots but also definitely could never be a real NBA player since he’s a 24-year-old rookie and the best players all come out when they’re 19, except for like half of the All-NBA rosters. This is a weird league.

Jrue Holiday is a dynamite two way player. He’s one of the most underrated players in the NBA.

Dude has been at the helm of teams with the following win totals: 34, 45, 30, 34, 48, 33, with every season played with Anthony Davis. If you’re saying that the 2018-19 Pelicans were the most underrated 33-49 team in the league, then yeah, I guess that’s an opinion.

He’s a pretty good player but he’s not underrated.

Forgive me for leaving out Fizdale (aka Shemp)

This made me laugh…. He’s not even good enough to be a “real” stooge.

Your mancrush wanted out of here pretty bad when Zen Mustache was running this ish too, Mr. Revisionist History

Phil has/had some serious generational flaws with his people skills and needed help at GM (because Mills is a utter moron and Phil doesn’t have those skills), but unlike the pinheads in charge now he understands basketball.

There’s no revisionist history here other than by you. When Phil was booted, KP gave the new management team a clean slate and said he was 100% on board. Then he saw the team they put together, watched them operate, realized they were idiots, and knew he was going to waste his prime here. So he asked out. I would have done the same thing at the same time. Well, not really. I’ve been watching the Knicks for years and already knew Dolan and Mills are morons. I would have asked out sooner.

Phil has/had some serious generational flaws with his people skills and needed help at GM (because Mills is a utter moron and Phil doesn’t have those skills), but unlike the pinheads in charge now he understands basketball.

Phil understood (at one time) coaching. He understood zero about his actual job as a Knick, namely being the GM. Melo, D Rose, Noah, Aaron AfLOLo , Derrick Williams, The Wear Bear and Lance Thomas all sez hai!

Trier is clearly the best pure scorer on the team. If he could only do at least something else!

Phil was a half-senile, smug codger prick who bilked starfucker extraordinaire Dolan out of tens of millions.

Phil understood (at one time) coaching.

Heck, even with his disastrous GM stint, I think I’d still trust him as a coach!

But yeah, ooph, was he bad as a GM.

There’s no revisionist history here other than by you.

Uh, what part of what I said is revisionist history?

KP didn’t want to get the fuck outta dodge when mustache was running the team?

Very underwhelmed by Randle in the preseason…

Smith’s numbers looked good aside from shooting. Problem is the shooting was atrocious.

Portis put up a solid scoring line. I didn’t see him at all. How was the rest of his game?

I just got back from the game in the Bronx. I only know that the Knicks lost by a point.

Sounds like RJ, Mitch and Trier were Good and we still don’t have a point guard. Is that the game summary?

This is probably a pointless exercise, but humor me for a second. Would you rather have the combination of Mitch, RJ, and the combination of 7 first round picks in the next 5 years OR Luka Doncic and a maxed out KP with 3 1RPs in the next five years.

Dallas essentially doubled down (gave up lightly protected draft compensation AND a big chunk of cap space). on KP’s health while we punted on it. If Dallas is right, and KP being November KP for 5 years straight is the literal only way they can be right, they have two MVP players in their organization for the long haul and should be a title contender as soon as next year. They don’t have a lot of draft picks to put around them and maybe they make a run for Giannis in 2021, but the only way that team improves seems to be free agency.

We, on the other hand, have two guys I consider to be elite level prospects. Mitchell Robinson is already good-great at basketball, and RJ Barrett has shown he belongs and can be effective on both ends of the court this preseason. To build around those two, and I really hope the front office and Fizdale understand those two are the future of the team, we have a shit ton of cap space in a couple years, we have 7 1RPs in 5 years, and we have a couple coin flip prospects in Ntilikina, Dennis Smith Jr, and Kevin Knox.

This probably sounds crazy, but I view Porzingis/Doncic, LeVert/Allen in Brooklyn, and Robinson/Barrett all at about the same level. We’ve seen Porzingis disappear into the winter and that’s the big reason why; he’s simply not a Doncic/Robinson/Jarrett Allen level player at the moment. I think Dallas will figure that out by the all star break; hopefully the coin lands on heads for Smith Jr at that point.

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