2019-20 Game Thread: Knicks @ Pistons

Hey, at least Mitch is back into the starting lineup, so that’s something!

The Knicks will be opening with Frank Ntilikina in the starting lineup, as well, along with RJ Barrett in the backcourt and Mitch, Julius Randle and Marcus Morris in the frontcourt.

This Pistons team is still missing Blake Griffin, so they should be beatable, but we shall see if that actually happens. It’s funny that the Pistons are starting Morris’ twin brother, but at the more logical power forward spot.

Let’s go, Knicks!

216 replies on “2019-20 Game Thread: Knicks @ Pistons”

Never realised how many players listed as guards are on the Pistons roster. Given our form of mediocre guards having career games against us, this could be a danger game

Yep, not Wally.

At least people are remembering that Mitch is the best guy in the NBA to throw the ball too around the joop.

And good D by Frank so far

RJ Barrett and Mitchell Robinson’s two man game. THAT IS ALL I WANT TO SEE, FIZ.

This is likely to look stupid soon, but seems like they came out with a bit of an edge

One minor reason the Knicks get so few assists is that even when someone makes a good pass for an open look, no one can hit an outside shot. smh

Yeah, Frank hasn’t gotten around a defender in his entire life. It’s just crazy to me that the athleticism that works so well on one end doesn’t translate at all.

Mitch is such a beast. Who is a more athletic big man in the NBA?

I like Frank and Robinson on the court at the same time.

FRANK

The answer to the most athletic big man might be Drummon.

I love Frank on defense.

It’s eerie how similar these two teams are. Detroit is better but they have a a lot of similarity.

Drumond will be good test for Mitch tonight.

Can we please have a Dotson sighting tonight?

Knox can shoot, but those drives where he’s just tosses it in the vicinity of the hoop…smdh

Drummond might not jump as well as Mitch and he’s slower and shorter, but he’s much stronger and he moves really well for a man his size so idk. There’s no an easy definition of athleticism. I might go with AD if you count him as a center because of his combination of movement and basketball skills, but if you said Mitch or Drummond it’s not like I could prove you wrong. Embiid is also not a slouch when you consider how big he is.

Mitch and Frank go out with game tied. Now, Detroit up 9 and Frank back in….and almost immediately forces a TO.

Again, if you don’t understand Frank’s value, I don’t know what team you’re watching. He’s not a good point guard, but he’s a good player.

We need Frank and Robinson on the court together. We can worry about the rest of the defensive incompetents later. At least have 2 players that can impact that side.

So tough to defend a possession well and then watch as a last second 3 goes in.

Again, if you don’t understand Frank’s value, I don’t know what team you’re watching. He’s not a good point guard, but he’s a good player.

Are you secretly Clarence Gaines?

Send Bobby Portis to the Illawara Hawks for a jar of Vegemite

I’m hoping that Fiz, with this starting lineup, has realized that his best hope is defense. It was the same lineup that played the Celtics tough, and surprise surprise, they were good again. Defense matters.

That said, he had 0 rebounds, 0 assists and 0 FTs. If he doesn’t hit a 23-foot 2, he’s 1-3.

in order to consider frank a good player you really have to ignore all the mistakes and failures and overall non-impact….

good quarter defensively tho….

Don’t even recognize this Frank.

And I was very happy to see Knox get all the way to the rim

I apologize for beating a dead horse, but the boxscore shows Frank with 2 blocks and no steals. But he’s been critical disrupting about a dozen possessions. That’s the kind of stuff he does that doesn’t get noticed. Tonight he’s obviously more locked in than typically so it’s more obvious (at least for a few minutes so far), but he does these kinds of things almost all the time even if not as frequently.

That said, he had 0 rebounds, 0 assists and 0 FTs. If he doesn’t hit a 23-foot 2, he’s 1-3.

That’s why you need to watch to know. As Strat said, he deflected a few passes, disrupted sets, kept the Pistons from getting easy looks. It’s not there in the counting stats, but it’s absolutely clear on the floor.

theory: mitchell robinson stole the free throw shooting ability from several of his teammates

Send Bobby Portis to the Illawara Hawks for a jar of Vegemite

A jar of vegemite would be a steal. Would be lucky to get off-brand vegemite or maybe even marmite.

As good as Frank has played so far this is definitely going to be the Thon Maker game…

That was super dumbass foul by Randle.

And yes, Mitch should be in this game

Sally gushing about franks free throw percentage… he misses both.

Kenny:”this are actually franks frost fts of the season”
Wally: “really!?!”

You can write this stuff

Interesting that the D is better with Frank and anyone but Portis. I would have thought Mitch was the other key.

randle and morris isn’t bad for the frontcourt… should do some dmg against this pistons lineup….

Did Mitch get concussed?

Possibly. Didn’t see him on the bench just now so he’s probably getting checked in the locker room.

Would be really nice if Wally or Harlowe gave us an update.

He got smacked by Markeiff’s elbow. I thought concussion when I saw him after he got up.

Frank is a little bit like Knox in the contact department. As Wally is saying, RJ definitely is not. His ability to get to the rack is impressive.

I really wonder if there are 5 shooting guards stronger than RJ Barrett. At the 3 his strength won’t be such an advantage, but he gets that left whenever he wants because he’s much stronger than the guy guarding him.

Once he’s hitting free throws like an NBA player should be, we’ve got ourselves a dude.

I love RJ’s controlled aggression. He’s gonna be a really nice player for a long time.

Meanwhile I think Portis would have a hard time guarding me.

Frank made the wrong decision there. That was his mistake.

But RANDLE!!

Despite being down almost the whole half i like a lot the way we play.
I had 2 beers also tho !

There can’t be more than 5 or 6 players who have expanded their skillset since coming into the league more than Andre Drummond.

How is Drummond beating our defense down the court?

Kennard is going to be looking under his bed tonight for Frank like he is the boggie man!

Drummond v Portis is not a matchup that works for us

Drummond vs. anyone on the Knicks is a problem for us unless we hit Frank with some gamma rays at halftime and he comes out green.

We can’t win tonight without Mitch unless someone gets hot from 3. But this is much more competitive…except for Portis, natch.

I dunno, Drummond isn’t exactly Blake Griffin on O…he’s still pretty limited.

Ahh, he’s not limited tonight.

I just checked on b-r…92% of his shots are inside of 10 feet, he’s shooting 67% from the FT line and he still has only a .587 TS%. He’s just murdering everyone on the boards as he always has.

Mitch, Frank, Barrett, a PG, and at least one elite scorer (either the PG or the other player) and we might have some fun.

Bobby Portis at $16M is a fireable offense if you ask me. Especially when PHX added Dario Saric and Aaron Baynes via salary dump trades this summer.

Not having Payton or DSJ available is a benefit to Frank. He seems to get that he won’t be pulled for one error and seems to be playing with more confidence.

Frank played 21 minutes in the first half. Poor guy is going to need load management. 🙂

Drummond is on his way to being an historic rebounder…he’s only 26 and has over 7500 rebounds

I hope mitch didn’t get one of those weird orbital fractures…

Please NO!

We need him out there for development and to have any chance to win games.

Randle can really pass. There a player there. Just not a great fit with Mitch, and can’t play D.

I can’t be the only person who thinks these Knicks have a new coach….

Now we’re down a center and two point guards

In other words, we have no pgs or centers on the roster. Good thing we have 5 power forwards.

In other words, we have no pgs or centers on the roster. Good thing we have 5 power forwards.

Frank is playing like a point guard today so I didn’t want to say that.

To be fair, even the male refs are looking good these days! At least compared to the likes of Mendy Rudolph and Dick Bavetta!

Just saw a clip of the shooting foul by Randle on Morris. How exactly is that a flagrant 1?

Also, future Knick Cole Anthony looks great against Norte Dame tonight.

yeah, I don’t know if this is the best game of Frank’s career but he’s been very good, especially in the context of being Frank Ntilikina

I have never heard of Christian Wood. I have no idea how this guy has 600 career minutes across four seasons.

Under the definition of ‘Replacement Player’ is a picture of Wayne Ellington.

not that there’s anywhere good to get hit by an elbow from an nba forward but right on the temple is one of the less good ones.

pistons are also without 2 of their pg’s and their star frontcourt player… and they are destroying us…

The Pistons are at home and are a better team than the Knicks. The only guy we have who could hope to guard the Pistons best player got concussed after like 5 minutes.

It’s the Tony Snell game.

Although I vaguely recollect we already had a Tony Snell game….

Man average/garden variety players must circle the Knicks on the schedule every year.

challenging a one ft foul in a game where you’re down 16 with 6 minutes to go doesn’t make for must see TV

the other wasn’t a challenge.. it was checking if the foul occurred before the violation…

What are we going to do with this potentially bad Randle contract?

Any questions we had about his defense were answered tonight and the fit is simply not very good. He may score a little better with Robinson out and more space, but he’ll give back plenty.

I think Frank burned himself out in the 1st half. He didn’t have the same energy in the 2nd half. At least we got a chance to see the kind of player we hope he can develop into over time. Then longer term you try to add to that. Still, I don’t care where we put him. He’s going to be a very good role player. He just can’t run a traditional offense by himself as the PG, at least not any time soon. But I want him on the court for X minutes.

I wouldn’t read too much into Frank’s game tonight. Remember that both of Detroit’s PGs were out.

Randle is here for 2 years. It doesn’t matter if he sucks.

This was a much better bad loss than our previous bad loss. There was a valid reason to not play Mitch much, RJ played relatively well (he shot like shit, but he drew plenty of fouls, hit the boards and got 8 assists), Frank had a good game, Kevin flashed some scoring ability, and none of the other players matter.

X as in 10?

🙂

Honestly, I think he’s SO good on defense, I’d like to see him start some day. But he’s still so limited on offense now you can’t do that unless 2 very high level scorers and a good 3rd option are on the court with him. Then the offense can still be great and you’ll get his defense almost for free.

On a more normal team he’ll have to develop more.

On this team, with these dregs, we need a good PG and he’d have to shoot like this every night to be a starter. If we are trying to win, I’d start Payton at PG and use Frank 15-20 minutes off the ball and maybe occasionally as a backup PG.

I want to make a lot of changes. I hate our lineups.

At this point I’d probably throw Payton, Dotson, Barrett, Morris, and Robinson out there, but I don’t think it’s politically possible to move Randle to the bench where I’d prefer he be when Robinson is starting. And don’t think I suddenly like Morris. I don’t like any of the other options. All our lineups suck.

Awhile back I said that Randle is a PF variation on Kanter. That was a bit of hyperbole because he’s better than that. But when you are a big that scores and rebounds well without defending a lick you can look pretty in the boxscore and still not be very good. To start, you have to defend well unless you are God’s gift to offense.

Randle feels a little like a quad A first baseman type who has had his one great year…..

Off topic, I’m watching a documentary on the Apollo theater and I have to say, Barack Obama breaking out the Al Green is maybe the coolest thing ever.

randle was fine today… he got some pretty soft foul calls on him and some absolutely dumb ones but it’s not too far from what you could expect…. there’s plenty of other games where you could pin it on him but he’s not the reason today…

it’s because we had no answer to the pnr… it didn’t matter who was involved… if drummond was on the floor it would either result in a 3pt’er or drummond flipping it in from 3 ft…. they basically abused us with some simple top of the key action and it was pretty embarrassing…

it was a very bad game defensively.. especially in the second half and it was basically from everyone… taj probably did the best but we weren’t gonna win with the way we were covering things…. besides how drummond and snell were killing us…. we really needed a much better overall effort on that end…

Welp, winning two more games than Orlando a few years ago was the difference between Johnathan Isaac and Frank Ntilikina.

It’s nice having college hoops back.

Cole Anthony took a lot of shots that seemed like low-percentage looks but went in anyway. If he can really shoot like that he’s a pretty intriguing prospect. He was really flinging it from everywhere. He seems to have had good shooting percentages throughout his high school career.

He’s fun to watch. He’s not a lightning fast end-to-end guy like Ja or DeAaron Fox but he has some funk to his game.

From the highlights it looks like he knows the game. Not really the penetrate and dish type, though. It was nice to see his Dad watching proudly.

Cole’s shot looks gorgeous, he reminds me of Ray Allen for some reason. Maybe the consistency of his form.

Im not sure of his ability to play pg. On the few highlights of him driving, he looked like he struggled getting by his man. Only one of his assists came from a drive, and only after he got stopped at the free throw line and pump faked. Maybe he’s Curry-like and will end up being crafty enough or have his touch will get the ball to go in anyways. He may fit well in the backcourt with RJ, if RJ can be the primary ballhandler.

The scouting report on Cole says he can score reliably with his jumper off the dribble and that he has a whole array of floater/layup type moves in his arsenal. He certainly showed that tonight. He did not look easy to guard in that game. Very often with kids this age the caveat is “if he learns to shoot he’ll be a player” but Cole seems to be able to shoot already.

I can’t imagine myself any happier than if Dolan sold the team (as he’s apparently being urged by investors who think the company’s value will shoot up a third if he sells) and if Mills/Perry/Fizdale we’re gone but left behind Cole Anthony, Frank Ntilikina, RJ Barrett, Kevin Knox, Iggy Brazdeikis, Mitchell Robinson, and $50M in cap space.

I think Bondy tweeted that Steve Mills is 164-336 after 500 games as GM/President. His reign of terror must end before he trades the farm for D’Angelo Russell.

Porzingis was mentally at the Friday game against the Knicks obviously.
But got to give credit to Isaac who not only destroyed KP but also the complete flow of the game for Dallas.
Dallas had to go to JJ.Barea!!!!of all people to find some scoring and rhythm.

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