The Knicks head to Detroit to continue the push for the 11th seed and having a .500 record post-All Star break!
Let’s hope that they lock down that #12 pick with a big win over the Pistons.
Let’s go!
The Knicks head to Detroit to continue the push for the 11th seed and having a .500 record post-All Star break!
Let’s hope that they lock down that #12 pick with a big win over the Pistons.
Let’s go!
142 replies on “2021-22 Game Thread: Knicks @ Pistons and a .500 Post All-Star Break Record”
Early Bird
March 27, 2022 at 1:47 pm
Also, IQ is our best player this year. Fight me.
The guy leading the team in BPM, VORP, and PER is the guy we may lose in free agency for no good reason. He’s also 23, but is often not mentioned as one of the “young guys”.
Grimes is out (knee soreness) and Randle’s a game time decision…
#Remastered#
There a was time when I was excited to watch Shump grow or Frank do stat stuff or Obi play a few minutes…
And now that we play the babies so many minutes and they all kick ass i shall feel bad for winning?
Not Me sugar!
I feel GOOD!
Let’s Win them All till the end of the season!
I m ALL IN!
I know everyone here loves the pure boxscore stats but they’re not on the cutting edge anymore and are being replaced with the tracking, RAPM, & boxscore hybrids. IQ generally does better than Mitch on these metrics. Plus, the C position is so flooded with talent that having a high BPM at the position isn’t as impressive as having it at other positions. Mitch is good but so is almost every other starting C in the league.
I don’t really object to calling IQ our best player. Last year I entertained the notion that he might be our best young player i.e. better than RJ. I definitely lost the faith to some extent this year and worried the new foul rules would sap him of a lot of efficiency, but he seems to have adapted and gotten better at some other things.
I’m back to thinking he might be better than RJ. For all of his streakiness, don’t think RJ has ever had a stretch like this:
Hey, did you know that Robert Williams is the Celtics’ best player?
Everyone will be happy to know Randle is back and starting today!
So…. Randle is starting again 🙁
I continue to not understand the emphasis on whether we’re mad about wins, or whether they’re “good” wins, etc. This is just not a material difference at all when it comes to the challenge these wins pose to our team building strategy.
We don’t have elite talent. We probably have the single lowest O/U in the league when it comes to future all-star games on the roster and I’m not exaggerating. We’re probably going to pick 12th. There are no compelling free agency or trade opportunities to add elite talent on the horizon. This is an objectively sobering series of facts and whether wins are “good” or “bad” does nothing to change any of them.
OT: we understandably haven’t gotten the attention of Saint Peter’s, but my alma mater is making a hell of a Cinderella run of their own. Currently giving Kansas every god damn thing they can handle. I will stop complaining about the Knicks for, like, a day if they take Kam McGusty and/or Isaiah Wong in the 2nd round or sign them as UDFAs.
fucking Randle back in
Randle back in. Tankers have been heard. Go Knicks?
Well some believe that our chances of losing are better if Randle plays, so there’s that!
Randle starts off standing in the corner like Obi 😉
Waiting patiently for our 2nd unit
Here i am. This one will be hard to play well and not get the W. Wait, Randle’s available? Then maybe there’s a chance that we lose on the iso sh*t gospel.
Bagley abusing Randle like a rented mule..
So let me check if i understand this right, Thibs plays the kids but we’re back to the same starting five??
Randle is unbeaten as tank commander
Saddiq has sauce on his hair? LOL
Hope Obi can make the most of his 10 minutes of playing time.
Well, since good centers apparently grow on trees Mitch should be very easy to replace. He’s the #2 offensive rebounder in the NBA and the #3 shot blocker but you can just find guys like that on the scrap heap. Mm hmmm.
Billups to the trivia question
Sims is such a good value find at 58
Randle will play 40 minutes today…thibs is a twisted m$therf#cker….
and yeah..Billups is trivia answer….
Sims and IQ are rootable as f!
You’re being optimistic, Randle is well rested, 8 mins to Obi, tops. 😛
Quick just oozing confidence
the pistons really suck
Okay, so you can’t out tank a team that misses open layups
Knicks gonna end the season on a 10 game winning streak.
The already terrible Pistons are a G-League team without Grant and Diallo…
Home broadcast for me tonight, Pistons’ announcer are hard to listen to…
IQ is playing like a man possessed and Jericho is a great pick at 58…
I wanted Hayes on the 2020 draft, got to take the L on that one. And we picked after the Pistons at 8th, so in my case the meaningless wins that put us 8th instead of 7th would save me from myself. LOL
If we had 10 more games, Quick would break Fournier’s record.
I feel like we’re on the verge of Quicksanity…
Thibs, chill out, we don’t need wins, we need to develop the kids.
we’re back on pace for 56…………..
if we can count first 20 nxt yr…
OMG, will the Knicks be champions first, or will the Aaron Paul ad stop playing at MSG?
Can this IQ-Deuce-RJ-Obi-Sims lineup play all 48 mins?
Obi is really quick in transition, i get the sense that if we catch a rebound and the ball handler sees the court, we’ll always have 2 easy points if he passes to Obi.
Yes, please. Only Grimes allowed to go in, if someone needs a breather.
IQ with three consecutive dumb decisions just to calm us down… 🙂
Obi!
That steal by Toppin. It’s the little things.
The jam. Yes, please.
Nice pass from Hayes to Obi. LOL
Hayes looks terrible out there.
We’re gonna have to bring back Ndour for the last game
I’ll never stand for a french player in the draft again. LOL
Mitch playing with Noel’s hands today.
They don’t call Deuce “Trois” for a reason.
Deuce shot is off tonight
Randle’s back in. Fuck Tom Thibodeau.
RJ now finishes a lot of plays where he’s fouled, for the and-1. Nice.
Hey, respect the tank! 😛 😀
R-J-Barr-ett chants at the… what’s their arena called again? I’m used to call it the Palace.
They play at a pizza place now, but I saw them play at the Silverdome 😉
I think the Domino’s pizza guy owns the naming rights to the arena…or it might be Lil Caesars
Wow, that was a long time ago. Did we win? 🙂
well I’m sick of Randle again
The tank commander at it again. Win-win situation. 😀
Quick and Obi showing plays to Deuce and Sims. Nice.
Just remember, folks. Even though we’re 12 games better than the Pistons, they’re in a better “position” than us bc they might have a higher lottery pick than us and that possible higher lottery pick might possibly be a better player than the one we pick.
Randle has the hardest on the eyes game in the NBA…
Haha. I grew up there watching the Bad Boys. Also the Lions tanking (2-14) to get Billy Sims, but that was a lifetime ago…
Lol.
hopefully randle’s quad tightens up at halftime….
Rokas Update:
Rokas didn’t play in today’s Barcelona loss, his shoulder sprain is a little more serious than expected.
Still no timetable for a return.
We were enemies back then. I started my NBA fandom in 1989-90 with the Blazers (because they selected a rookie named Drazen Petrovic, my favorite player in europe at the time), and they went to the finals where they lost to the Bad Boys.
You know you’re twisting the arguments, but a game thread is not a place for this, so i won’t answer.
And when DET has a core of Cade, Saddiq and Holmgren (or Banchero), maybe you’ll understand.
LOL
The starters are tanking
Fournier and Randle really helping the tank…
And, until now, not Mitch’s best game of the year…
The starters are hard to watch.
When they dump it into him to take advantage of the inevitable “mismatch” I want to change the channel to something more exciting like curling.
Yeah, i don’t know if i want to tank, if that means having to endure this guys playing the most boring basketball of recent memory.
LOL
Yeah, that was a crazy time for me. I was a hardcore Pistons fan as a little kid in Detroit then moved to NYC in 1988. So I relished the Bad Boys championships as the culmination of my youthful teams, but then went all in on the Knicks … with three decades of futility to show for it 😉
The transition was sustained by my abject hate for Chicago and Jordan. And I felt particularly embarrassed during Isiah’s time running the Knicks b/c as a kid I (obvs) loved him.
How many times does Thibs says “come on” during a game? 😀
Anybody else think Sims could go coast to coast with his handle and speed? I do.
Two decades. I like the 90s a lot, although we didn’t manage to win a championship.
Maybe he can. His handle is superb, being a C.
Anyone know how to add ‘Rommel’ to Julius’s nicknames on BKREF?
Sure. Love the 90s Knicks, but also a lot of pain to get so close 😉
I’m starting to believe in Quick for more than 6th man on a very good team. Let’s hope he can keep this up. But hey Thibs, keep playing PG-Burks because that’s a real success.
That was a third quarter from early in the year. Yuck.
We are still weighing the chances to get to the play-in!? :O
Mitch helping us lower DET’s offer to him this offseason.
McBride might be worse offensively than Frank.
Both teams suck.
Worse than Frank is not possible. But yeah, he’s been pretty bad. The G-League numbers give us some hope that he can get (a lot) better.
You can talk smack, but he’s still a plus 4 (better than any of the starters, which admittedly is a low bar).
I don’t mind losing when we just suck. That’s okay.
Tar Heels by 10 over the Peacocks minutes into the first. Uh oh.
Are the Peacocks tanking?
Mitch isn’t looking good, maybe the injury still lingers.
LOL. Oof. Tar Heels by 15 now. Might be midnight for Cinderella.
ahhh…Randle the human turnover
So if the Pistons are a G League team right now, what’re the Knicks again?
Randle is no commander…he’s a 4 star general
Randle can’t handle Bagley !?
I assume this was written before this game got tight, but in any event I do think the Pistons are one of the close calls vis-a-vis positioning against the Knicks. I’m not a huge believer in Cade as a star. Bey and Stewart are fine players but more or less on par with our guys. Hayes looks like he’s going nowhere fast.
Then again, if Chet or whoever else they pick this year is a multi time all-star, in one fell swoop they’ll unambiguously be better positioned than us. High draft picks, folks, they matter!
We can still lose this one
This is riveting stuff, similar to the 1992 playoff series between these 2 teams
Alec Burks is no loser.
Is winning on a Burks 3P part of the play the kids plan?
phuck mitch…help dee no bueno
When Killian Hayes beats you off the dribble you deserve to lose.
Hayes was picked 7th. Clearly a winner.
Oh darn, we won…
Mitch played too well late. Got the Pistons interested again.
Alec Burks for the win baby! Maybe he’ll emerge as our star.
Yeah…dunno about Cade.
Fuck, a merc seals the victory, what a complete and utter disaster
Burks pulling a Bullock to seal the deal!
woo hoo…..now we’re lucky if we get holmgrens sister in the draft…
I do love how enthused IQ & RJ were to win even if we should have blown it
All the good vibes of the last two games washed away by the return of Mr. Bruised Ego (even bruiser today after the Bagley Treatment).
Kudos to Alex Burks, he’s no PG but he’s a very valuable piece as a swingman/wing.
In a parallel universe we tanked and landed the #1 in both of the last two years and drafted Hayes and Suggs. As Clyde might put it, Dolan’s Razor is omnipotent, omniescent and omnipresent.
Is she pretty? 😀
she’s tall
Yeah, that was nice.
Ok, so no need to pay Mitch, we’ll play Holmgren’s sister at C. 😀
Kids may not played great but at least they played.
This organization simply can’t do anything right.
In theory an improvement but Taj will take all her minutes
I found it interesting that RJ took all the shots down the stretch. Didn’t make them, but you know Randle has to be pissed he didn’t get to turn the ball over
And much thinner than her brother.
Ya gotta think those will be the kinds of moments RJ thinks about as he’s busting his ass this summer to work on his game. I think he’s that kind of guy.
Hate to be wet blanket but after a post all-star break stretch that had allayed some concerns about giving RJ his max, he just completed a 10 game sub .500 TS% stretch.
We’ve basically got 3 full seasons of data now and anyone who says they scream “$30M+ AAV player” is just not being honest. He ranks 21st just within his own draft class in BPM (1000 minute minimum) and there is basically no metric that supports the idea he’s even a league average player. There’s something to be said for the very bizarre team constructions he’s found himself in and I’d still rather max him than let him walk, but this is just not a great situation all around.
This is why most successful rebuilding teams don’t make a single high draft pick and then call it quits on the whole draft thing before they’ve ever seen the guy play, which is exactly what we did in the summer of 2019.
Yeah, max RJ has been scary since the day we drafted him.
He’s got another year on his contract and then he’s a rfa. Extending him this offseason would be a big mistake.
When players are RJs age and need resigning to continue after their rookie contract, teams usually have to make an overpay compared to their production under the theory they will continue to improve. And often this works out for the signing team.
All I know is I’m pretty excited to watch some baseball until deGrom and Scherzer’s arms fall off in June
Yeah, but it also often doesn’t, and usually when it does the players have been more productive than RJ has through his first three seasons.
You can peruse this list of guys whose production by BPM (I will repeat: not because it’s a perfect metric, just because it’s a quick and relatively telling way to sort players) roughly matched RJ’s through their first three seasons: https://stathead.com/tiny/ERZJv
There aren’t many guys on that list who would go on to become max-level players.
There are definitely exceptions. Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan are the only bonafide stars I can spot, but there are others who went on to be good players like Tyson Chandler, Jusuf Nurkic, Evan Fournier, THJ, Collin Sexton, DeAndre Jordan, Channing Frye, Gary Trent Jr., WCJ, Bojan Bogey, Brandon Ingram, Malik Monk, and probably some others but I need to stop scrolling this depressing list.
A lot of the guys who went on to become good did so by taking lesser roles than they originally envisioned though, and in any event they probably account for like 1-2% of the total list. The odds are not great.
Oof. Checking in after the win (and during the Oscars) to read TNFH. Sadly, I’m persuaded by his analysis, and my buzz is killed. (But maybe it’s wrong just this one time please.)
Did you see Will Smith punch Chris Rock too?
it was an open hand vs closed if that matters to you. We won’t be hearing the end of this one for a lonnnng time.
My wife and bonus daughter are convinced it was a complete shoot and not a work. There’s a good deal of old school w/in me that can’t blame Will for defending his wife’s honor – regardless of however they define their marriage.
Did yall see Jada’s face after that joke? No way Will could’ve let that slide.
I just asked my wife if she would’ve wanted me to react the same way had that been her/us…
Her: ” no, because you wouldn’t know when to stop [hitting].”
Me: “so only hitting him once is okay.”
She laughed.
***it was an open hand vs closed if that matters to you. We won’t be hearing the end of this one for a lonnnng time.***
The only thing that would have made that moment better is if Jeff Van Gundy was clinging to Will Smith’s leg.
While white men talk of pressing charges, and white women complain of toxic masculinity, the real truth is that the wiseass knows how to absorb a blow. If Chris “Not The” Rock couldn’t, he never would have made it on stage at the oscars in the first place.
lack man, i don’t think I’m going to like the fallout from this. f. The immediate reax on my FB timeline are full of both pro and anti-slap arguments. I’ll also say that even though Chris crossed the line, I appreciate that he didn’t make it worse by retaliating even though he had the legal right to defend himself. ing even though he had the legal right to defend himself. d the line, I appreciate that he didn’t make it worse by retaliating even though he had the legal right to defend himself. He realized the moment was professionally bigger than that, and even though he’s a pro’s pro when it comes to hosting, he was able to regain his composure.
As a Black man, i don’t think I’m going to like the fallout from this.
i mean to your point, yeah, professional comedians practically have to have near-superhuman thick skin to absorb (or dodge/deflect) so much, especially if you’re willing to be edgy and/or make people a bit uncomfortable with your material.
hey cdiggy, i hope all is well for you and the family 🙂
had to go check out the situation after you guys had mentioned it…
been giving this subject some thought lately…generally i keep my interaction with others fairly well scripted…few weeks back while in a drive-through i lost it a bit…had the kids in the car and they were trying to switch up their order at the last minute, someone behind me honked…i did well and ignored it, after pulling up a bit they actually said something out loud through their window and laughed – at which time i started screaming like some madman at them – didn’t think about the kids in the car, just wanted nothing more at the moment than put my hands on them…i trust pretty much no one and normally dislike interacting with strangers, so a very odd event for me…
there’s a reason why that one line from the first dirty harry movie is so popular – go ahead and make my day…it’s not hard to understand the feeling behind that sentiment…
it was just the wrong day, wrong kind of feeling for me…both chris and will are very lucky will had decided to “bitch-slap” chris as opposed to trying to choke the life out of him up on that stage…
yep, don’t push will cuz he’s close to the edge…personally, i don’t think the ji jane joke about jada’s hair was that bad…that doesn’t really matter though…kudos to chris rock, handled the whole situation very well…
From war in Ukraine to war at the Oscars.
America has moved on.
“According to an NBA source, the Pistons will go after Robinson as a free agent unless they fill the center position in a draft that features Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren. …” Berman
Z-man:
“According to an NBA source, the Pistons will go after Robinson as a free agent unless they fill the center position in a draft that features Gonzaga’s Chet Holmgren. …” Berman
Is this tampering?