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2022-23 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Hawks, Quentin Grimes’ Home Opener!

The Knicks host the Atlanta Hawks as they welcome Quentin Grimes back. I find it hard to believe, though, that Grimes will play much, as he has missed so much time that he’s unlikely in game shape just yet. Still, great to have him back!

It is always fun when the Knicks beat the Hawks and MSG Public Enemy #1, Trae Young, so let’s hope that they pull it off tonight!

HOW IS MY WIN PREDICTION DOING? It’s still doing okay, but a win tonight would be a big help.

Let’s go, Knicks!

215 replies on “2022-23 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Hawks, Quentin Grimes’ Home Opener!”

I’m not expecting too many minutes from Grimes. He missed almost the entire camp and most of the practices since then. He may come up with a sharp game here or there on adrenalin, but I think it’s going to take a few weeks for him to reach his best on a consistent level.

“TheClashFansays:
November 2, 2022 at 19:18
I wonder if Cam loses some minutes to Q?”

Take it to the bank….

There’ve been times in my life, I’ve been wonderin’ why. Still, somehow I believed we’d always survive. Now, I’m not so sure. You’re waiting here, one good reason to try. But, what more can I say? What’s left to provide?

Go Knicks! Who breaks out offensively tonight? IQ? Obi? Capela? (yikes).

RJ is mic’d up all game. Expect a lot of “Oof. That’s a foul” from under the hoop šŸ˜‰

TWO!! Two dunks by Mitch from Barrett!

Rebecca did mention that RJ reads Knickerblogger daily.

EDIT: Haha. You beat me to it.

Mitch is trying to guard every player in the paint by himself, and it’s almost working.

The Hawks are a team we need to beat to make the playoffs or play-in. This is a critical early game.

Mitch is trying to guard every player in the paint by himself, and itā€™s almost working.

Yeah, looks like Mitch knows Capela has gotten the best of him in the past. Statement game (one hopes).

Never realized how many Hawks players I really dont like: Trae obviously, but I also canā€™t stand Murray and Capela either and Hunter is starting to get annoying to me too for some reason.

Weā€™re playing like headless hens on offense and sleeping under our defensive boardsā€¦
the only way is up, weā€™ll improveā€¦

Missing technical FTs annoys me even more than regular FTs

Should be a contract penalty.

Funny, I was interested to see Rose with the starters with Brunson in foul trouble, but he’s barely touched the ball.

Is it me or the refs now whistle even softer touches than before? Seems like there are a lot more and-ones this season.

“Raven is a Big Black Birdsays:
November 2, 2022 at 20:02
Funny, I was interested to see Rose with the starters with Brunson in foul trouble, but heā€™s barely touched the ball.”

Maybe he’s trailing the play because of how fast we’re playing…

Love Stoudemire and Starks relaxing in the box.

Wonder what Amar’e has to say about Kyrie.

I LOVE the pace we are playing with!

I havenā€™t look at the pace stats but weā€™re definitively pushing more this year and itā€™s niceā€¦

Hartenstein just doesn’t anticipate defensive rebounds well. He’s a split second slow to react. Several got snatched away from him in that last little run of play there.

RJ needs to lose an arm to get some FTsā€¦
He has absolutely zero respect with the refs.

Some of it was good paint defense, but some was just missing. I donā€™t think Young will keep going at a two for twelve pace.

Obi off the bounce saying, “I can do more than dunk.”

Oh, and then a layup.

Yes.

Feels like the Knicks aren’t playing well yet they’re up 20 early in the 2nd quarter.

Obi’s 3p% is a function of being left open. If he keeps shooting like this from 3, they’ll take that away and force him to put the ball on the floor. All that is good. What I am saying is that he’s getting better, but that 3p% is a mirage.

Has anyone ever won the dunk contest and the three point contest or will Obi be the first?

Has anyone ever won the dunk contest and the three point contest or will Obi be the first?

Thibs will probably bench him between the first and second round of dunksā€¦

Mitch with a hookish shot?

I couldn’t tell if he just chucked it up there or was doing some classic big man shit, but I liked it

i gotta say, this is the general vibe towards anyone on the court not wearing our uni’s (isn’t this the “city edition”?)…yes, refs included…

Never realized how many Hawks players I really dont like: Trae obviously, but I also canā€™t stand Murray and Capela either and Hunter is starting to get annoying to me too for some reason.

Itā€™s not really a knock on the Knicks, first half 20 point leads routinely evaporate in the NBA

But that was some ugly basketball

I despair for Randleā€™s three point shooting. He was so good that one year. How can his shots be so far off now?

The modern NBA is wild. I basically thought nothing of us having a 20+ point lead, and lo and behold it meant nothing.

Someone please post the trivia answer. I have to go to work and canā€™t keep watching.

I’d rather them not play Grimes tonight. It’s not worth it to aggravate through injury.

Give him a few more games off to get back to 100% with no questions.

“I despair for Randleā€™s three point shooting. He was so good that one year. How can his shots be so far off now?”

Yeah, he’s putting up more UFOs than ever…

Someone please post the trivia answer. I have to go to work and canā€™t keep watching.

Dejounte lead the league in steals last season with 2.0, who was the only Knick to do it?

Solid half. Dejounte put on a 2-way showā€¦

Yeah, i agree. But us being careless with the ball near the league leader in steals helped a lot.

I’m with you on Grimes, EB. He’s probably rusty anyway, and we don’t need that in this game.

Randle is unbelievable.

And Thibs is unbelievable because he plays him.

Weā€™re back in Groundhogā€™s Day.

That was as bad of a 2.5 minutes of basketball as I’ve ever seen the Knicks play…

If Randle keeps playing like a Hawks sleeper agent Obi might see 18 whole minutes tonight

Randle is so bad. He stops ball movement, takes horrible shots, and then is careless with the ball. His body language is horrible. He needs to be taken out of the game.

Randle is not doing much to help us trade him. We may have to bite the bullet and incinerate one of our picks.

when do we get the game where the refs are coming down on our side, the last few games it feels like its an uphill battle with them

The third foul was total bullshit but Mitch needs to knock it off with the stupid shit

Totally. And I love Hart, but that was the perfect moment to get Sims in there for a few minutes.

Weā€™ve scored 6 points in most of the third quarter? What the h**l is going on?

A couple of nights ago I said I hoped that we’d seen the worst Knicks 4th quarter of the season. Now, I hope we just saw the worst 3rd quarter of the season…

This is the problem with not having a defensive stopper. When a player on the other team catches fire, we don’t have an answer.

Edit: Trade Randle for Jae Crowder.

>Like the Nets teach us, itā€™s never too early to fire a coach.<

It has nothing to do with the coach. We have no shooters and don’t have a really high level perimeter defender anymore. Move Randle for a true stretch PF and add a 3&D defender to replace Fournier.

i came home from a bike ride…saw 51-28 and was like …nice…i’ll watch…saw a few randle whirling dervish specials and was like…see ya…looks like it just got worse…can’t wait for the post game thibspeak…

Only took 8 games for me to look up whether or not the Knicks have their first round pick.

So that’s good?

This game isn’t over yet! That’s just the sort of circus shot that sometimes brings a team back to life!

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Funny mistake by Breen there calling the Hawks the Spurs because of Murray.

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Well, we got our wish. More minutes for Obi. Two missed threes late, two missed layups, and a missed dunk.

This is a poorly assembled team that was put together by a dilettante who is way out of his depth.

The Knicks ainā€™t winning shit as long as Leon Rose is running the show. Heā€™s not a good enough GM to fix the mess that Leon Rose created.

Were the Knicks even a factor for Dejounte when he was on the market?

Didn’t appear so, no. They liiiiiiiiiiikely were just planning on getting Mitchell all along.

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*NOW* Grimes? Either he’s ready and you use him to stop the bleeding early, or you rest him to get him 100% WTF?!

*NOW* Grimes? Either heā€™s ready and you use him to stop the bleeding early, or you rest him to get him 100% WTF?!

It’s very odd, yes.

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As someone who advocated hard for a Dejounte Murray trade, I have to say I don’t feel good right now.

We all knew Detroit, Charlotte and Orlando weren’t real tests and that we would know more about this team when we faced the Bucks and the Hawks… and the next games are versus the Sixers, Celtics, Wolves and Nets… this might get ugly.

shoot…we might just stumble into the wembanyana sweepstakes…look out lakers…here we come!

Haha. RJ tried, but only 19 …

Well that was demoralizing on many levels.

Mitch was playing well, then disappeared.
Brunson was not able to keep us steady.
Obi had a chance to really shine, but he absolutely did not.
Thibs with some odd choices.

Rough one all around. But the season is looooooonnnnnnng.

Randle’s stat line doesn’t do justice to how badly he played. That was vintage nadir 2021-22 Julius.

The clock is ticking on the fans turning on him again.

I keep hanging on the small sample size, but each game we play only confirms what we were seeing before. We need some spark, maybe Thibs will promote Grimes directly to starter, i don’t know, something please. More of the same, but trying harder is not the best of formulas.

It was once foretold that Randle would one day hit a 3 again…. I call bullshit.

It kinda bugged me that RJ prioritized his stats over getting Grimes a couple of looks…

I mean DeJounte Murray is a nice player, but tonight we made him look like the best player in the NBA. And he laughed his way up and down the court. Sickening.

I’m going to stand by my prediction that we’ll go 2-9 over this stretch and Thibs will be shown the door. Yes, this is a terrible collection of players, but Thibs isn’t helping with his strict policies and confusing substitutions.

It kinda bugged me that RJ prioritized his stats over getting Grimes a couple of looksā€¦

It was crazy.

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There was a period last season with the Giants where I was not only rooting for them to lose, but for them to be humiliated, so that John Mara would have no choice but to fire his idiot buddy Dave Gettleman and his underqualified head coach Joe Judge.

Iā€™m at a similar place with this team now. I donā€™t believe Dolan will fire Leon Rose, but I do believe Leon will fire Thibs to save himself if things continue to be humiliating. And heck, maybe the new coach allows him to briefly sell Dolan on a youth movement? Probably not, but Iā€™ll settle for a big losing streak giving us Johnny Bryant in the big chair.

Itā€™s clear we have the worst shooting starting forward combo- no surprise there. It looks like we have the worst starting defensive guards in the league as well. Brunson is really bad. And having RJ guarding the best offensive player? RJā€™s okay defensively but hardly a stopper. Grimes really has to start.

At this point Iā€™d definitely give up one of the contingent firsts to move Randle but I donā€™t think thatā€™d get it done.

Iā€™m gonna have to push back a little on the apocalyptic talk. Yes that was disgusting, nauseating, ghastly but it was one game. No one was calling for blowing it up or firing Thibs after the 3 road losses because we mostly competed with 3 very good teams

Not trying to be Pollyanna here, but weā€™ve played 7 whole games.

Now if we do go 2-9 over the next 11 as ess-dog predicts then Iā€™ll join the bandwagon of doom and gloom for sure

The November schedule looks pretty brutal. Thibs better figure something out in a hurry.

“Thibs better figure something out in a hurry.”

Like what font to use on his updated resume…

Wellā€¦ā€¦.:

Going to the Garden is still magic although I donā€™t know if the Knicks City Dancer revamp is an improvement. There were tons of kids in the arena. Somehow they are finding a way to make new Knicks fans. Itā€™s like all those strange tubes on underwater volcanic fumaroles. Nature finds a way.

First half was great. Mitch did some good stuff. The Hawks missed a lot of open shots. Dejounte somehow scored 23 points. It didnā€™t feel good though.

I had dinner and got sucked punched as I walked back in to us being up only one. Got worse from there.

Not sure what to add. Mostly covered above and a very nice Cronin jinx too.

IQ really did rebound the hell out of the ball. He had at least a few super impressive boards.

Fournier really is invisible most of the time.

RJ stat padding was comically bad

I thought the refs had a lot of bad calls and hurt us quite a bit.

Overall, pretty Knicksy. At least the Garden and the fans are great.

Best part of the night was the fancam as they played Justin Bieberā€™s ā€œbaby baby baby oh,ā€ a song I was not familiar with but many attractive NYC women definitely are.

RJ stat padding was comically bad

I thought Randle letting RJ pile up all the empty late game stats showed how committed he is to playing team basketball this season.

I’m sure we’re not as bad as we looked tonight, but we looked really bad. We’re allowed to complain.

Last 3 games have been against tough opponents, but all 3 seemed like the other team had an extra gear whenever they needed it.

The starting lineup needs to shoot more and better.

Thanks for the info Z-man. I think someone above suggested Michael Ray and he was right

And on the subject of IQ, point guards do often take a long time to develop. Just look at DSJ, who took five years. For Quickley to be doing this after three years is nice. He had the best and one of the few positive plus minus on the team even playing a lot of minutes (29 minutes). I mean who knew that having guards who can defend and rebound helps your results?

Fun facts:
Micheal Ray Richardson led the league in steals per game 3 times, and his 3.23 per game for NYK in 1979-80 is 4th all time. Right above him is Magic Johnson, who averaged 3.43 SPG in 1980-81. Alvin Robertson has the all-time record, 3.67 in 1985-86, followed by some guy named Don Buse, who set the all-time record in the ABA with 4.12 SPG in 1975-76 and followed that up with 3.47 after the merger in 1976-77.

Sugar Ray also is second all time in career SPG at 2.63. Alvin Robertson is #1. Without looking, see if you can guess who is #3. Hint: it isn’t a PG.

It’s year 4 for RJ and he still has the same issues he’s had since his rookie year, he has shown zero actual progression outside of what, some better effort on defense and a slight increase in FT% so far which is barely meaningful as he only gets to the line about 4 times a game anyway?

I know he’s 22, but having him sign a major extension and that’s how he starts the season… we keep hearing that he’s a hard worker and has the right attitude and tries to improve but at some point it’s got to translate to on court production.

Quickleyā€™s passing, rebounding, and defense have all improved, which is nice to see, but his outside shooting has become comical. He not only takes dumb shots too often now, he often misses badly. Itā€™s seems like he used to be a better 3pt and ft shooter. Maybe he just needs more reps?

***Maybe we shoulda traded for Dejounte***

Landry Fields, the gift that keeps on not being a gift at all.

(Btw, *we* didnā€™t try to trade for Murray when he became available because we were neck deep in Brunson and couldnā€™t pivot, even though a breakout young all star pg who is basically earthbound Westbrook but with elite defense is exactly the kind of guy a team like Roseā€™s Knicks NEEDS to try to find. Dolanā€™s Razor, yet again.)

Only one game, early in the season, but I am keeping score…this loss is 100% on Thibs. A collapse like that at home with a healthy roster?

If RJ and Randle can’t shoot, then the starting lineup is toast, full stop. There is a grand total of one plus defender in that lineup (Mitch). There’s one average defender in RJ. And 3 minus defenders in Brunson, Randle, and Fournier. So let me check my math:

3 non-shooters PLUS
3 below-average defenders PLUS
1 head coach who insists on playing this lineup for the most minutes in the league EQUALS
exactly what we’re seeing here.

There might be enough sheer individual talent on this team to beat bad teams, but we’ve gotten our asses handed to us by any good team whenever that good team decides to start trying.

That starting lineup is now -8.8 per 100 possessions even with the addition of Brunson.

Here’s an interesting (small sample size) exercise:

Lineups with Fournier + Randle: -8 net rating (331 poss)
Lineups with neither Fournier nor Randle: +6 net rating (215 poss)
Lineups with Fournier but no Randle: +17.4 net rating (only 22 poss)
Lineups with Randle but no Fournier: +16.6 net rating (138 poss)

Of course out of the 4 possible lineups here, the one Thibs plays the most is the worst one.

Trading out Reggie Bullock for Fournier (especially considering the contract) has turned into one of the most disastrous decisions this FO has made.

It is honestly time for Julius to become a 28-30 minute player and Obi to take the rest of the minutes. And for Grimes (or Quickley!) to enter the starting lineup. Cam has potential but still too many boneheaded plays. You can’t have 3 nonshooters and 3 non defenders at the same time.

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