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2022-23 Game Thread: Knicks @ Pacers – We’re Literally Only Trying to See if Brian’s Prediction Can Come True Now

That’s the only thing that matters over the last three games, is to see my 49 win prediction come true.

Come on, Knicks!

120 replies on “2022-23 Game Thread: Knicks @ Pacers – We’re Literally Only Trying to See if Brian’s Prediction Can Come True Now”

We may be re-signing Eldfrid Payton to play out the string

Owen, you scared me so much I did run to the Knicks’ Hoops Rumors page…

In other news, Thibs said RJ Barrett will be a game time decision tonight.

Update: RJ Barrett is out for tonight game.

We may be re-signing Eldfrid Payton to play out the string but you guys want to talk guitars. SMH.

Yeah, but did u look at them

I’m guessing that some folks here were hoping that this would be our starting lineup in game 80 but for other reasons…

In other news, Thibs said RJ Barrett will be a game time decision tonight.

Update: RJ Barrett is out for tonight game.

Okay Obi, go show your stuff

I would have rested Mitch and started Sims. Mitch is too injury prone to be messing around with, especially when we have Sims to continue developing just in case Mitch goes down in the playoffs.

Big Mitch energy right now

Insane IQ energy. Love to know what his TS% on his quick threes is

Happy Passover! (although the Knicks’ FO tends to have its seder on draft night)

People are talking like Quickley is getting the 6th man of the year. He may deserve it, but Malcom Brogdan has also had a very good year. I can’t see how that would be anything other than a very close vote even though I would vote for Quick.

Josh Hart Is the bull in transition and everyone else in the NBA is a red cape.

McConnell a classic Knick killer

I hope Obi is ok.

By the way, just imagine next season when potential award winners (all NBA, for example) are playing in games like this just to hit their 65 minimum games played requirement that’s in the new CBA.

Obi is not much of a basketball player but the man can throw it down with the best of em

Grimes is now 6 dunks behind star athlete RJ Barrett. Usually RJ dunks at a similar rate 4.0% as Grimes (4.1% prior to tonight), he’s currently at 2.9%. I’m kinda hoping RJs been playing hurt…

Hartenstein’s gonna be pretty essential if we’re gonna have any chance against Cleveland’s behemoths.

Sims has had some nice passes & is a great cutter. The Hartenstein/Sims frontcourt works way better than it should.

People are talking like Quickley is getting the 6th man of the year. He may deserve it, but Malcom Brogdan has also had a very good year. I can’t see how that would be anything other than a very close vote even though I would vote for Quick.

Their numbers are pretty similar but Quick is an elite defender and Brogdon is, uh, not

Getting rinsed by TJ McConnell is a weirdly familiar feeling.

Feels like a very meaningless game and both teams seem to be playing like they acknowledge it, but it’s been to watch the kids have a go at it.

Toppin! What a fun 3rd quarter.

Josh Hart must be so infuriating to play against.

Obi would be a first ballot Hall of Famer if you just counted meaningless games

And TJ McConnell would be a first ballot Hall of Famer if you just counted games against the Knicks

Was worried we wouldn’t break 60 without our three leading scorers. Squeaked through

That Deuce free throw was funny

I get it: Eastmans are the Elfrid Paytons of guitars.

And there I was, agnostic about your identity as a KB troll. No longer, Z-man. No longer.

a little different but when i was in 7th grade… we had the 2 tallest 8th graders on my intramural team… as soon the opponent shot, the 2 guards would break for easy 2’s… obi knows how i feel, now, so we are practically brothers…

From reading the earlier comments I guess tuning in at 7 minutes in the 4th was the best time to watch the game.

Last time the Knicks were a 5th seed they won 47 games and swept the Cavs in the 1st rd…..

Whoever took the under on the Obi bet is feeling foolish.

107 points on 74 true shots from our big three. That will play.

Was going to take the over but didn’t get it in before the game started. Could’ve taken the live bet but Obi’s knee worried me.

That’s 50% more rebounds than Obi’s last 52min!!

Went to watch the Yankees tonight to find they played this afternoon so resigned myself to watching what I expected to be a dull slog of a Knicks game. Boy was I wrong!

Nobody knows what the ceiling of this young core is. I don’t care who the superstar might be, but I am not putting Grimes or IQ in that deal. No way!

Kinda want to blow up the Brunson/Randle core to watch Obi/IQ/Grimes every night

I’m with you Rough. If we had whiffed on Brunson, IQ and Grimes would have been an excellent backcourt of the future.

Bulls came through with a loss to the Giannis-less & mostly Middleton-less Bucks

Bulls v. Mavs on Friday. Bulls officially have nothing left to play for.

I’ve been very high in Quick and Grimes, but I’m starting to wonder if they both might even surpass my most optimistic upside.

Think back to when they were talking about giving up Quick for some mediocre 1st rounder. Omg. I was going crazy at the time. If it happened I’d be breaking things at this point.

As perhaps the most pro-Leon FO guy here, I’d have been completely out on him if he moved Quickley for a protected 1st

“Their numbers are pretty similar but Quick is an elite defender and Brogdon is, uh, not”

Sure, that’s why I’d vote for him. But I’m not sure how many people outside NY fully appreciate Quick’s defense.

Strat, IQ in November 2022 and IQ today are not the same. At the start of this season, his third in the NBA, he only showed some improvement on defense, but his shooting was worse than years one and two, and his play making ability had not improved a bit. This is when the Knicks were taking calls for him. IQ started turning it around suddenly, and spectacularly so, in early December. At first, I thought it was just a fluke and he’d go back to being his old self, but no! He kept improving. That is impressive.

This might the first and last time in my life I’m rooting for Kyrie Irving.

Just watched the game and read the thread. Loved seeing all our 2nd tier guys play big minutes and deliver. Did not love seeing Mitch fall and grimace with 50 secs left in the fourth and then again with 30 secs left. We’re up by double digits! C’mon, Thibs.

“Strat, IQ in November 2022 and IQ today are not the same. At the start of this season, his third in the NBA, he only showed some improvement on defense, but his shooting was worse than years one and two, and his play making ability had not improved a bit. This is when the Knicks were taking calls for him. IQ started turning it around suddenly, and spectacularly so, in early December. At first, I thought it was just a fluke and he’d go back to being his old self, but no! He kept improving. That is impressive.”

I agree he wasn’t “shooting” as well at that point, but we already knew he was capable of shooting well from fairly extended stretches previously. I was never worried about his shot. His defense and versatility were already emerging also. That’s why I thought it would be insane to trade him. It looked like he could be really good on both sides if he put it all together. There’s never a guarantee when you are projecting, but this isn’t a shock to me. Now I’m wondering what he’s going to look like next year if he gets his consistency level up and adds just a little more on offense. He may be impossible to keep off the court.

Grimes also looks like he can add usage without too much of an issue and the best is ahead for him.

Brunson, Quick, and Grimes are kind of small as a group, but no way RJ should be on the court next year. RJ is either the scorer off the bench or trade bait.

Its a shame Kyrie is the way he is off the court cause he really is an incredible basketball player.

God I hope we can win one playoff series and also end up with the 11th pick. If those two things can happen we’d go into the off season with so much momentum and good vibes. We could make a big move and actually realistically dream of competing next year.

If Dallas wins their next 2 (which they should) then what else has to happen for us to get their pick?

The funny thing is that the Kings were so incompetent for so long that I can’t even say that the Mavs make the dumbest possible moves I’ve seen.

Still, they are making some astonishingly dumb moves lately, and they’ve all benefited the Knicks, which is awesome!

By Post Author

Strat, I was ready to give up on IQ just because he was showing only those “glimpses” and no real improvement. It was the same story as RJ who is now in year four. RJ’s usage went down since the trade deadline, and I understand the team does not have anyone else except Randle with enough strength to drive inside. But RJ is a below average finisher around the rim, his only strength is the left hand, his jumper is poor, his outside shooting is worse than poor, he is slow, he can’t jump, he has tunnel vision, and the list goes on and on. The only thing he has improved in four (!) years is his FT shooting. I believe the only value in his contract is that it makes it easier to match salaries in a future trade. The Knicks don’t have much faith in him, otherwise they wouldn’t have been so eager to include him in a trade for Spider last summer.

With IQ it’s all about how much he’s going to cost. He’s playing his way well into a 9-figure deal.

If Dallas wins their next 2 (which they should) then what else has to happen for us to get their pick?

As long as they don’t advance in the lottery the pick would be ours

I was not a believer in IQ, but he really turned things around, his defensive effort has improved massively and his shooting too, and he’s been showing more and more variety in his shot chart which was something I did not expect to happen. This version of IQ is surely as close to an untouchable player as there is outside of actual stars, and I really want us to keep him.

Dallas is now officially eliminated from the playoffs, right? So wouldn’t they shut Luka and Kyrie down now, since they no longer have the chance that Luka was saying he would keep playing for?

By Post Author

Why are they officially eliminated? If they win their next two and the Thunder lose one of their next two Dallas could be in tenth and the Thunder in eleventh in the West. Then Dallas is in the play in.

By my dead reckoning, if the Mavs win their next 2 games we will get the #11 pick unless a) they move into the top 4 or b) both CHI and OKC advanced in the play-in, or CHI advanced, OKC did not, but won the coin flip to put DAL in 10th, and no one after DAL moved up.

The most likely scenario is that we don’t know for sure whether the pick conveys to us until after the lottery. The only way around that is for DAL to advance in the play in. But if they win both games and finish 40-42, the pick is probably somewhere around 80% likely to wind up with the Knicks.

If DAL loses one (especially the CHI game) then it becomes a shitshow. There is still better than a puncher’s chance that we wind up with the pick, but the possibilities are crazy.

If DAL loses both, they most likely finish alone in #10 unless OKC loses both and loses in the play-in, leading to a coin flip. If DAL ends up alone in #10, there would be around a 20% chance that they get jumped and bumped down to #11. There’s an outside chance that they wind up at #9 if UTA wins out, making it almost certain that they keep the pick.

Does that sound about right?

“Dallas is now officially eliminated from the playoffs, right?”

They are not eliminated, as KFNINJ pointed out. That’s why tonight’s win was so big.

Also, if DAL wins 1 and OKC loses both, then DAL is the 10th seed and in the play-in (they own the H2H tiebreaker with UTA so even if the Jazz won out and tied them, DAL would be in the play-in.

It’s a good sign that DAL won tonight against a SAC team that was clearly doing everything it could do win. I mean, why put out that level of effort to win a game just to lay down for either of the next two?

You can get a serious basketballer at #11. This could be the last chance to add another core player without having to give up big assets for it. Would be great to find some older draftee who is ready to contribute to a playoff team.

The funny thing is that while you guys root for the Mavs to lose, Leon Rose is probably rooting for the Mavs to win.

I’m rooting for them to win. I want the pick this year. If they make the play-in too that is fine with me.

did not see this recent offensive production coming from grimes…

maybe we don’t need to go hunting for a shooting guard this off season…

just need to add a starting small forward…

what a sudden leap forward for a second year player…

maybe we don’t need to go hunting for a shooting guard this off season…

just need to add a starting small forward…

This has been clear for a while, even before Grimes started really balling out like he has for the last few weeks. The missing piece is a bigger ring who can defend, can reliably shoot from downtown, and can maybe function as a tertiary creator, especially when Randle and/or Brunson are off the floor. In other words, we need the idealized version of RJ rather than the one we actually have. Or, more ideally, we need someone like OG, or, in a fantasy world, Mikal or Kawhi.

Alan, we’ve been missing a “ring” for a long time 🙂

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