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2023-24 Game Thread: Knicks @ Timberwolves (Knicks Road Trip Ender Opener, particularly not a thing)

The Knicks close out their very successful road trip with the second hardest team they’ve faced on this stretch, the Minnesota Timberwolves, who have had a strong start to the season, coming into this game with a 4-1 road trip themselves and a 9-3 record overall.

The Knicks are going to have a hard time having their rebounding advantage over the many towers the Timberwolves have, but hopefully the Knicks’ outside shooting continues to be hot like these last few games, with newly minted Eastern Conference Player of the Week, Jalen Brunson, especially on fire from long distance.

The Knicks’ new GM would like to beat his old team, and the Knicks’ coach would also probably love to beat his old team, so hopefully the Knicks can pull this out and make that very smart 53-win prediction look LOW!

Let’s go, Knicks!

129 replies on “2023-24 Game Thread: Knicks @ Timberwolves (Knicks Road Trip Ender Opener, particularly not a thing)”

NBA Efficiency = PTS + ORB + DRB + STL + BLK + AST – TO – All Missed Shots

Game Score = PTS + 0.4 * FGM – 0.7 * FGA – 0.4*(FTA – FTM) + 0.7 * ORB + 0.3 * DRB + STL + 0.7 * AST + 0.7 * BLK – 0.4 * PF – TO

I finally couldn’t take it anymore and looked up what the heck WP meant.

I would say unless you understand the formula. I mean really understand the formula.

Any words touting it’s metric quality is silly.

Oh yes, Go Knicks.

Not sure what the spread is, but we seem pretty doomed this game.

We have no shot whatsoever of winning.

Let’s have some fun 😊

Mitch wins the tip, Jalen hits his shot, RJ fumbles out of bounds on a crazed drive. Same old.

The main problem with wins produced is it says Mitchell Robinson is a top-10 player when the truth is he is the best player in the NBA

“The main problem with wins produced is it says Mitchell Robinson is a top-10 player when the truth is he is the best player in the NBA”

…maybe of all time…

Maybe dribbling the ball directly into three defenders every time down the floor isn’t the best offensive plan

They played an old piece about IQ that had Nerlens and Elf in it and I feel sullied.

The Wolves look like a pretty good team I have to say. They have length and defend well, and I like their depth pieces.

IQ has been pretty awful these past 2 games.

Let’s just hope he doesn’t go on a multi-week bender like he has in the past because it won’t be pretty for the Knicks.

“Slow-mo” is already a nearly perfect nickname, but the fact that he also has one of the slowest free throw motions in association history takes it squarely into chef’s kiss territory.

Mitch getting OREBs against this team is a real statement about how good he is right now.

I have to say that I’m very encouraged about how we immediately bounce back from every run the Wolves go on…we are a bunch of hard-nosed mfers.

We’re shooting under 40%, they’re shooting over 60%, we’re only down 4. We could win this, but we need to stop the unforced errors. Which, well…

Knicks have shot 13 more FGs than the Wolves (and made one fewer), which I think is why this looks less competitive than it is.

Feels like we’re down 1 (and even up 1) in the same way the Wizards were within 5pts of us in the 4Q.

They said three players on the Knicks in double figures and I could only get two, but of course there’s Pointz Barrett, who is somehow 1-7 from two.

Randle is getting stripped and all but he’s also punishing the Wolves physically…and that dunk was very promising regarding the condition of his ankle…

Hope Knicks have enough legs in the 2nd half, 3rd game in 4 days all on the road might eventually catch up to them.

Randle is unfortunately having one of those games…

Fixed it for you

Randle is unfortunately having one of those years…

Weird game. It feels like we should both be getting blown out AND be ahead (we missed some easy shots).

Guess a 2 point deficit is where it lands

Hauser starting tonight for the Celtics has 3 pts on 1 for 9 shooting including air balling the potential game winning shot at the buzzer. Why can’t the Knicks find players like that….

Celtics are scuffling a bit, the barely beat memphis and now they’re in ot with the hornets

I know the RJ Barrett regression when I see it. Gonna go ahead and say the first couple of games were nice while they lasted.

Hope I’m wrong!

If the Knicks don’t turn this around soon, we are probably going to have to debate incinerated picks all day tomorrow. 😉

Mitch block to the RJ three was a really nice sequence and everything else has been terrible

I feel kinda bad for Grimes. Not sure how you can stay in rhythm as a shooter shooting, like, four times a game.

That lineup was a fucking eyesore. Don’t know what Thibs is thinking here but that is not a lineup that is gonna bring you back from a double digit deficit

3-2 on this road trip wasn’t bad. We look horrible in this game but this is a tough matchup for us. You could see right from the beginning that it was going to be very difficult to score with the way we play.

Off night. End of a road trip. Look past it and move on. But can’t shake the feeling that this really drives home the point that we are a solidly middle-of-the-pack team. We can hang with best for a few quarters but still just lack the firepower to go to that next level.

Minnesota looks like they will be a tough matchup for anyone. Their defense looks like it’s for real, and they have elite size.

Honestly, I was expecting a loss since we are on the road against a good home team that has good size and defense inside, but it’s worse than I expected.

Jonathan Issac is on Hannity. Hannity’s not there, but Jonathan Issac is talking about some stuff.

If the knicks would have performed better, I might have missed that while channel surfing.

The football game sucks, the Knicks’ game sucks…

This game would be so different if Quick hit half his shots.

Rough night but at least Big Blue Al got his Sam Hauser victory lap in while the Knicks were getting trounced.

Minnesota has a damned fine defense. Effort and skill. Towns isn’t even being shown up (much). It’s swarming and up in everyone’s grill, regardless of the size advantage. Of course it helps that we sucked and do constant stupid things. But give them credit.

Yes, this is a remarkable defensive squad, and yes, the Knicks didn’t shoot well because they were never allowed to get into a rhythm. On the other end, however, what did the Knicks defense do to them? Well, through the first three quarters Minnesota scored 30, 28, and 35 points, total 93 points. By that time, the game was out of reach. This was the problem tonight, the Knicks defense, not the Wolves defense which is, no doubt, very good.

Do we need to add another star or do we just need to promote one?

Jacob Toppin tonight in Westchester:

37 points
4-9 three
10 rebounds

So NBA hierarchy is something like:

1. Boston & Denver
2. Philly & Minnesota
3. ???

7th game in 10 nights. 5th on the road. Against the best team in the Western conference. Relax people, this game doesn’t tell us much…except as Owen said, about the Wolves. They’re legit.

And so are we.

We’ll be fine, but I am a little concerned that we have a starter (Grimes) who has zero impact on the game.

i guess it’s a good time to sell action on the 1000 to 1 bet on grimes getting fournier’ed…

Our flaws become pretty apparent against teams like the Wolves and the Celts. Any team with a good/great C, a big PF, and big guards and wings is going to give us a lot of trouble. That includes BOS, MIN, DEN, OKC, MIL, and probably TOR and NOP.

Neither MIA nor PHX are of that variety, so it will be interesting to see how we do against them.

@EB
Milwaukee & Phoenix, once they get healthy.

I want to see them prove it first, but yeah probably

I’m gonna cut Grimes some slack tonight due to his hand/wrist injury. RJ sucked from 2 but was 3-4 from 3 so that’s a positive takeaway.

The next two games will be far more telling. This was a pretty predictable loss to an all-in team that has finally become a real contender after a long playoff drought. I wasn’t a fan of the Gobert trade but it is looking a lot better now than it did last year. Good for them.

We were down by double digits at one point and Thibs ran out a Brunson-Grimes-Hart-Randle-Robinson lineup.

That lineup had no hope of scoring against this T-Wolves defense. Grimes, Hart, and Robinson are all good players but it seems like we have one too many of these minuscule usage guys with very limited offensive firepower. When any of the 4 high usage guys are out we end up having to play these dismally bad offensive lineups.

Grimes, Hart, and Robinson are all good players but it seems like we have one too many of these minuscule usage guys with very limited offensive firepower.

Terrible lineup.

The more scorers you have in the lineup the better, but you can typically get away with three scorers and two high level role players. In fact, imo having an elite role player is better than having a fourth scorer that’s not elite at anything else. Two scorers just doesn’t work unless maybe they are both incredible.

Any team with a good/great C, a big PF, and big guards and wings is going to give us a lot of trouble

I agree. We have some matchup issue with long athletic teams, any C that can stretch the floor and get Mitch out of the paint or anyone that can keep us off the offensive boards. I think one longer wing would help with some of that.

We’ve been shooting WAY over our heads from 3 lately. Part of that was probably the soft defenses we faced a couple of nights. Tonight we were dreadful from 3. Part of that was probably good defense, but sometimes the ball just isn’t falling. It was the end of a road trip. They may have been a little gassed. It’s just one game.

Reading the latest on the Knicks-Raptors lawsuit. Dolan has taken his dickishness to new heights. If they haven’t already, the other owners must absolutely hate him, as well as every employee in the Commissioner’s office. Silver (no pun intended) lining is that he’ll get the Sterling/Sarver treatment the first chance they get.

Before we move on, props to Brian with the Road Trip Ender Opener. The challenge of coming up with one of these every game is significant, and yet, like Jalen Brunson, Brian (almost) always delivers in the clutch.

I’m not sure the other owners will hate Dolan. It depends on how much they believe Toronto behaved badly and how outraged they are by the behavior. They don’t want spies in their organizations either.

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