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Game Thread 2023-24 Knicks vs. Pacers (The Killer B’s Debut Opener, which is not really a thing)

Bojan and Burks make their Knicks debuts (well, 2024 debut for Burks, of course) as the Knicks take on the Indiana Pacers at the Garden tonight.

Brunson is still a game-time decision, but let’s hope that he plays (well, unless he’s still hurt, of course, don’t want any of that playing through injury bullshit).

If Bojan and Burks follow the example of Hart, OG and Precious, they will blow up right away, so I am hoping for, like, 50 from Bojan tonight.

Let’s go, Knicks!

156 replies on “Game Thread 2023-24 Knicks vs. Pacers (The Killer B’s Debut Opener, which is not really a thing)”

Taj starting!

Jesus … Taj against Dallas was flirting with a heart attack…

The Little General is back, Let’s go knicks!

Taj against Indiana’s pace is a choice. I couldn’t be have started Previous at the 5 – Turner is not a huge inside presence anyway – and Bogey at the 4? Though I suppose Bogey is almost Taj’s age.

Don’t they have any center in Westchester they could have brought up with the roster spot that is open?

I didn’t know the referee crew had an umpire amongst the three…crew chief, referee, umpire…

I wonder what the difference between an umpire and referee is…

Carlisle on Doug McDermott, “He’s an elite runner, shooter, spacer.”

Yes, when I think Doug McDermott, I think “elite runner.”

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Probably Pacers fans are dreaming about going to the ECF/Finals just like we are, right? Cavs fans too. Not to mention the ones that are counting on it (Celtics and Bucks). It’ll be a fight but it’s so good that we’re in it.

I heard the US Olympic team begged McDermott to compete against Usain Bolt but he said he’d rather dominate the NBA. Then he said, “McBuckets out” and sped off in a cloud of dust.

It’s gotta be so disheartening for the Pacers to be, like, “They’re down Randle, OG, Mitch and iHart, and we can only play them even at best?”

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Pacers backup center has now given us 4 points on goaltenders that were surely not going in.

With Burks and Bojan we don’t have to worry anymore about making up for RJ and IQ’s usage lol

You have to love how the Knicks are winning in a very different way from all of their other games. It’s fascinating.

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Watching a Thibs team play defense without a rim protector is a lot like watching 42 year old Mike Bibby trying to run an SSOL offense

We’re not only missing 4 main players, we’re basically missing all our physicality, we’re smaller and they’re destroying us in the paint…

Bogey can create some offense for himself and knows how to exploit a mismatch, which is nice

Unfortunately RJ and IQ down 20 at halftime vs Cleveland.

They are 3-12 combined, sigh.

Knicks really miss their centers today.

When they are healthy, it will be very nice to have Bogey with the bench units. Dude can score.

Let’s try to defend a little better their P&R and avoid bad transition buckets and this game could be winnable…

It would be amazing to beat the Pacers by beating them at their own game, namely, scoring.

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Robin Lopez is on the buyout market. He’s probably not any better than Taj, but at least watching him is kind of funny

You definitely can’t play both Taj and Josh Hart at the same time. That’s 3-on-5 and it’s not surprising that they’re smashing that lineup

That pass off the backboard for an assist by Haliburton was pretty special.

Robin Lopez is on the buyout market. He’s probably not any better than Taj, but at least watching him is kind of funny

Back when he was on the Knicks, he said he’d do a bit with me about comics, and he was traded, like, the next day. 🙂 So yes, come back and we can do that article!

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I’m positive there is someone in the world not signed to an NBA team who would be better at this than Taj

Is someone a rim protector if he can’t actually get his hand above the rim?

The whole idea behind replacement level is that a sub replacement level player can easily be switched out. And yet there’s Taj.

I’m not much of a Sims fan but Holy shit he needs to get back ASAP so we don’t have to watch Taj anymore.

He’s like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon, about to retire but Mel Gibson (Thibs) keeps getting him involved in these crazy cases

I love Taj, I respect the hell out of him and tonight I’m feeling really sorry for him, he can’t play anymore…

And I’d rather give his minutes to Jacob Toppin

This defense is hard to watch .. pacers will simply have to miss open shots for us to have a chance…

I love Taj, I respect the hell out of him and tonight I’m feeling really sorry for him, he can’t play anymore…

Yeah, me too. Let’s sign him to be an assistant coach and get a player that can help.

Agreed on Payback, Geo

And the original, Get Carter, is great too (Edit: sorry, meant Point Blank)

oh yeah rama 😊

and for the record – I am all in on getting Robin Lopez back in to a knick uniform – asap…

okay then, not our night…understandable but all this winning this year has gotten me a bit greedy…

Edit to the edit: do you mean the one with michael caine?

What’s amazing about Deuce is he’s suddenly pulling all these Brunson moves out of his back pocket. They’re the same damn moves — I’m not sure I can remember a player just copying a teammate like this.

But hey, it works! Good mentoring, Jalen.

And the original, Get Carter, is great too (Edit: sorry, meant Point Blank)

Lee Marvin >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Mel Gibson

🙂

what a blessing to have jalen’s footwork, josh’s rebounding, julius’ tenacity and OG’s defense to try to model while watching up close…

for a young player finding their game and trying to stay in the nba…

It seems like the Knicks should carry four centers on the roster. Three isn’t enough.

Thibs should punt this one. Let Jalen and DDV get some rest, try to work the new guys in there, let the end of bench scrubs get some run. We’re not coming back to win this game.

These post trade Knicks are going to have a tough time defending until I-Hart and OG are back. We have no legit C to defend the paint after they break down our lack of perimeter defense without Grimes and/or OG.

The defense is comical.

somehow the words: Brunson hits the floor – doesn’t get jalen to the bench…

nice, we are both slower and smaller out on the court…

Look I know grinding it out is like Thibs’ thing but this is truly just idiotic. Like I think he is legitimately a stupid person right now.

It’s annoying how the Pacers basically played the short handed Knicks all three times this season.

I miss watching julius go at the refs…

I’ve noticed that is one habit jalen’s picked up from julius and josh…

jalen goes at the refs a lot harder these days…

I’d rather have just lost this with Brunson taking another day off. Waste of his effort and energy. Disappointing.

JK, I’m pissed off since the jumpball 🙂
Starting Taj is one of his classic “I’m too smart to choose the trivial, reasonable thing”, just like when he started Sims instead of I-Hart a couple of months ago…

If we take anything from this game, it’s that Taj can no longer play NBA minutes. We had no one else tonight but man it was rough to watch. And so is Josh Hart on offense. He looks beyond awful right now and has zero confidence.

37 minutes for Brunson and 39 for DDV.

Brunson missed THE PREVIOUS GAME with an ankle injury and DDV is clearly getting fatigued, and Thibs left both of them in for meaningless minutes down the stretch of a hopeless blowout loss.

It’s shit like this that’s gonna kill us.

I agree. I sincerely thought that in a moment when the team has a lot of players injured he would think about protecting the ones he has left.

I’m no mental health expert but imo there’s almost certainly something “off” with Thibs. He’s too intelligent to not understand that at a certain point the injury risk and potential for multiple losses is greater than the chance of winning this single game. That goes double when a couple of them are already worn down and playing at less than 100%. It’s preposterous.

Management needs to step in and tell Thibs he can’t be doing that shit leaving Brunson and DDV out there with everyone injured right now. But sadly nothing will be done…

Ugh, Thibs needs to learn there are some games that should be allowed to be lost. There is no point in trying so hard when some things are out of hand. It’s even worse b/c JB wont get any rest during the All Star break.

Tonight’s nonsense leaves me unsettled. Is Thibs too irrational to lead a team to a Championship? This repeated 10 day shit with his man-crush Taj is completely bananas. Piling on minutes to already injured players will lead to more missed games. Also, there’s a better than 50% chance that Bojan’s offensive output will not offset his lousy defense. We may actually miss Grimes.

I think Bojan will be fine, I’m not worried about our defense if we’re something close to healthy and his scoring will come in handy. As a bench piece he’s the least of my worries.

How much you want to bet Taj is back out there next game though. That was maybe the most washed performance I’ve seen by a Knick since Mike Bibby was trying to play point guard for us.

Yeah, JK. Exactly. Taj just had an off night. He was worrying about his Roth IRA conversion after reading that AARP magazine article. He will be right as rain next time. Crazy.

Also, there’s a better than 50% chance that Bojan’s offensive output will not offset his lousy defense. We may actually miss Grimes.

Obviously we would be better off with both, but you need either very good perimeter defense or very good interior defense. We have neither right now in part because OG is out and in part because Grimes was traded.

IMO if our measurements of defense were as accurate as measurements of offense, defense would get more weight. It’s hard for any model (or person) to weight defense properly when no one seems to be able to measure it properly. But in this case imo it was fairly obvious we were solving the bench scoring issues, but at least in the short term, raising some issues about defense because we were going from a solid perimeter defender to a matador and Swiss cheese lover.

We need at least one of I-Hart or OG out there, but imo the loss of Grimes and the potential for OG, Grimes, and I-Hart/Mitch is being underrated post trade. That defense would have been killer.

It doesn’t matter how far back in the standings the Warriors fall, they will be a must-watch team as long as Curry is in the league.

Deuce does a pretty reasonable imitation of Grimes. Grimes is maybe a better POA defender and is a couple of inches taller but I’m not so sure Deuce isn’t the better two-way player at this point.

I didn’t think Deuce would stick in the NBA because his offensive game looked so weak, but he has come a long way on that side of the ball.

Grimes gets traded and now he’s become super overrated, why am I not surprised

I think Grimes is a solid role player. I defended him through the down period as a starter right until the end. He’s low usage, but his perimeter defense is clearly solid, he’s good from 3 and he shows flashes of being more than just pure 3&D. IMO he’s likely to get better given he’s only 23.

The Knicks had to address the lack of bench scoring and playmaking that resulted from the OG trade, but IMO this particular trade was too short term oriented and brought in two highly suspect defenders. Naturally I hope I’m wrong, but don’t think we have enough yet to be considered serious contenders. IMO this trade did not move the chain nearly as much as pundits are suggesting. We need one more solid move in the off season or at the next trade deadline. Let’s hope the next one is some guy in his mid 20s like OG that ideally will be around for a long time and play both sides.

I don’t get how they make all of these moves, and don’t pick up a big man. It’s baffling to me. Tobias Harris is literally their main center right now. It’s absurd.

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I respect Taj as much as the rest of the Hive, but he seems like a child’s teddy bear whose skin is worn out and stuffing starting to leak that Thibs refuses to let go of. If Sims and IHart not coming back soon, he needs to be replaced.

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