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2024-25 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Thunder: Payback Time

The Cavaliers just beat the Thunder, so it’s not like these guys are unbeatable. Hell, the Bucks beat them in the In-Season Tournament, as well! So they are definitely beatable.

We just need the Knicks to, you know, beat them.

Having both KAT and Deuce tonight will help a lot towards that goal.

Let’s go, Knicks! Stand up for your status as a contender, like Jonathan Isaac stood up for the right to be a tool!

158 replies on “2024-25 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Thunder: Payback Time”

Deuce Deuce Deuce!!!

So nice I’ve said it thrice!

Win this for Donnie!

We need to get KAT a lot more than 13 shots this time if they’re gonna put Jalen on him again.

trying to remember all that matters is we score more points than them by the end of regulation…

this is some rough ball to watch right now…

It’s 2-2, Pags. Take a chill pill.

I was joking, Raven. You take a chill pill!

It is concerning that we’re on pace to score 24 points for the game though…

This is like the Little Knicks that play at half-time when neither team can actually reach the 10ft rim.

I love how Towns plays D with his hands down at his thighs.

I don’t actually love that.

KAT playing with weights on his wrists on defense or something. Put your damn hands up!

I also just want to say I’ve been very disappointed in the Knicks City Dancers the last year-plus. I think it’s mostly their choreography. Dull as molasses. The Knicks City Kids do more interesting moves.

Let’s see what happens to their D if we put Deuce in for Hart and Hartenstein has to stay glued to a shooter. Or is that too tactical?

Our players that don’t have the ball have to move a lot more to be in good position to get the ball.

jalen needs to stop pounding the ball, doesn’t work against OKC…

I don’t like the way he is playing, not at all…

I don’t like the way he is playing, not at all…

Me neither, but i’m also not liking the movement of the other guys.

Wow, I looked away for 5 minutes and it really is game over.

I’m not even mad, it’s just amazing how we can collapse so quickly and completely even on our home floor, yet are zero threat to come back when down.

Edit: 2:17. From a score of 19-17, we lost this game in 2:17. Wow.

Only reason left to watch is to see how long it takes Thibs to put in Kolek/Huk after we go down 30+ by halftime.

So after coaching Julius Randle for 4 years Thibs finally realizes that some of his players spend more time whining to the refs than coming back on defense?

Better later than never, I suppose…

We’re playing like shit, Bridges and OG are ghosts and Brunson is playing for himself…

SGA is another level

And their army of anonymous dudes are tickling the twine every time

Not high IQ basketball. Not staying in front of your man, driving into traffic before you look for a pass, not blocking out, not moving without the ball (against a stifling defense).

Putting Williams on Towns is killing the pick and roll bc every Towns screen brings a great POA defender with him.

We had a week to think about this. Did we seriously come up with nothing?

First ball he touched Cam Payne took a shot…
Second ball he touched Cam Patne took a shot…

Precious isn’t wrong that iHart was all over him there. Most unlikely bench run of all time incoming? Please?

First quarter offense was handcuffed by OKC and we couldn’t make even those few open shots we get. Defense was so and so and affected by our offensive ineptness. Things don’t look good. OKC is really good.

Anunoby and Bridges just aren’t good enough for the Knicks to really compete with the big boys. The perimeter defense they were supposed to bring really isn’t there.

Isaiah Joe is such a great name for a fur trapper in the late 1800s.

before it even began perhaps…

I mean, it doesn’t take Nostradamus to understand that this team is light years beyond us. I don’t think we can ever beat them in a game they really want to win. We won’t lose by less than 25 tonight.

Is 11% from three good?

It’s uncanny how bad we are from three lately.

Anunoby and Bridges just aren’t good enough for the Knicks to really compete with the big boys.

Yup. 3&D is something other teams get for almost nothing from draftees and scrap heap guys. We paid mega-luxury retail for two guys who aren’t even elite at it anymore. We managed to buy low on chrome & leather, the hardest thing in the league to do, and then squandered our window by buying super-high on nuts & bolts.

We may have our differences, E, and I think your man-crushes on the RJ Barrets and DeJounte Murrays of the world are weird, but broadly you are right.

Thibs needs to fire Cam Payne. Like pink slip. Middle of the game.

How did we lose and learn nothing? No strategy to free up Kat, let’s have him stand in the corner? Now is the game to go with the no Kat-no Brunson lineup? Brunson decides chucking is how he gets the team going? The only thing that seems to have changed is Bridges forgetting how to shoot. We are not a contender…

We paid OG Anunoby $212M for Isaiah Hartenstein’s impact on winning.

Preach. He was our best big man since Ewing and probably better than Towns as a two-way player. Not securing his Bird Rights has slammed this window shut before it ever opened.

OG just hasn’t improved. He can’t go to the basket. He either loses control or he looks like old RJ where he has no lift and get embarrassingly blocked. It has been happening over and over for a few weeks. I think he needs to accept he is a 12-14 point scorer and only take open 3s, run on transition, and 2 dribble mid-range. That’s it. He can’t do much. His lack of rebounding hurts too.

Mikal can’t shoot 3s again. He is something like 3 for his last 26 from 3 point territory.

I am slowly accepting the fact that our wings are our biggest issue outside of depth. We will see how the rest of the season goes but it may be they have to look to move them.

One team has learned from last week’s game, one don’t.
Daigneault is running circles around Thibs.

Is it time to talk about firing Thibs yet? Our record is fugazi and so is his player management and game strategy.

Just what is he doing well besides trying really really hard, to little effect?

Towns thought about raising his hands on that Shai drive, but then thought why bother.

Thibs is the pawn of making meaningful adjustments , this game started to be over with brunson chucking and no offensive game plan then the defense went to shit

Well can’t blame Hart for this one. He’s the one who is both playing hard and smart.

Another frustration is that Mikal and OG can’t rebound. Then on offense, OG can’t create his own shot and Milkal can only do it a little.

Hart is the only one really fighting but he can’t win it by himself. The rest look shell-shocked like young kids. That’s incredible.

Literally everyone on this team except Towns (who we have no plays for) forgot how to shoot in the past 15 games …crazy

How many wings do they have that are better players than OG/Bridges? Like 7?

I think to troll everyone Thibs played 4 of 5 bench players and the lead ballooned to 20+. But his plan to be like “see I have to play the starters heavy minutes!” is backfiring.

Our wings outside of Hart look lost and overmatched.

I think we should set up a gofundme to send these guys on vacation for a week to some Caribbean island where they can relax and recharge. They will be fine or at least could be fine, but this is a tired team right now.

We could also kidnap Thibs and send him to a country far far away for a couple of weeks.

Either would be fine.

MSG crowd is too kind,
Hart is the only one showing some pride, the others should try to play like this in Belgrade, where after the game they would not be able to leave the lockeroom without a police escort…

I’m 99% sure are gonna lose this game. A feeling I haven’t had in a long time.

We are officially in a funk and I don’t trust the coach to get us right.

Wallace being that open for a corner 3 off a Knick free throw was kind of the opposite of pretty, pretty good.

Also, my reluctant newfound respect for Cam Payne is worn out. I never loved his style of play, now I just hate it…

It was 11 even when I switched to Texas-OSU and uh I guess I will not be watching the Knicks when it hits halftime

I really wish the Knicks didn’t just extend Thibs.

It was a 40 point second quarter of doom. We are shooting just over 30% from the field and 13% from three while OKC is shooting 67% from 3pt alone. You can’t win like that. Not that I want to defend the starters but I must I also say that the big damage was done during those 5-7 minutes when the bench was on the floor.

Hey guys, haven’t checked the score yet… how’s it goink?

3-4 Knicks passed out from exhaustion and 1-2 are in a coma.

Something’s wrong with the team, be it that some of them have lingering injuries, or that they’re tired because of the heavy minutes Thibs has them playing, we are not this team that is losing by 27 pts to OKC at the half.

KAT hasn’t taken a single 3PA in 6 quarters against this team.

Can we get an adjustment at halftime, please? He’s got 6 inches over his defender. Set some fucking screens for the guy and get him going from deep.

Just sit the starters at this point. Preferably fiir the next 5 games or so.

The only person on the team that has played consistently well over the last 10-15 games has been Towns and Hart. Everyone has been bad or up and down. Mikal in a deep funk. OG, unless it’s against Toronto, funk. Brunson, deep funk. Payne, funk. We literally don’t have enough players right now that when they step onto the court we have confidence they will play well. Even Brunson, it’s kinda sad

They can’t be that bad. I am hopeful they will come out with some better tenacity and aggression in the second half. It’s almost impossible to win at this point, but we can’t allow OKC to be toying with us and embarrassing us like they did in second quarter.

Something’s wrong with the team, be it that some of them have lingering injuries, or that they’re tired because of the heavy minutes Thibs has them playing, we are not this team that is losing by 27 pts to OKC at the half.

It has been ridiculously obvious they are hurt and exhausted since after the last OKC game.

My big mistake was not betting a ton of money on OKC tonight. I expected it to be a pick’m game and to make a big bet on OKC, but OKC was a 4 point favorite. So I didn’t bet. Everyone else had the same idea.

Thibs should have sacrificed the Raptors game and held a few players out, but that would have been asking too much from our idiot savant coach.

We need some water from Lourdes

The problem with “runs” when you can never, ever score more than 2 points in a possession is they don’t amount to much

You are in a slump from three but you’ve been decent from midrange in the same timespan, so what will you do in this game?

If your answer is “I will only shoot threes” you’re Mikal Bridges.

The biggest issue for me is that bad shooting is clearly affecting their defensive effort and that’s unacceptable. They seem as disconnected on defense as in November.

This might be a good time to raise a glass, gallows humor style, to the original original sin — passing on SGA and taking giraffe on roller skates, the kingpin of 3 on 3 — Mr. Kevin Knox.

The big question is how much do we have to be down and at what point before the pinhead throws in the towel and gives these guys a break.

They’re shooting 61% from three, we’re shooting 14%.

For all the other things we’re seeing, if those are the percentages, you’re going to be down 20-25 points.

I don’t remember exactly how I felt about the post-iHart, pre-KAT trade team back when we thought that’s what we’d have. But now I’m pretty sure it’d be .500.

Hey playing through Towns seems to be working what do you thunk? Yet we start the game with Jalen Iverson taking every shot. Can we please start playing through Towns at the beginning of the game!!!

This might be a good time to raise a glass, gallows humor style, to the original original sin — passing on SGA and taking giraffe on roller skates, the kingpin of 3 on 3 — Mr. Kevin Knox.

Something we can all agree on. That said, I hear we need some length, a PF, and a SF. Guess who’s dominating the g-league through 5 games?

Brunson and Towns get exposed for being bad defenders against good teams. They get pick and rolled to death and they can’t stop anyone.

Thibs still playing Bridges in the worst game of his career is classic. Plays 4 out of 5 starters the whole quarter and they make no dent in the lead.

Raven, we’re shooting 16% because they are great at defense. They are shooting 60% because we are terrible at defense.

Hubert, I ain’t gonna argue that the Thunder’s suffocating defense doesn’t matter, but we are clanging clean looks. Many of them.

The biggest problem the Thunder present is the Williams on Towns matchup. There simply is no Brunson/Towns pick and roll because a Williams switch onto Brunson is a great matchup for the Thunder.

There’s not a lot of Jalen Williams in the NBA but if Thibs can’t figure out how to adjust the offense to make teams pay for putting a small on KAT, every team with a reasonable facsimile of J-Dub will use this strategy against us.

No shame in losing to OKC, but that was a pretty pathetic performance on your home court.

The right thing to do would be to throw in the towel and give the bench extended minutes but we know this coach will do no such thing.

we are clanging clean looks

We are watching different basketball games. I haven’t seen a damn thing that looks clean. Everything looks forced, off balance, and three feet away from our comfort zone.

Why are these exhausted beaten down players on the floor in the fourth quarter of a game where they’re down by thirty

Playing Hukporti, but with starters, is a really funny bit. Like, are you trying to see if he can spur a 28-0 run?

When the Knicks win the championship in June we’ll all look back at this game and have a huge laugh about it!

I watched the 1st qtr and bailed…weird vibes…just could see there was no juice…but…these kind of embarrassing losses can be turning points….or not…

At least Knicks didn’t lose at home to the Pelicans like the 76ers did tonight.

And the Celtics look like they’ve going to lose to the Kings at home with Porzingis in the lineup… so some more misery of enemies to enjoy.

OKC is a young, deep, energetic, and well-coached team. They have a historically good defense, perhaps the best ever. You need to be at your best to hang around with them. Unfortunately, Bridges was awful, Burnson and OJ were bad, KAT was ok, and only Hart was good. On top of that, we have no bench.

Let’s hope for a miracle before the trade deadline. Chances are not good as last summer we spent five picks on Bridges who played about a dozen good games out of forty. Anyways.

Finally Kolek comes in. They coulda won it if this happened earlier.

Lost 4 out of 5. Players look tired. Coach looks like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. We could have ourselves a reverse January than the one we had last year (losing instead of winning)

Watching SGA in person was really something. He has that Jordan-like attitude like I can do whatever the fuck I want out here and you can’t stop me

I know Jokic is out there but to me he’s the best player in the NBA right now.

Could we have drafted him?

Could we have drafted him?

How could the Knicks have drafted him when they had his worse teammate available to draft?

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Just got out of the opera, the heroine and hero tragically died sealed in a tomb. How did the game go?

This game needs to be sealed in a tomb. With Thibs and Payne in there, too.

Thibs MAYBE gets a pass for giving Huk almost 13 minutes. Although he only gave Kolek two. So seal him up.

Just got out of the opera, the heroine and hero tragically died sealed in a tomb. How did the game go?

Z-man, You should feel privileged to have watched Aida even if the Knicks had won by 50 tonight. There are things more important than basketball.

If they had shot 38% from three they would have lost by one point.

But they shot 12.9%.

Unfortunately, all those years of tanking did not produce a superstar for us through the draft. KP came and went, RJ came and went, and this team had to be built through trades. The front office did a very good job overall. Afterall, it’s not their fault that their predecessors drafted Knox instead of SGA! Some of their signings were brilliant, such as Brunson and Hart, some others were bad, such as Kemba, Fournier, and Reddish. I am afraid that the Bridges move will go down as the worst by far. Bridges is a very good player, don’t get me wrong, but spending five (!!!) first rounders for a player like that was not only unprecedented, but it also totally tied our hands. It might have worked if everything else had been in place and that extraordinarily expensive signing was the last piece. One would then say damn the picks; we have a great team! But then I-Hart walked, everyone panicked, whatever capital had been left, along with Randle and DiVo, was spent on KAT, and we now have a very top-heavy team with about six good players and nothing more. This is a very bad situation to be in, and I am hoping for a miracle to remedy it.

Bottomline: the front office was building so well for four years, but they screwed everything up at the end! Maybe I am overreacting. I hope I will be proven wrong, and I won’t have to wait for another decade or two before I watch another NBA finals game at MSG.

We won’t always shoot 12% from 3 and they won’t always shoot 50%… I said for the 3rd time that week.

It’s more than just the shooting slump, unfortunately. It’s that we are so clearly not in the contenders league. The way we are now constructed, I am not even sure we are much better than last year.

Honestly, I’ve been watching NBA basketball for a lot of years, and I’ve never seen a player go from “Bridges shot is completely broken” to “Bridges never misses” to “Bridges shot is completely broken” in a span of 39 games

It’s mind boggling.

Rough, maybe you’re right, but as I said, if we had a ‘normal’ three-point shooting game we lose by one to what many are saying is the best team in the NBA shooting over 50% from three.

Why we can’t have normal things is a question I’m not able to answer…

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