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Game Thread

2022-23 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Lakers

The Knicks host the Lakers tonight, and unlike most of the season, instead of missing the other team’s stars, the Knicks will get both Anthony Davis and LeBron James tonight, after they both skipped last night’s game against the Nets.

The Lakers aren’t all that good with Davis and LeBron, so this is a nice chance for the Knicks to get right at home before some stronger opponents.

Let’s go, Knicks!

171 replies on “2022-23 Game Thread: Knicks vs. Lakers”

The game thread super early, thanks Brian. šŸ™‚
Lebron and AD skipped the Nets because they know they have to be well rested to stand a chance against the Knicks! I appreciate the respect! šŸ˜€
Gooooo Knicks! šŸ€

I think the main reason they skipped the Nets game is who gives a shit about playing at the Barclays center? MSG is where the stars want to shine. Always has been. Always will be.

I think the main reason they skipped the Nets game is who gives a shit about playing at the Barclays center? MSG is where the stars want to shine. Always has been. Always will be.

Amen.

unless those stars happen to have a distant relative who recently delivered doordash to the mother in law of a paralegal at a law firm which previously sued nobody beats the wiz for a faulty word processor

i’m not sure i believe in either obi or bey but you could easily argue they’d be better off if they parent trapped. bey is probably best off in a good defense where he can do the narrow big wing thing and limit his khris middleton offensive aspirations more toward the corner 3 jae crowder end of the spectrum. and obi of course needs space to roam and cut and leak and ideally a stretch 5 to play alongside (which duren of course is not but stewart aims to be) and multiple ball moving initiators.

I donā€™t know wtf pt just said but I agree with itā€¦

Owen where in celebrity row will u be seated?

Alan Hanh was on the radio earlier saying that some players have it written into their sneaker contracts that they get extra money when they play at MSG because of the larger audience. So if they have a B2B and choice of which game to take off, it will always be the game before or after MSG. They want the extra money.

Is 14% from the field a good thing?

Are they really putting Sims on LeBron? Maybe I imagined that, or it was a switch, but if it’s not I’m all on board.

Late on this, but the game isn’t worth talking about so I would absolutely look to buy low on Saddiq Bey. I wouldn’t give up anything real for him, but to this point in his career he’s been better than RJ Barrett and he’s all of one year older.

This is the first time I’ve grown frustrated with Brunson. He’s playing like hot burning garbage.

Our 3 man weave starts at half court…seems irrelevant since nobody has to guard us out there…

kinda has the feel of an 18 win fizdale era team losing an exhibition to a group of recently retired stars

Itā€™s like the Knicks are psyched out. They are missing shots they often make

Saddiq Bey … to this point in his career heā€™s been better than RJ Barrett

I see you, you’re trying to provoke the RJ believers. šŸ˜›

I think we blew our load in that Celtics game…oops…drank a protein shake…all good again

Okay, Brunson on the road to redemption with that three. But still just on the road…

A great comp for RJ just dawned on me – Marvin Williams. You never played the Hornets thinking ā€œwe just have to figure out a way to slow down Marvin Williamsā€

Same with RJ, he doesnā€™t scare anybody.

what would westbrook have to shoot on c&s 3s before announcers stopped demanding he take them

I know I’m living on the island, but Deuce just totally bodied Westbrook twice, stopping his drives. He’s a strong little fella.

Deuce has me wondering how bad a player has to be before his team is better off with him simply never, ever shooting as a rule.

I’m getting dangerously “maybe we should’ve traded for Hachimura” pilled.

randle’s defense lapses last two game have been hard to watch. i get that he has a burden on offense, but the 4 can’t play faux safety just standing around flat footed with no mitch.

The day he got drafted nobody in their right mind could’ve seen how good IQ was gonna become.

Last time an opposing player hit a crazy half court shot at the halftime buzzer the Knicks got destroyed in the 2nd half….

That was some seriously shitty basketball by both teams, I bet TNT is wishing they were showing Heat-Cavs

I think the main reason they skipped the Nets game is who gives a shit about playing at the Barclays center? MSG is where the stars want to shine. Always has been. Always will be.

Do you ever wonder if this the real reason behind our perpetual mediocrity over the years, and part of the reason why we’re such a bad home team this year?

We’re the perfect NBA Stormtroopers!
-Well funded organization
-Tend to lose with odds overwhelmingly in our favor
-Intolerant towards dissenters
-Known for inability to shoot accurately

ā€œDid RJ pass awayā€

No. Weā€™d be dominating the game if that was the case.

I can’t watch this team play defense anymore, any time a player takes 2 dribbles the entire defense starts running around with their heads cut off leading to open 3pters.

Our home crowd is not nearly hard enough on opposing teams ā€¦ itā€™s fucking quiet ā€¦ embarrassing

Randle needs a boo ā€¦ not because he stopped Hartenstein from getting rebound ā€¦ but because he completely sulkedā€¦ played zero defense and boxed out no one after it happened ā€¦ someone please tweet that shit sequence ā€¦

Heā€™s leaning a bit rightā€¦ but thatā€™s been a charge about 478 out of the 500 occurrences

We sorta did lose itā€¦ I def lost my mind ā€¦ I donā€™t have time for OT .. Iā€™ll check score in 15 minutes ā€¦ clowns

I like Thibs benching RJ when in the 4th when he deserves it recently.

Oh, bullshit. Every shot Mitch has ever blocked close to the apex in his career has been called goaltending, but now we’re differentiating that from being on the way down in a 15-minute CSI analysis.

This league gets less watchable every year.

MSG should advertise – ā€œCome see the Knicks, they probably wonā€™t win but itā€™ll sure be exciting!ā€

At least RJ was benched for stinking out the joint and Hart was great. Wish Randle didnā€™t throw the game though.

Turned it off at halftime to watch Fauda with the lady. Good new season. Seems like a sound decision in terms of my mental health.

We have now reached the point where I mentally process every OT as a loss at the end of regulation, and every chance for a last-second game winner as a miss before the inbound pass.

Of course one of my coworkers texts me a tweet about the Lakers winning.
I could say ā€œhey great job beating us without our best defensive playerā€ but they have no clue who Mitchell Robinson is nor would they care.

Knicks now 12-14 at home. I remember the 1994-95 Knicks being surprisingly bad at home, they went 29-12…

I WILL NOT LET MY SON BE A LAKER FAN
I WILL NOT LET MY SON BE A LAKER FAN
I WILL NOT LET MY SON BE A LAKER FAN
I WILL NOT LET MY SON BE A LAKER FAN
I WILL NOT LET MY SON BE A LAKER FAN
I WILL NOT LET MY SON BE A LAKER FAN
I WILL NOT LET MY SON BE A LAKER FAN
I WILL NOT LET MY SON BE A LAKER FAN
I WILL NOT LET MY SON BE A SPOILED ASS GOT DAMNED LAKER FAN

Fuck Scott Foster

Garden was rocking. Great game. I have thoughts but will post them tomorrow.

It’s hard to believe this was even close the way we shot 3s – which of course has become way too much of the game of basketball.

Knicks canā€™t survive shitty games from both RJ and Randall. Going forward IQ and Hart need to be playing 30 minutes plus every night- Quick is better than both RJ and Grimes and should close every night and Sims just isnā€™t very good and Hart is starting to look like the guy we thought we were getting when he signed. Grimes needs to get back to hitting threes. He also needs to spend this summer working on his handle- heā€™s probably the best passer on the team but he canā€™t put himself in position to make plays against set defenses. Iā€™d be interested in seeing if he can do anything as the ball handler in the pnr but right now knocking down the three is more important.

Hot take of the evening.

Just find some sucker and trade RJ!!!

Heā€™s probably eventually going to become a pretty good scorer, but heā€™s a negative defender, undersized at SF, too slow at SG, too concerned about his own stats, and doesnā€™t do anything really well. Iā€™ve been as patient as anyone with his development as a more efficient scorer. But Iā€™m pretty convinced at this stage that even if I am eventually right about that, heā€™s not going to be a significantly plus player anyway. Heā€™s not developing anywhere else. Just get him the hell out of here and find a legitimate SF. Maybe we should just bite the bullet and overpay a bit for OGA on the assumption that RJ plus whatever picks we have left will be enough to bring in another player later (Iā€™m assuming Masai wonā€™t want RJ even though sending him to Canada makes the most sense).

I think it’s too late to pawn RJ off on someone. The secret’s out at this point.

You would think that we would have seen SOME development from RJ by now. But nope. He’s still the same guy, year after year. He’s remarkably consistent at being not very good. You can set your watch to the crummy TS%, the 5.5 rebounds, the 3 assists, the half a steal and the one block every five games. You can count on him every season coming out of the gate looking like hot garbage, then going on a decent “regression to the mean” kind of run in January, then ending up with the same mediocre numbers he had the year before.

I know he’s still young, but the utter lack of any development is pretty remarkable. It’s like he walked through the door a fully fledged mediocrity and hasn’t changed one iota.

>>I think itā€™s too late to pawn RJ off on someone. The secretā€™s out at this point.

E and djphan would disagree. RJ is a potential future star, doncha know!

That was a really bad basketball game. Just shitty play on both sides except for the overtime period, where the Lakers were good. Man, I know the Lakers are missing two key rotation pieces in Austin Reaves and PatBev, but holy shit, that roster is garbage outside of LeBron, Brow and Schroder (and I guess Rui is interesting and Bryant isn’t actively bad). Troy fucking Brown? Max Christie? Westbrick being an actually important part of the rotation? It’s madness. What a ridiculous roster. And my god, how bad was Lebron down the stretch of the fourth quarter, when the Lakers were nursing a lead and yet he just kept chucking threes instead of driving? What a weird series of plays that was.

Thank goodness for IQ, Hart and Brunson. Everyone else was highly disappointing, as were Thibs’ schemes (nothing more embarrassing than that final possession in regulation. Hole. E. Shit). I do like that Grimes is at least taking it to the rim while his three point shot is off.

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Also, while you have to give Thibs props on playing IQ over RJ for the last 11 minutes of the game (counting OT), this is also the downside of enabling RJ for so long, as you know this isn’t going to go well now if Thibs keeps doing it. What player in RJ’s shoes, based on how he has been treated by the Knicks up until this point, would accept being treated like this?

It pisses the shit out of me that when one of those “Guys who just need to put it together” guys go to the Knicks high in the lottery, it has to be a guy who is, as Strat notes, “undersized at SF, too slow at SG.” The whole point of the dudes at the top of the lottery is usually that they have unreal physical dimensions and they just need to put it all together (like Ingram, for instance, who is 6’8″), and the Knicks don’t even get that when it’s their turn to take one. Imagine a 6’5″ Melo! Blech.

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Oh, I see — what’s really going on is that people are bitter that Barrett is the one Knick high lottery pick and that spills over into the running commentary and now we’re back to hysteria over a guy who went 5 for 13 in a single game.

But in any event, the Knicks played a two guard 40 minutes last night who literally did not hit a single outside shot.

I’d be perfectly fine with them trading Barrett in the right deal, but they’re still significantly talent deficient and, without belaboring the point, still in purgatory. So we wind up with all the Knickerblogger back and forth about angels dancing on pinheads and overreactions to a series of 13 shots while the bigger picture goes entirely unaddressed.

They’ve needed all-star first halves from Randle and Brunson just to be mediocre. If a team like the Raptors can be seriously contemplating a teardown path, so absolutely could the Knicks. That’s pretty much the staggering reality of Knicksville.

My position on wanting a teardown for the past three seasons is implied. šŸ˜‰

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