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Game Thread 2023-24 Knicks vs. Magic (Martin Luther King Day opener, which is a thing)

The Knicks host the upstart Orlando Magic in an afternoon game celebrating MLK Day.

I’m still waiting for the swirlies! Now that OG is here, I fully expect swirlies!

How is 53 wins looking? Still very possible!

Let’s go, Knicks!

245 replies on “Game Thread 2023-24 Knicks vs. Magic (Martin Luther King Day opener, which is a thing)”

We’re definitely DOOMED, due to the early start, our recent tradition of playing lousy on MLK Day, Brunson being questionable at minimum, Orlando having a million tall guys even without Franz Wagner, etc.

DOOMED, I says.

Brunson a game-time decision, per Thibs.

@IanBegley
Wendell Carter Jr. is available and coming off the bench for Orlando vs NYK, Jamahl Mosley says.

New game — shots of your favorite libation every time Deuce takes it to the hole.

Could be a fairly sober MLK Day…

And in honor to Dr King, we might have unity today, because this game is easier for europeans to catch. 😉

cyber, does the average Portuguese have any awareness of MLK? I only ask because I couldn’t name a famous person from the history of Portugal beyond the explorers!

Fuck, Brunson is out again today. Gonna be an ugly game but as long as the Knicks get the W that’s all that matters.

At the game. Bummed Brunson isn’t playing – hope they’ve figured some things out…

Somebody said ~ Deuce’s passes in the offense rarely put his teammates in better positions.

Luckily, OG’s and iHart’s often do 😉

cyber, does the average Portuguese have any awareness of MLK? I only ask because I couldn’t name a famous person from the history of Portugal beyond the explorers!

I think so, yeah. MLK is world famous, i’d say. A little harder to have world famous people from a country with only 10M. Maybe Cristiano Ronaldo? LOL

Monica interviewing Clyde re MLK. Can’t start better than that.

Oh damn, i missed it.

Good energy to start this game, so it’s already better than the two previous ones.

Problem with putting OG on the PF like Banchero is Randle has to defend a SF/SG who all they do is run around looking to shoot 3pters and Randle doesn’t even bother staying with them which is how a scrub like Okeke already has 6 pts and a couple of uncontested offensive rebs.

“I think i heard Deuce shouting “where’s Noble?” 😀”

nah, it was “Where’s ‘noby?”

Glad we’re not doing shots every time Deuce nails a three.

Or am I…?

nah, it was “Where’s ‘noby?”

Glad we’re not doing shots every time Deuce nails a three. Or am I…?

LOL and LOL

I know Orlando sucks at offense but Knicks are playing some awful defense allowing way too many unnecessary wide open 3pters.

Randle said he played terrible after the Memphis game and he’s somehow come out and looked even worse so far today.

I know Orlando sucks at offense but Knicks are playing some awful defense allowing way too many unnecessary wide open 3pters.

I feel like they got at least a couple of open 3pters out of broken plays/deflections, and not really poor defense.

Not saying this is all my fault but the Knicks have been outscored 10-1 since I got home and put the game on

It looks like Deuce worked a lot on his shot and I-Hart’s screens for the shooters are monumental (IQ used to take advantage of them in the good old days)…

They’ve out rebounded us 12 to 7. I think that is the biggest problem.

Don’t worry about Randle, the Knicks would never send him back to play if he was really hurt, right?

Yeah whoever it was the other day saying Deuce is similar to IQ now on offense I hope they just saw that last possession by Deuce…

lmao Arciadiacono gets another defensive 3 seconds called on the Magic. Randle hits the free throw and Arch exchanges “Creation of Adam”-style fingertip touches with the assistant coaches on the bench.

Achiuwa sucks at setting screens.
We should just run OG at C and see how it goes

Has Fultz been mentioned as a potential backup PG option? He’s on a $17M expiring contract and I can’t imagine the market would be super robust. Then again, the Magic might view us as too direct of a competitor.

How did Sims go from being a starter to not seeing any time when Precious is playing this poorly?

This kind of game makes me furious. As a bench player, you should be greedy for these games and eager to show you are better than your garbage minutes in the more difficult games. I’m looking at you Deuce, Grimes, Precious, jHart, Flynn, even Devo.

Clyde should NEVER be able to describe you as “sluggish.”

I can’t believe how spot on all descriptions of the Precious Achiuwa experience have been. Bunch of flashes of some talent that add up to absolutely nothing.

By comparison, Earth Wind and Fire have never been described as “sluggish.”

How did Sims go from being a starter to not seeing any time when Precious is playing this poorly?

Sims kinda stinks too he wasn’t exactly starting on merit.

I think Pop, Carlisle and Spo. I don’t think Kerr has been a coach long enough even though he has a good winning percentage.

At least Sims rebounds and can offer a lob target, feels like the PnR might be some kind of threat with him in. Sims sucks, but is he actually worse than this?

This lineup looks like it should have Quincy Acy in it

LOL! Or Jared Jeffries! 😀

“Has Fultz been mentioned as a potential backup PG option? He’s on a $17M expiring contract and I can’t imagine the market would be super robust.”

He was on Vecenie’s list in the article posted by Alan in the previous thread. I wondered the same thing. Vecenie thinks the price would be a couple of 2nds.

Sims kinda stinks too he wasn’t exactly starting on merit.

I feel like Sims is less prone to stupid mistakes and a bit more solid on defense? But o agree they both suck.

For a second I thought Precious was Deuce and was shocked he pulled off a standing dunk like that with ease

IHart is fouling so that Thibs can’t play him 42 minutes. It’s a call for help, really.

Well this game may have no other redeeming value, but there was definitive proof that Precious can actually jump in the air.

For a second I thought Precious was Deuce and was shocked he pulled off a standing dunk like that with ease

There’s Hart and Big Hart, we can also have Deuce and Big Deuce! 😀

Well our starters are uniformly all about +5 in +/- while the bench is all -5 or worse. I guess I should have expected this.

Does a floater count for a shot (of liquor)?

It should, it’s new!

My generation missed the Trent Tucker game, but we do have the David Lee tip in.

Deuce man, come the fuck on…

I could’ve sworn as a little kid I watched the Trent Tucker shot, we had just finally gotten cable the previous summer. At first I only watched MSG for Yankees games and the monthly WWF shows!

We’re leading the league in dumb challenges by a mile…

And this game in dumb fouls by double-digit…

I think Thibs challenged just so Deuce had to stand around in disgrace for much longer before halftime.

Banchero reminds me so much of Carmelo Anthony. Could make it hard for me to go all-in on the Magic.

And the few Precious plays I’ve seen have reminded me of the few Anthony Randolph plays that I saw.

“I think Thibs challenged just so Deuce had to stand around in disgrace for much longer before halftime.”

It’s funny cuz it’s true…

Randle gave him the ball to make up for the foul. Too bad it didn’t went in. 😛

iHart’s floater is like he’s pulling dice out of his pocket and throwing them in the air…

Glad Deuce had those points in the paint, but notice how Donte touches the paint on almost every possession

And the few Precious plays I’ve seen have reminded me of the few Anthony Randolph plays that I saw.

What made you want to tune into the Knicks today?

Thibs is giving Precious a chance. We’ll see how long that lasts. Still plenty of time until the trade deadline.

“Jared Jeffries hands.”

You could probably pen a song about this to the tune of Bette Davis Eyes…

Pleasantly surprised by the turn around from the dreadful start of the 2nd quarter, let’s just find a way to win this game.

If OG has one weakness given his size, it’s on the boards. Granted we have so many plus rebounders at various positions that could be impacting his results, but you would think at his size and length he would be better.

I’m close to saying Deuce can definitely at least shoot, which is a new and welcome development. He is still very much not a point guard but this makes him playable.

Yeah, I definitely think Deuce is good and has played great, he’s just not a PG

Still worried about Randle’s ankle, he looks pretty terrible out there. Not that he has to be injured for that to be the case, far from it, but I doubt he was able to fully shake off that turn.

Part of OGs rebounding numbers might be his playing the PoA so often, pulling him away from the basket, can’t really say yet

Read this thread and figured we had no chance of being in this game but I see we’re up 10 with no Brunson and bad/hurt Randle…

What’s up with this great shooting from Deuce? A lot has been made of his poor Ortg but it seems like all his minutes come with bad Randle…

Precious is gonna be dynamite in the CBA

And i’d prefer for it to be as soon as possible. 😛

iHart’s bugaboo is his propensity for cheap fouls…really unacceptable given our backup situation.

Marechal, you can’t play DDV with that group, because the formal definition is, “When matter and antimatter react the event is called annihilation.”

Hart starting to look like the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman in Along Came Polly.

How old do you think Cole Anthony was when he started beating his dad in one-on-one? My guess is 9.

I like OG but it doesn’t seem he is a rumored $40 million a year player. Not even sure he is $30 a year. Knicks need another scorer.

Pagliacci willing the Magic back into this game…

I don’t create the energy, I only observe it. Without Brunson we look like a G-League team even in the midst of Deuce-sanity

I just had to take a shot of 12-yr-old single malt and spit it on the cat…

Man, if I had the ability to predict anything else like I can predict the Knicks’ late game collapses I’d have a lot of money

Doesn’t help if our passing delivers easy shots but we miss. Smh.

EDIT: … including free throws.

4th 2:37
Julius Randle misses the first free throw

4th 2:37
Julius Randle misses the second free throw

4th 2:34
Markelle Fultz defensive rebound

4th 2:22
Paolo Banchero misses an 8-foot driving floating jump shot in the lane

4th 2:18
Cole Anthony offensive rebound

4th 2:16
Markelle Fultz misses a layup

4th 2:14
Markelle Fultz offensive rebound

4th 2:11
Paolo Banchero makes a 16-foot jumper from the right wing assisted by Markelle Fultz

And there it is

How did Josh Hart get so poor this year. That contract is not looking good right now.

Nice cut by Devo.

You know, just bc McBride is the PG doesn’t mean he has to have the ball in his hand the entire time.

Sux how we have zero ability to come back from even small late deficits.

Remember when the Mavericks beat us after being down 11 with like a minute left?

Think it might be a smart idea to stay off this site for the next couple of days after this game….

Katz has pointed out how important it is to get Randle the ball in deep post position, if you watch him play with Deuce he never gets it anywhere near the basket

Sux how we have zero ability to come back from even small late deficits.

It’s not happening without Brunson.

This is Jalen Brunson’s team, without him we’re a play-in team and bad in the clutch (as we were before him).

And Orlando’s defense is feisty.

Deuce needs to be an off guard with another ball handler. Josh Hart should play less minutes until he improves. I want to keep OG at the right price but if his contract demands escalate the Knicks should have a limit.

Oooof. That hurts. Lotta problems for E to explain tomorrow, but —

We scored one point from 7:38 to 1:30 in the fourth quarter. Unbelievable.

68% from the FT line and we don’t even have Mitch. The Donte twins missed 5.

Djphan was definitely right that OG doesn’t have the creation ability I thought, I still rather have him than RJ, but he’s been underwhelming on that front

Agree about OG’s lack of creation skills off the dribble, but he and iHart and Devo seem to work well passing/cutting. I wish we had more of that throughout.

We were out-rebounded 16-8 in the 4th. I don’t know where help comes for that.

Grimes has a quietly efficient line, but, for a guy who was a starter not too long ago and an untouchable player for any deals, shouldn’t we get more from him in a game like this? 14 minutes? What is Thibs seeing that keeps him on the bench?

Randle was clearly not able to move, he couldn’t get in position for rebounds or jump even when he got there.

Grimes has been getting into the paint off curl plays recently but seems really indecisive when he gets there, favoring dump-off passes to Precious, which just isn’t a good decision. I think a better C would make a big difference there, but Grimes still needs to clean that up. He should start getting Hart’s minutes.

I’m hoping Hart turns it round later in the season, which is what happened the past 2 years, hopefully getting traded wasn’t the catalyst both times.

I could see Detroit throwing a max deal at OG, we should get ready to pony up.

34 points on 17 shots for Alez Burts. Bring him home!

(seriously, he would help, go get him)

The loss isn’t on OG, but 11 shots (in 44 minutes) aren’t enough, not when with JB out you must switch to play as the 2nd option and later with Julius’ injury as the 1st (at least on paper).

Efficiency is good, but sometimes volume is good too and I think he could be efficient enough even with more volume.

OG needs to step up on offense. Tonight he had a promising start then he let the game pass him by sometimes…

(someone could say, and probably will say tomorrow 😉 , that with IQ and RJ this is a game we would have won…)

We all know Knicks need to make another move or 2 by the deadline, just hope they don’t suffer many more stupid losses until some help arrives.

There is no great mystery here.

We knew (or should have known) what the issues were the moment the deal for OG closed.

1. We were already missing a backup C.

2. We gave up our backup PG and almost all our bench scoring in the OG trade. We strengthened the starting lineup but made the bench weaker and especially vulnerable if Brunson got hurt (which he did).

3. We know Randle’s game. When Brunson is not around and there are no other scorers, Randle turns into a pumpkin. His ankle was no excuse tonight. He wasn’t efficient last game without Brunson and started this game terribly BEFORE the ankle sprain. If anything he was a little better in the 2nd half.

Staggering Brunson or Randle is not a solution for replacing Quickley and RJ, especially when Brunson is hurt. It’s not enough and hurts the starters a bit. When Brunson comes back that will solve some of the problem, but we need a more dynamic PG or scorer off the bench to be the new 6th man to carry some of the scoring load in the 2nd unit.

We need a better backup C unless we are certain Mitch is coming back long enough before the playoffs to be close to 100% playoff time.

OG never averaged more than 14 shot attempts per game when he was with the Raptors

You can’t expect him to morph into a volume scorer just because our 2 best scorers are injured or MIA

When I scheduled this post this morning, I thought Brunson was going to play. I definitely wouldn’t have been optimistic about this game without Brunson. It just shows how important he is to the team (not that we didn’t know that already, of course, but it’s still interesting to see it so plainly).

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What sucks is next 2 games are a back to back so don’t see Brunson returning then immediately playing back to back games. Granted the 2nd game is vs Washington but still a guaranteed easy win will now probably be a bit of a struggle without Brunson and maybe even Randle if his ankle swells up next couple of days.

OG never averaged more than 14 shot attempts per game when he was with the Raptors

True, and also true he was clamoring for more shots since last year, tonight he had a chance to take 20 and didn’t.

You can’t expect him to morph into a volume scorer just because our 2 best scorers are injured or MIA

Then we must be very careful about how much we’re going to pay him.
A 3rd option must be ready to be a volume scorer when the 1st and 2nd option are injured or bad, otherwise he’s not a 3rd option.

It’s funny, DJphan was killed by some after the trade because he was skeptical about usage, and now we’re talking about a problem with the usage distribution. 😀

Randle lost them this game. I see the injury excuse has been brought out for him.

Hart needs to stop getting double grimes minutes

Precious is not very good

duece mcbride was a plus 3 by the way and played well against a very good defense

So it wasn’t the no brunson that lost them this game at all

the trade was more than fine

This lineup makes sense

Brunson
Donte
Og
randle
Ihart

Its been very good when they’ve actually played together

This issue happens when you are missing brunson it won’t work and Randle now shits his pants…

Anyway its much easier to get a 6th man creator than get a solid starting lineup

Honestly, we lost that game because our two all-stars were out. That’s it. If you thought you saw Randle out there, I have 5-18 that says he wasn’t.

Yeah, OG is setting himself up to be called ITM (Invisible Third Man), and yes Deuce hasn’t yet figured out how to set up an offense despite some otherwise excellent ball play.

But we’ve got no back-up center and we’ve got no back-up power forward. That’s not good when one is in foul trouble and the other one is MIA. And right now we have no back-up point guard, at least after Deuce (Flynn runs fast while dribbling but so far that’s it — 0-4 tonight, no assists).

Outside of our glut of small wings, we’re paper thin.

I want to see Jericho unleashed.

98 points that’s what the magic scored

Playing grimes over hart maybe would help

duece mcbride was a plus 3 by the way and played well against a very good defense

So it wasn’t the no brunson that lost them this game at all

I may be going out on a limb here, but I think Brunson might have gotten us some big baskets down the stretch when our offense was stagnating.

sure he would have helped he is an all star level player

But the other star could maybe not brick free throws and 13 out of his 18 shots that could help as well

Magic are an elite defense

Are people actually ready for playoff randle

Maybe move him before his value tanks again..

Randle = dak prescott

Not made for the lights

I might have been inclined to think that “ETW” is actually just “E,” as well, because he often offers similar negative/pessimistic opinions. However, in the end I don’t think that it is really E because one thing E actually did very well was to articulate himself coherently with a minimum of grammatical, typographical, and punctuation errors…….all things that ETW is definitely prone to. If it *is* E, he’s disguising himself very well by making himself seem dumber. I never got the feeling he would go that far to try to disguise himself, if he were the type to even attempt such a thing at all.

My professional $0.02. LOL

Usage is not a problem when the team is healthy, losing Brunson and/or Randle is always going to cause shot distribution problems just like it would on every team that loses its 2 best players

Knicks had a double digit lead late in the 3rd quarter, they should’ve found a way to win this game even without Brunson. I assume if Randle hadn’t sprained his ankle in the 1st quarter he would’ve been able to close this win for the Knicks.

I think we miss IQs usage, RJ not so much. I’ve mostly assumed we made the move with an eye on acquiring Murray or Brogdon also, so I wasn’t terribly afraid of the usage issue.

That said, I could see them thinking Deuce would play well enough to hold down the 6th man role, he’s definitely shooting and playing defense at an impressive level.

Randle lost them this game. I see the injury excuse has been brought out for him.

Let’s deal with reality.

He was terrible before he tweaked the ankle. I can’t remember exactly, but he was 1-8 in the 1st half. He was actually better in the 2nd half than the first half. The ankle didn’t help, but he’s struggling because Brunson is out. Even when he’s in, we don’t have quite enough scoring in the starting unit unless both Brunson and Randle are scoring close to 30 or DDV or OG has a big game.

Geez, Hardaway and Kyrie with 40pts. Maybe they don’t need Luka. Ditto for Indy and Hali so far

I think that usage distribution is a problem that needs attention. We have 3 low usage players in the starting lineup. Our two high usage players are not hyper-efficient.

The most feasible solution to the problem that I see is to augment the combo-guard position so that you can mix and match situationally and survive when either Brunson or Randle are out. Deuce is a nice story but he’s just not that guy. I still think that Brogdon is the best answer our there, Burks might be a good stopgap.

Now we could just roll with this team and hope everyone stays healthy and that Randle and Brunson can handle the increased scoring load, but if that’s the strategy we should lower our playoff expectations accordingly unless someone good gets bought out.

And maybe there is a side benefit in showing the rest of the league that OG has offensive limitations so that his asking price comes down.

But a bench lineup of Deuce, Precious, Grimes and Hart is just not acceptable in today’s NBA no matter whether it is rounded out with Brunson or Randle. They will get blitzed continually and we will have trouble generating quality shots. Not to mention that you lose some of the benefit of them playing together.

Yeah, they definitely need to make a move, but I think they’ve always been planning to make a move since acquiring OG.

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…and of course RJ and IQ come out smokin’ against the Celtics.

I’d be curious to see Grimes and DiVo play together to open up the floor, instead of always subbing for each other and having Hart come in to muck up the spacing.

As ugly as Knicks Magic was its a beautiful masterpiece compared to this Heat Nets game.

The same pathetic Grizz we just squeaked by just blew by the Dubs…

(well, not quite the same, but still…)

Jazz are a real interesting team and they have a lot of assets to get better

Wonder if they end up not sellling

Sexton is low key very good

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