PG: Knicks-Thunder

[oldshoolballer]

Very poor ball movement no cutting to the basket. Payton is what he is. RJ's inconsistent shooting is a problem.IQ not playing with the same fire we saw earlier. Next to Randle Mitch is the best player on the team.

[BugginOut]

Randle had a fine game. Shot over 50% from the field, had good counting stats with two turnovers. The problem was we needed him to be in the game, and he got in foul trouble and our offense fell apart.

Payton was awful as always. The fact that he takes the most shots on the team per 36min is unforgiveable.

RJ was forcing a lot. I don't know what his shooting coach told him, but he needs to rework his shot from the ground up again,

Knox took shots that are not in his game, instead of sticking to the 3 where he was actually solid at tonight.

Bullock looked scared to shoot.

Quickley was trying to spam FTs instead of looking for quality shots. He needs to pull those open 3s he gets and actually take it to the hole, instead of floaters every time

I think one thing that is getting lost in this, is that with Randle and Mitch out, it shows how much of our production is based on our starting player.

Can we really compete playing RJ and Randle 44 minutes every game? Randle looks like an iron man now, but his play will be affected eventually. RJ is starting to look worse and worse every game. I know he is young, but I can't remember the last time an NBA team had a 20 year old play 40+ minutes a game every game. There is a reason teams rest their players, when players are tired, that is when they make poor decisions and that's also when their shooting suffers. Thibs needs to cut RJ's minutes to about 36 if we want solid offense out of him, cause right now we might be causing him to pick up bad habits with his decision making and shooting.

[dakomish23]

Found the culprit

Read on Twitter

[mpharris36]

Randle had a fine game. Shot over 50% from the field, had good counting stats with two turnovers. The problem was we needed him to be in the game, and he got in foul trouble and our offense fell apart.

Payton was awful as always. The fact that he takes the most shots on the team per 36min is unforgiveable.

RJ was forcing a lot. I don't know what his shooting coach told him, but he needs to rework his shot from the ground up again,

Knox took shots that are not in his game, instead of sticking to the 3 where he was actually solid at tonight.

Bullock looked scared to shoot.

Quickley was trying to spam FTs instead of looking for quality shots. He needs to pull those open 3s he gets and actually take it to the hole, instead of floaters every time

I think one thing that is getting lost in this, is that with Randle and Mitch out, it shows how much of our production is based on our starting player.

Can we really compete playing RJ and Randle 44 minutes every game? Randle looks like an iron man now, but his play will be affected eventually. RJ is starting to look worse and worse every game. I know he is young, but I can't remember the last time an NBA team had a 20 year old play 40+ minutes a game every game. There is a reason teams rest their players, when players are tired, that is when they make poor decisions and that's also when their shooting suffers. Thibs needs to cut RJ's minutes to about 36 if we want solid offense out of him, cause right now we might be causing him to pick up bad habits with his decision making and shooting.

great analysis!

[NoDopeOnSundays]

RJ missing layups, jump shots and having tunnel vision isn’t a Randle problem. It’s funny when RJ plays well you aren’t saying anything about Randle but once RJ plays like schit it’s Randle’s fault again

Payton had one assist tonight. When he’s your starting point guard of course our APG is gonna be low. He never looks to pass.

My dislike for Randles game is always there, and I don't know where this ultimately going with him, like are we going to resign him? When RJ has a good game I'm content, but when he struggles it's almost always the same thing and part of that is the fact he's not a good shooter, being asked to shoot too often. To me, the Randle / Mitch frontcourt needs to be broken up, and we don't have the personnel to replace Mitch with a floor spacing C, so Randle makes the most sense. I don't care if it's Knox or Obi, start one of them at PF to space for everyone else.

Payton is awful, but Randle is the hidden danger to me, and I will only like his game if he's coming off the bench at this point.

I appreciate the critical thinking behind this take, especially with this new sense of optimism surrounding the Knicks.

Randle is a tough player to evaluate because (not unlike other players on this roster) he can only be a featured player. He can't be a role player, because he's neither a good 3-point shooter nor a good defender (despite some improvement this season).

So is he good enough offensively to be one of the go-to options on a winning team? Or is he really more of a 6th man who can get you buckets and have the offense run through him off the bench?

Much like RJ, Obi and Payton, he's a difficult player to build around.

He's made significant progress under Thibs playing within the flow of the offense and making quicker decisions, but his game is still very slow and methodical. it's not exactly conducive to running a smooth, free-flowing offense.

I'd keep him for now because of his contract but I'd be very careful before giving him an extension and I would seriously listen to offers. I would definitely say trade him now if I had more confidence in the Leon Rose's ability to evaluate talent and to target the right players. My skepticism about our front office is the only thing giving me second thoughts.

I view Randle as a 6th man on a good team type of player, just look at the playoff teams last year, who would have been better with him as a starting PF? Maybe the Blazers? But he probably wouldn't work with Nurkic, maybe the Thunder? But do you really want him with the ball over SGA, CP3 and Dennis? There's not a single contender that could have used him in their starting 5, because he either takes the ball out of a better players hands to be successful or he would have been worse defensively than whoever they had.

I'm critical of Mitch, but at the same time if I had to choose between him and Randle the choice is pretty easy, you take the guy who doesn't need the ball and plays defense. When healthy I'd like to see Quickley, Burks or Rivers, RJ, OBI and Mitch as our starting lineup, Quickley looks less and less like a PG but you can give some of the ball handling duties to Burks/Rivers to take pressure off him.

I think of RJ as a 2nd or 3rd scorer in the future, his shot is broken right now, but he's being used in a role that isn't really fair to him. Any other team would put him on the ball a lot more than he is now, for example Payton still sees the ball more than him, that's just unacceptable to me. I'm with you, I'd trade Randle as soon as I could, but I really don't think there will be that many takers, he's not a high volume three point shooter and he's ridiculously ball dominant.

[prophet_of_rage]

I want to see RJ in more of a creator role with better spacing, just cause he shot 21 times doesn't mean they are good shots, he and Payton took 9 threes when they shouldn't, but because Randle is essentially our PG everyone who shares the floor with him outside of Mitch has to shoot. He can't even run PnR with Mitch either, which is another terrible aspect of him having the ball so much, and I'm not the biggest Mitch fan.

I mean seriously, he touches the ball more than Luka, how is this a good thing? If we had better guards you'd be annoyed that Randle isn't getting the ball, the dude played with Holiday and AD, and they still sucked

Randle was out for quite a while in this game so RJ had plenty of opportunities to create. Guess what, he still sucked nothing changed. He took the same shots he always takes when Randle is on the floor. Dude gets tunnel vision when he gets in the paint also, which has always been a problem since he was in Duke. Maybe he should keep his head up and look for open players. Him and Payton played very selfish tonight.
Sorry bro but the hate with Randle for you is way overboard. I’m calling it a night. You can have the last say or whatever lol

RJ being thrust into a role of create for a few minutes isn't the same as them practicing it and it being the gameplan moving forward. Randle moving to the bench is best for business, this is all that really needs to be said, just think of all the superstar players that are after his name, and the fact this is probably going to go up too Goodnight Melo.

Where do you go for these stats?

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[NoDopeOnSundays]

Randle was out for quite a while in this game so RJ had plenty of opportunities to create. Guess what, he still sucked nothing changed. He took the same shots he always takes when Randle is on the floor. Dude gets tunnel vision when he gets in the paint also, which has always been a problem since he was in Duke. Maybe he should keep his head up and look for open players. Him and Payton played very selfish tonight.
Sorry bro but the hate with Randle for you is way overboard. I’m calling it a night. You can have the last say or whatever lol

RJ being thrust into a role of create for a few minutes isn't the same as them practicing it and it being the gameplan moving forward. Randle moving to the bench is best for business, this is all that really needs to be said, just think of all the superstar players that are after his name, and the fact this is probably going to go up too Goodnight Melo.

Where do you go for these stats?

Sent from my SM-N970W using Tapatalk

Nba.com sortable player stats, then it's in tracking. They have tons of stats there.

[prophet_of_rage]

Well the Nets lost and Kyrie is out until he feels like playing again.

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[prophet_of_rage]

He probably doesn't sign with us anyways, but not even going after FVV in the offseason was a big mistake

We'd be so much better with him at PG than Payton.

16 pts!!!!!!!!!!!!

In before "Frank scores 0-4 ppg he sux and is so much worse" crew shows up and derps all over the thread

That's not a thing.

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[Besart19]

somebody in that backcourt gotta learn to shoot lol

A syndrome since 2013

JR Smith
Shumpert
Hardaway
Artest
Udrih
Felton

Our non-shooting guards

[HerSports85]

RJ, honey ....

[thebuzzardman]

Quickley looked sickly

[Richard4444]

Thibs cost us this one by leaving Mitch out for some long. Our defense was the problem the last 15+ minutes in the game, so what does he do? Keeps our best defensive player and anchor out of the game just to try and get cute with small ball. So stupid.

It was a curious decision. Maybe he did it thinking more that Randle needed space to help drive us to a W.

That's the only real reason to do it because the D sucked. And Randle has thrived offensively with Mitch.

I thought it was a teaching moment for Mitch.

Mitch is awesome but still not very coachable.

Al got too many open shots in the first half. Mitch often tries to do too much and forgets his man open.

[GEOLINK]

I’m not gonna overreact over this game after the 3 game winning streak.

This is a young team so I expect ugly losses like this from time to time.

[knicks94]

How do we beat the Bucks, Pacers and the Jazz, but look awful against the Craptors and OKC?

[DowNY]

How do we beat the Bucks, Pacers and the Jazz, but look awful against the Craptors and OKC?

It happens. We’re a young team. We’re not contenders. Good teams lose to bad teams all the time

[HighRyzer83]

Goes to show you how important Mitch is to the team. Just his presence alone

[Knicksfan20]

We are one move from being a solid team.

DNP Elfrid Payton

His inability to shoot the ball kills us.

[Reign23]

just a few thoughts:
- what a horrible game
- Randle: still impressed by him. he looks good dishing and rebounding. that said, I think right now would be the perfect moment to sell high on him. sorry, but thats what I would do
- RJ: I love this kid and I think he could become an all star one day. his mentality and all around game are already there, but my goodness is he a brick layer.
- Mitch: the best of the young players so far. his D is incredible
- Knox: he is making progress, no doubt, but I am still not sold on him. if his three pointer doesn't fall, he is basically useless
- Payton: has good and bad games. I don't know why he is starting to chuck as he does. still the worst possible fit for Mitch, RJ and also Randle

I know that most of you are excited to finally have a good start and decent team and rightfully so. BUT I don't know how you can watch a game like yesterday and not think we need a high draft pick. Really fear that we tail off at some point and picking in the same 8-10 **** spot again.

[ThunderBolt]

Mitch was our best player tonight

He really forced Shai to quit going inside early and start shooting jumpers. Unfortunately for the Knicks, Shai hit his jumpers tonight but that hasn't been the case so far this season. I was impressed with his rim protection.