Game Thread: Knicks at Hawks, 02/15/2019

[jayu70]

Last game before the Allstar break - Let's get to 20 wins!

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[lethalweapon3]

sidenote: "Get To The Greek!"

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~lw3

[ATL Boy]

sidenote: "Get To The Greek!"

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~lw3

I laughed out loud the first time I saw this

[azuresou1]

First ever home game for me! Let's get it!

[ducler]

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[Jamaaliver]

LOL at the fact NY Knicks have no identifiable stars to even put on the marquee.

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[kg01]

LOL at the fact NY Knicks have no identifiable stars to even put on the marquee.

Dang, @jamallllio spewing Nik-hate on 'love wins' nite ..... I'm proud-a you.

[bws94]

The Knicks are pathetic. Crush the Knicks tonight, ATL. Crush them.

[bws94]

Go for 20.

[hawkmanreturns]

Not much benefit to losing this one. The Hawks need to run them out of State Farm Arena before the All Star break. Any one or two of Collins, Trae, or Huerter need to get a career high tonight.

[Hazer]

Not much benefit to losing this one. The Hawks need to run them out of State Farm Arena before the All Star break. Any one or two of Collins, Trae, or Huerter need to get a career high tonight.

BINgo, crushing win needed here. Show everyone we’re a level entirely above NY/PHO/CLE/CHI. Absolutely no reason to lose this game.

[Jamaaliver]

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Atlanta coach Lloyd Pierce wants to see his young team finish the first portion of the season strong.

The New York Knicks, who visit the Hawks on Thursday in their final game before the All-Star break, simply want a win.

The Knicks (10-47) have the worst record in the NBA and have lost 18 straight, a single-season franchise record and two short of the 20-game streak that spanned the 1984-85 and 1985-86 seasons.

Despite the struggles, coach David Fizdale believes the team is headed in the right direction.

“I like what we’re sitting on right now, and I’m excited for our future,” he said prior to the Wednesday loss.

Atlanta, in the middle of a rebuilding effort, has one of the youngest teams in the league and typically starts two rookies. Pierce said this portion of the schedule can be particularly daunting for a young team that continues to feel its way through the season.



Key Matchup

Dennis Smith has been doing a good job getting around screens and jostling with defenders for air space. If he can dig in on Trae Young early, and maybe spark some foul woes, New York might have a chance to push the Hawks around. If Young doesn’t want to get aggressive, it’s imperative on Smith Jr. to get a head of steam toward the rack. On the other end, we’ll see if Smith can show some tact by trailing Young everywhere he goes and getting under him as soon as crosses half court.

If not and he is just focused on the upcoming dunk contest, that’s fine. I mean what’s the use at this point?

Knicks SB Nation
NBA.com

[Jamaaliver]

Which happens first:

Mitchell swats a Trae layup, or J Collins bams one in Mitchell's face?

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[graymule]

Dennis is worried about Trae? He and his team should worry that Jalen Adams is able to play backup and will be ready
to lead the team. They may think that, with Lin gone, the Hawks are ripe for an upset. We haven't been favored in
any of our recent games so that's something to be nervous about. Puts on a little extra pressure.

We really want 20 games won by the break. This is our last chance for the win #20.

GO ATL HAWKS !!

[lethalweapon3]

First off, hearts out to cryingknicksfan, y’all. That poor young man.

Were I in his shoes, soon as I was able, I’d be disowning Pops the minute after I got a hold of that trust fund.

How can you fashion yourself a so-called die-hard fan of the New York Knickerbockers, Pops, and name your son Jordan? Of all the names out there… Patrick, Clyde, Spike… I mean, did you lose a wager or something? Was Reggie not an option? I’d call Upper Manhattan Child and Family Services and file a report I could figure out the number.

To make a bad situation worse, you teach your impressionable tween how to mimic your year-round discontent. And then, you handed him a smartphone and paraded him in front of a national audience at the 2015 NBA Draft to parrot your visceral reaction to whomever your Knicks select. Who do you think you are, a Jets fan?

I can’t blame you, individually, for feeling that way. You were likely raised to live off Grandpa’s glories of the early 1970s, gritted your teeth through the ensuing decades as Patrick Ewing’s years wasted away, then endured year after year of Michael Sweetney and Jordan Hill at NBA Draft time. But nobody’s progenitor should be subjecting them to such annual torture.

I recognize the inherent value of adorning your kid in your favorite team’s attire and gear like he’s your walking/crawling personal man-cave. Frankly, it would be nice to see more folks around Atlanta doing the same with their kid’s hometown Hawks, rather than the opponents they want to bandwagon, or the teams from all the cities they ran here from.

Hundreds of adults from Manhattan to McDonough are scratching their domes ahead of today’s game here (7:30 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, MSG Network in The Big Apple), pondering whether it’s too late to return the Kristaps Porzingis jerseys they bought in size XS for Christmas. They’re not alone. After Tuesday, we’ve got loads of purple-and-gold LeBron mini-shirseys on their way to the Goodwill discount racks, soon to hang alongside the wine-and-gold ones.

Gollee, that poor kid. Heartstrings pulled by his Pops in impossible back-and-forth, up-and-down directions. Boo, Porzingis, he’s a stiff! He’s no Willie Cauley-Stein. We passed up on Mario Hezonja? Thumbs down! Oh wait, this Porzingis guy actually looks like he’ll be kind of good. Hooray Porzingis! All Hail The Unicorn!

Boo, Frank Ntilikina! How many Europeans do we need around here? He’s no Dennis Smith. Looks like we blew it again. Oh, wait. Unlike our entire roster, Frank can at least play a little defense. All Hail Frank the Tank, our new savior!

Boo, Kevin Knox! We shoulda got Michael Porter, or… oh, wow, did you see that kid’s dunks? Whoopee, All Hail the core of our new future. Knox, Frank, Tim Hardaway, Jr., and of course, once he gets healthy, The Unicorn! Hey KD, AD, Kyrie, come join us!
Little Jordan and all the crying fan-tykes were trained to despise Porzingis, then raised to idolize him. Well, so much for all that.

As a silver lining, perhaps, Jordan’s persnickety Pops gets to root for Hezonja and DSJ, after all. Tip your Hawks cap if you find any transplant Knicks fans, big or little, at the game tonight rocking the jersey of those two, or better yet, upstarts like Mitchell Robinson, Damyean Dotson, Allonzo Trier, or Kadeem Allen.

I want to feel sorrier for their plight. But nobody, least of all New Yorkers past and present, were around for the crying Hawks fans back in the day, when Hawks Inc. did their team’s fans the way producers do when they abruptly part ways with soap opera stars: “The Role of Hawks Star Finally Making a Decent Championship Push Has Been Replaced by Danny Manning.”

Around here, that decision was a death knell for the allegiances of many a fence-straddling Hawks fan, whose children would grow up to become MJ fans, Knicks fans, A.I. fans, Kobe fans, D-Wade fans, Dirk fans, Dwight fans, and LeBron fans, often from one game to the next, filling up the empty voids inside State Farm Arena.

Alternatively, to Knicks fans’ credit, they don’t let indignities, however predictable, make them turn heel on their preferred NBA team. Bad GMs, bad drafts, bad trades, bad free agent signings, and one uniquely hideous owner won’t do it. There is no Last Straw for a Knicks fan, no fence to straddle. Once you’re in, you’re IN.

I just wish the grown-ups would allow their kids to make their own decisions as to whether they should jump in and share the adults’ selective misery. I suppose the fear is, you take your eye off the kids for a minute and, next thing you know, they show up to the dinner table in Celtics green, refusing to eat their vegetables and stuff.

If the Knicks fans are scurrying to find something to lean on for the long haul back to respectability, their best bet is probably not a player on the floor. Former Hawks assistant David Fizdale isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, not so long as the Knicks’ head coach is tethered to executive Steve Mills, and owner Jimmy Dolan doesn’t drop them both for the next shiny thing that saunters across his path.

As far as today’s game goes, there is no great reason why Coach Fiz and the Knicks (10-47, 1-9 on the second night of back-to-backs, 1-26 since December 14) can’t break their record 18-game losing skid here. One fifth of New York’s current win tally came courtesy of these Atlanta Hawks, albeit much earlier in the season. They even opened with a 39-28 first quarter lead on the Hawks in their last meeting at MSG, Knox piling up 17 points in that opening frame.

That was a lead the Knicks relinquished only after Kevin Huerter (probable, ankle sprain) found a hot hand (12 third-quarter points @ NYK on Dec. 21), and after the Hawks found applied the same defensive clamps (38 second-half NYK points) they rediscovered on Tuesday night to quiet down The James Gang (44 second-half points) and hold off Los Angeles for the 117-113 victory. Atlanta’s 114-107 win in December helped send the young core of the Hawks (19-38) on a positive trajectory, while the Knicks sent many of their marquee players to, well, Dallas.

The Knicks have been the league’s least accurate shooters from two-point range (47.5 team 2FG%), especially since exiling the now-departed Enes Kanter, and the second-worst from beyond the three-point line (33.5 team 3FG%), likely worsened with the buyout of temporary acquisition Wesley Matthews.

Despite their season breaking bad, they’ve still got “I Am the One Who” Knox in their corner. As Ben Simmons and many others around the rim can attest, Knox and the Knicks can string together enough highlight-reel-worthy plays to stay in the running for four quarters, particularly against subpar competition.

But for the moment, Kanter was upgraded into DeAndre Jordan (10.7 RPG and 0.8 BPG in six games w/ NYK). Beyond granting cryingknicksfan a Knick worthy of the kid’s own first name, Jordan will continue to showcase himself through the month until the Knicks can work out a favorable buyout deal.

The Knicks will be sure to hang around so long as Jordan is beating the Hawks’ bigs to the ball, given the many caroms that are sure to ensue tonight. Including the setup of Knox’s poster play last night, DeAndre dished out 7 assists and will try to show playoff teams he can do more than be a cherry picker in the paint.

The departure of Hardaway and the buyout of Wesley Matthews leaves backup big man Luke Kornet as the Knicks’ most reliable perimeter shooter, and that is saying something coming off his 1-for-8 3FG performance in last night’s 126-111 home loss to Philadelphia. Hawks defenders have to commit to getting out to cover backups Kornet, Allen, Dotson and Trier (EDIT: I almost forgot Johnny CASH Jenkins! He's on a 10-day), while coaxing Smith, Hezonja and Knox into inefficient mid-rangers, and boxing Jordan and Noah Vonleh out.

If Atlanta defenders do all that consistently, Trae Young (15 points and 10 dimes @ NYK on Dec. 21) will have little trouble carving up the Knicks at the other end of the floor, especially with Emmanuel Mudiay (questionable, shoulder; 32 points vs. ATL on Dec. 21) or Ntilikina (out, groin) around to help the visitors out.

In these teams’ last meeting, John Collins bedeviled the Knicks with 16 rebounds to go with his 17 points. The Hawks will fare well so long as he and Young are focused on their duties tonight, and not this coming All-Star Weekend in Charlotte.

On Father’s Day this time around, cryingknicksfan, just get Pops a pair of tube socks. Don’t even bother trying to find them in blue-and-orange, either. If you want to grow up to become guardedlyoptimistichawksfan on IG, it's not too late to grab that handle.


Let’s Go Hawks!
~lw3

[lethalweapon3]

Mario? He's on ya injured list tonight.

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~lw3

[King Ken]

Knicks are keeping Jordan, that's Durant best friend

[macd-gm]

Knicks are keeping Jordan, that's Durant best friend

This was my question and you answered it. I couldn't figure out why Jordan didn't get bought out. Durant to the Knicks is fine with me. Would love to give JC more chances to dunk on his head next year.

[jayu70]

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[fuzzy1]

First ever home game for me! Let's get it!

Awesome! I'm here too

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