Game Day: Knicks @ Magic, 2/17/21
The Knicks have won three straight after a rousing win over the Hawks on Monday. Julius Randle is playing out of his mind. Still, a sense of impending doom prevails as always. Are the Knicks about to turn back into a pumpkin?
Feel like today is the day the Knicks take the basketball and it turns into a pumpkin. How long can they go before Elfrid Payton has one of those big first quarters and Thibs tries to ride that hot hand just a smidge too long? I’m not certain I, as a lifelong Knick fan, understand how to handle this minuscule amount of success. This increment of progress. A paralyzed integer that will certainly spin off into a fractal when I least anticipate it. Will we be on that fractured footing when it happens? Will the new space be whole? Or do we slip into the crack itself and re-emerge to a new void? That’s why I can’t help but anticipate it the whole time. If it can’t be then, it has to be now. Now is where the light is only just starting to penetrate.
I’m still not confused about the Knicks being some variety of good team, challenging a 40-plus win threshold and being a matchup nightmare around the league. I’m totally tripped up on how they’re not a bad team, paralyzed in the teenage win zone, giving up leads and taking their time to call time out for all the misdeeds it’s done. The toll time has exacted on our stiffened backs. The pains it has taken to walk off this seismic limp.
He’s back!
Yes, Elfrid is back in Orlando, where his NBA journey originally set sail. The guy I care about is Frank Ntilikina, who has exited the COVID protocol and will rejoin the team on this voyage. A stowaway who I will fearlessly defend and bring food to.
The Magic are down four key players and a few more are hobbled. The increased precautions and workloads in the times of a global pandemic are taking out their day on Orlando. On Florida, the zombie doomscape.
Terrors of pleasure
Julius Randle can do it. Gary Clark cannot. This is my declaration. I’m certainly very worried about a Terrence Ross explosion. Last time they played, on Martin Luther King Day, Ross was beyond frustrated and he played pretty damn good amidst the agitation. Can he and Nikola Vucevic take the reins and ride this buggy home before it turns into a pumpin, tossed up at the rim and smashed into a wet, stringy pulp?
Knicks by -14
