Game Day: Knicks vs. Raptors, 4/11/21

After a big come-from-behind win against the Grizzlies on Friday, can the Knicks keep the momentum going against a Raptors team receiving injury reinforcements on the second game of a back-to-back?

You’d be forgiven if you still haven’t quite come down from the high of the Knicks’ overtime win over the Grizzlies the other night. It was pretty exciting!

But life goes on, and the Knicks are back for another game tonight against the Raptors. On the surface, you might be like “Sweet, the Knicks are at home! Other team’s on the second game of a back-to-back! Mercury is in retrograde! Here comes .500 again!”

Not so fast, optimist! The Raptors are probably getting back two of their best players tonight in Pascal Siakam and Kyle Lowry. Even without those two (and Fred VanVleet, who will probably remain out), the Raps pulled out a 135-115 win in Cleveland last night behind 44 points from Gary Trent Jr.

The Raptors are in kind of a weird place right now… Only two games behind the Bulls for the 10th spot in the East and access to the play-in, and only five games away from the Knicks and eighth seed. Yet they’re also only five games away from being the worst team in the East, giving them a better shot at one of the top players in this year’s draft.

Kinda feels familiar, doesn’t it? Five games away from the playoffs and five games away from being the worst in the league is roughly the situation that the Knicks find themselves in every year before ending up with the No. 8 or 9 pick in the draft and running it back the next year (this year excluded, of course).

What would be the best way to combat the Raptors getting some reinforcements tonight? Starting the five players that fit best together on the team, perhaps?

Yeah, the time to start Immanuel Quickley has been like… forever. But what better time than the present to finally make the right call?

Single game plus/minus is a tricky stat that often does a poor job of telling the whole story of the game, but in the case of the other night… Elfrid Payton was a -11, Immanuel Quickley was a team-high +19. A 30-point swing seems about right to me! And, go figure, Quickley did much of that damage down the stretch with the starters. You know, the guys that he played extremely well with when he got a few spot starts with them a month or so ago.

If you check the lineup data… it tells a pretty similar story! Quickley, RJ Barrett, and Julius Randle have a +10.1 net rating together in 271 minutes this year. Payton, RJ, and Randle have a -1.7 net rating in 983 minutes. An 11.8-point swing probably could changed the results of a lot of games this year, particularly of late when the Knicks have lost so many by a single possession.

So will Thibs see the light tonight? Here’s hoping. I’m to the point now where I’m just gonna start trying to will IQ starting into existence.

The game’s tonight at 8 PM on MSG. Comment along here or follow us on Twitter!