Knicks 116, Rockets 103: Like a dream
The Knicks snapped out of their four-game funk with a win sparked by their young talent on the road. Will the good vibes last?
Last night’s game was like a dream.
A good dream, to be clear. Not a nightmare like most of the games have been lately, tales of “if a few bounces went the Knicks’ way” and “man this team might just actually suck.” Last night’s 116-103 Knicks win over the Rockets was definitely more of the “everything goes right” variety of dream.
Everything certainly wasn’t going right prior to the dream. The NBA’s COVID problem got bigger in Knicks-land, though it’s getting really big everywhere else, too — per Adrian Wojnarowski, 63 NBA players have entered protocol, and I’m pretty sure that number didn’t include the 10 or so other players that Woj and Shams Charania tweet-battled announcing their presence in the protocol afterwards. Talk about a nightmare:
The Knicks’ latest casualty was Kevin Knox, who had actually been kinda sorta carving a role out for himself lately as the backup power forward with Obi Toppin out of action. Joining Obi and Kevin still were RJ Barrett and Quentin Grimes, both of whom had also experienced resurgences and breakouts immediately before entering protocols. If that’s the criteria, I guess we should brace ourselves for both Immanuel Quickley and Miles “Deuce” McBride to enter protocols soon. Actually, OK, nevermind — maybe not Quickley:
This game was undoubtedly all about that two-man combo: Quick Deuce, or whatever the nickname ends up being. Though if giving them a nickname in the first place ends up dooming them to the fate of “Quivers,” maybe we should just call them Immanuel Quickley and Deuce McBride for now.
Derrick Rose drew the start at point for the Knicks, completing a lineup of himself, Alec Burks, Evan Fournier, Julius Randle, and Nerlens Noel. Rose would play 12 minutes in the first half before exiting with ankle soreness — it definitely seems he has a trick ankle this season that can flare up at any time — making Deuce effectively the starting point guard for the second half. And the backup point guard, too — he played all 24 minutes in the back half of this game.
Deuce offered a look at a guy who, at least based off this game (and the game against the Warriors as well), looks like he could maybe be the point guard option that Knicks fans have been looking for for the last 20 years or more.
McBride’s two halves played out like two sides of a coin — dynamic scorer Deuce and distributor Deuce. In the first half, he immediately made his presence felt, generating opportunities on offense by playing his brand of pesky defense, and then snatching those offensive opportunities himself. He started off his scoring with a pull-up triple, one of his staples from his scouting report:
But what really jumped off the page was McBride’s finishing ability in traffic. It should be noted, the Knicks were basically facing a glorified G League team — the Rockets were without top players Kevin Porter Jr., Christian Wood, Jalen Green, Danuel House, and still John Wall, some of whom had recently led the team on a 7-game win streak — but regardless, seeing a guy who relied so much on pull-up twos in college not take a single one, instead opting to get inside with force, is extremely encouraging for his future.
It wasn’t all sunshine and buttercups for the Knicks as a whole in the first half, though. The starters came out and actually looked pretty solid on offense! Evan Fournier and Julius Randle were taking and making shots, combining for 21 points in the opening frame. The only problem? They were giving up just as many points on the other end. By the time McBride came in for Rose with around four minutes left in the half, joining IQ and Mitch from the reserve unit, the Knicks were down 21-20. After a flurry of three straight makes from deep by McBride and Quickley to end the quarter, the Knicks carried a 9-point advantage into quarter two.
They would expand on that, getting the lead out to as many as 16. But — and stop me if you’ve heard this one before — the starters came back in, and thanks to a general lethargy and inability to do anything other than spam the “iso” button, they coughed up that sizable lead and only entered the half up six points.
The third quarter would be much of the same — the Knicks played a blah brand of ball, only to have the Rockets take advantage and at one point snatch the lead, 74-72, with just over four minutes left in the quarter. Jae’Sean Tate and Daniel Theis were being made to look like Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson by the lackluster defense from every Knicks big to touch the floor. Luckily, the fourth quarter happened.
Deuce was great, but the narrative of the fourth quarter belonged to Quickley and Mitch, who in different ways asserted their dominance over the depleted Rockets to finally give the Knicks an easy final few minutes of a game for what felt like the first time in forever.
My co-host Gavin on Locked On Knicks maybe put it the best last night with regards to IQ: he’s at his best when he starts doing the silly shit like bouncing on his toes after a shot or unnecessarily fading away. That’s how you know that he knows that he is ON. Quick would go on to can five of his six 3-pointers in the fourth quarter, capping a 24-point game with seven total triples for him on the night.
Robinson, meanwhile, dominated poor rookie Alperen Sengun in the fourth, playing with a fire that I wish he would show for every minute of every game. On both ends of the floor, he was undoubtedly helped by playing with a pair of guards that 1) were making his life easier by providing rock solid perimeter defense, thus not forcing him to make tough decisions on the inside that have plagued him this season, and 2) were able to run simple pick-and-rolls with him to FINALLY utilize the elite vertical gravity that we’ve come to expect from Mitch. He would finish with 17 points on 8-8 shooting for the game, including 6-6 for 13 points in the final quarter, which he played in its entirety.
I shouldn’t forget Deuce’s brilliance, either. For as great as he was as a scorer in the first half, he flashed a keen sense of distribution in the second half, understanding that the defense was treating him differently after his hot first half and making some next-level passes that also didn’t really show up on his scouting report coming out of college:
To get back to the dream analogy, the unfortunate part about this game is that it feels like at some point we as fans are going to have cold water thrown on our faces and be forced to wake up from this utopia, where young players are being given a shot and not buried on the bench. Alec Burks and Evan Fournier have had a myriad of struggles lately, yet history tells us that Thibs will probably let them continue trying to play through it. Once (if) Derrick Rose gets fully healthy, and RJ Barrett comes back, as does Quentin Grimes, there’s going to be a logjam in the back court once more and probably force the shining light of Deuce to be extinguished and sent back to Westchester until such a time comes that he’s called upon again. For now, I’m going to keep hitting the snooze button and try to enjoy the dream a little longer.
Notes
For as great as Mitch was in the fourth quarter, he looked like he forgot how to play basketball for large stretches of the game in the first three periods. Mitch came into the game with 5:59 remaining in the third quarter and played the remaining 17:59 of game action, seemingly getting better as time went on. I’ve been one of his staunchest supporters this season as far as patience with his conditioning after his foot injury, but nobody can really play 18 straight minutes of NBA basketball without being in shape. That excuse, while valid for a while, is out the window now, especially considering Mitch showed a level of verticality that he hasn’t in a while down the stretch. Now it’s on Mitch to start showing he can do this on a nightly basis, for whole games at a time.
Evan Fournier had maybe the most deceiving 23 points on 8-12 shooting that I’ve ever seen. He made shots in flurries to start both halves, but I wouldn’t say he played well at all. The problem with him lately is that he’s been so clueless on defense that he basically has to shoot 75% on offense to be a positive player. No clearer evidence of that then that first quarter of this game, where he was hot and the Knicks were doing well on offense as a whole, yet found themselves only up by three when Fournier subbed out late in the first quarter.
Count Julius Randle as another guy that quietly put up a pretty good stat line while also largely leaving me with the impression that he played like booty: 21 points, six rebounds, six assists, 6-18 shooting. This is absolutely all speculation but I find myself thinking that after the season (or if Fournier/Kemba get jetted at the deadline or sooner) there’s gonna be some grand exposé about how Randle and Fournier hated one another this whole year which was part of the starting lineup’s struggles.
Can the Knicks keep the dream alive against the Celtics on Saturday night? The Celtics are one of the few teams in the NBA that have fallen as short of expectations as the Knicks have thus far, so it might be possible. But to date, the Knicks basically seem allergic to stringing together multiple good games in a row. Guess we’ll have to see who wins between the stoppable force and the movable object tomorrow.
