Nuggets 113, Knicks 97: “Throwing this one in the trash”
The New York Knicks’ three-game winning streak came to an end on Wednesday night, and in humiliating fashion, in their 113-97 loss to the Denver Nuggets.
You win some, you lose some, and some nights you just get your ass whipped by the league MVP.
Nikola Jokic scored 24 points in the first quarter, the most in any quarter of his entire career.
The Denver Nuggets never looked back, with any and all runs made by Julius Randle and the New York Knicks having no larger effect than a mosquito bite.
It was as humbling a loss as could possibly be delivered. New York walked into this one riding a three-game winning streak over Chicago, Houston, and Memphis.
That’s two teams no one but their fans could give a shit about, and a Grizzlies team that’s a year away from being a year away of making noise on the NBA scene.
One of my favorite lines from the entirety of the Marvel film series comes to mind. Loki (Tom Hiddleston) arrives on Earth, and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) tells him:
“We have no quarrel with your people.”
The god of mischief replies:
“An ant has no quarrel with a boot.”
The Joker stepped all over the Knicks on Wednesday night.
Notes
Your lone highlight of the evening:
As has been the case all season, Julius Randle so untimely had one of his worst games of the year. He finished with 14 points, eight rebounds, and five assists in 29 minutes, and if you ask Knicks fans, that was about nine minutes too many. New York is now 2-5 on the season when Randle scores less than 15 points. Go figure.
Neither of the Knicks’ big men were able to slow down Jokic, if that much wasn’t obvious already. And they didn’t have much success on the other end of the floor, either. Nerlens Noel finished with just five points and five rebounds, but did have six blocks. Taj Gibson had just two points to go with all of one assist, block, rebound, and steal.
Derrick Rose was the only source of offense for New York in the first half. He went into the break with 14 points on 6-9 shooting from the field, with the team having just 29 points on 10-37 shooting. As much as fans may want to throw this game into the continued Rose hype, I didn’t think he really had a great game by any means.
It was nice to see Immanuel Quickley get the green light in the fourth quarter with the Knicks down big. He finished with 18 points on 4-8 shooting from the field. He made seven of his nine free throw attempts, and it’s only the fourth time this season he’s had so many makes from the charity stripe.
I thought it was a strange decision by head coach Tom Thibodeau to not deploy Norvel Pelle until garbage time, given his three-block performance in their previous game, and the inability of Noel/Gibson to stop Jokic. Feels like an extra body wouldn't have hurt.
RJ Barrett had another forgettable performance, and that started with serving as Aaron Gordon’s personal punching bag for the first minute of this one. He finished with 14 points on 4-13 shooting from the field, but zero turnovers, notably.
New York allowed the Nuggets to put up 113 points, which means they’ve now lost three straight games where they allow opponents to score over 110 in regulation.
Despite getting a technical foul within 30 seconds of the game’s start, I feel like we didn’t see enough Angry Thibs in this one. There’s rarely an opportunity for your head coach to go ballistic, as we saw in Monday’s win over Memphis, but this seemed as good a time as any for him to try and scare some offense into the team.
Rarely has Julius Randle been as animated as he was in this one. I thought at one point in the third quarter he was quite literally asking the referees to be tossed with his body language and persistent griping.
That carried over into his postgame availability, where he was quite frank about the team’s disappointing performance against a top contender:
“I’m throwing this one in the trash.”
Fortunately, and as opposed to other seasons, the wastebasket designated for performance’s like Wednesday’s is largely empty.
On to Phoenix.
