Austin Rivers had 25 in one half, RJ Barrett continued his string of good play, the Knicks led by 15 at one point… and yet, they still lost by 14 after some costly strategic and play style errors in the second half.

Last night’s game was one of those that I just had a feeling was going to go belly up.

Yes, Austin Rivers went fucking bananas on the Jazz again, hitting his first 10 shots en route to 25 points in the first half. But unlike the last time the Knicks played the Jazz, when Rivers dropped in 14 straight late in the game, he played his trap card too early in this game.

As soon as his first miss happened in the second half — when he arguably got inserted into the game way too late, at the 4:11 mark, with the big halftime lead he helped create whittled down to just three by the Jazz — you just knew this one wasn’t going to end well. The Knicks were counting on Austin to be the primary scoring force in this game, with Julius Randle getting tons of attention and RJ Barrett… *checks notes* getting frozen out by Elfrid Payton in the second half after being the engine that got the Knicks going in the first half.

Which, I guess that’s a good place to start as far as actually recapping the action in this game. RJ came out firing, but not in a “why is he chucking so many shots” way, more like a “firing on all cylinders” way. Barrett finished the first quarter with a tidy six points and three assists, which, in a normal world where the team’s point guard didn’t hate him, would have put him on pace for a tidy 24-point, 12-assist double-double.

That floater above was probably my favorite of the three that RJ dropped in the first frame (he and Quickley have been working together at practice, maybe? It seems like he’s definitely been using floaters more lately), but it was the passing that really stood out to me. Here’s all three of RJ’s assists:

First, he ran a pick-and-roll with Mitch and found him for the easy mismatch with Donovan Mitchell. Then, a nice look to Randle in transition. And finally, another PnR with Mitch, but this time they didn’t get the switch and RJ instead just laced a pass in to Mitch once he drew Derrick Favors and Joe Ingles were drawn to him.

So that kinda begs the question, even on a night where Immanuel Quickley struggled… would starting Quickley, a much better shooter in every facet compared to Payton, help RJ out as well by letting him be the initiator around half the time? I feel like we tend to forget just how good RJ is with the ball in his hands and running basic actions like the PnR. Meanwhile, I feel like I haven’t seen Elfrid run a good PnR in ages, which is kinda shitty considering that’s supposed to be his calling card. Just some food for thought.

Anyway, then Austin Rivers checked in. You know where this is going, I already spoiled it above. I won’t post every single one of his scores because 10 embedded tweets in a row is obnoxious. Let’s just do the top five:

Absolute insanity. I think about this prophetic tweet from my buddy Terry of NYK Terry and Tray whenever Rivers pulls a performance like this out of his ass:

The only thing wrong about that at this point is that we’ve had TWO Austin Rivers games. Bad news, though, this might be the last one. The Knicks won’t be playing Utah again this year, which seems to be the magic team for Rivers to go off against. Hopefully he can strike some sort of balance between being a nuclear reactor against Utah and the recent 2-16 shooting stretch he had prior to Tuesday’s explosion.

So that was basically how the first half went. The Knicks went up by 13 at the half, but if you’re a seasoned Knicks fan, you just knew the other shoe was gonna drop at some point. Drop, it did. But, as noted above, perhaps the most frustrating part was that it dropped due to negligence.

For one thing, Thibs waited entirely too long to get Rivers back in after his hot first half. How do you ensure that a mega hot player cools off? Don’t insert him into the game until the 4:11 mark of the third quarter because that’s when your rotation list said to get him in. Alec Burks was shooting like shit for most of this game — 0-6 in the first half, and wound up 3-14 overall. What harm would there have been in sitting him down for Rivers to start the third quarter?

Secondly, Thibs left Payton in there for entirely too long, when his horrendous defense on Mike Conley basically allowed Conley to singlehandedly get the Jazz back in the game. Inspired defense like this let Conley go off for 14 points on 4-4 shooting:

Even so, the Knicks managed to hang around long enough to still be up by one heading into the fourth quarter. I’m not going to bore/torture you with the details of the quarter. They got outscored 28-13. The final score tells the story. It was ugly, and the whole team went cold in crunch time, but I feel I should also probably shout out that Burks was showing an alarming tendency to ignore RJ too, who wasn’t able to do nearly enough after that hot start to the game and finished with 17 points (7-11 shooting, 3-3 from deep), four rebounds, and four assists.

Notes

— I really like Thibs, and I’ve really liked a lot of things he and his new staff have done this season. RJ and Mitch have been developing nicely, Quickley is showing improvements game to game, and obviously Randle turning into an All-Star level player is a testament to him actually having a coach that sets things up for him rather than just handing him the ball and telling him to iso all day like Fizdale.

But man, the rotations need to stop being so rigid. Our own Prez was noting on Twitter last night that it seems like Thibs is willing to ride the hot hand some nights and all that, but he also seems stubbornly committed to running out 10 guys on any given night, and only those 10 guys. Tonight, that strategy was dumb. Payton’s getting torched and RJ is being frozen out of playmaking duties in the third quarter while the team hemorrhages points… maybe give Frank Ntilikina a little burn and let him try to quell the onslaught from the Jazz? Nope, he wasn’t on the schedule for today, so he’s gonna ride the pine. Nerlens Noel was playing like a stone-handed doofus again; maybe trot out Taj Gibson for a few minutes? I dunno. But it seems really silly to just leave bad units out there for the sake of doing it.

Watching how Thibs has coached sometimes lately is like if a football coach had his first 20 plays planned out before the game (Mike Shanahan used to famously do that) and turned the ball over three times on the first three possessions. Would it not be prudent to break script at that point?

— I really wish Rivers had saved his human torch act for the second half, because the Knicks didn’t really need it in the first half. Randle and RJ were doing quite well on their own and probably would’ve kept the game close to tied heading into the break, instead of the 13-point lead that Rivers’ explosion gave them. Oh well.

— Quickley once again probably delayed his coronation as the starting point guard by a few games by following up an amazing shooting night with one where he couldn’t hit shit — 1-11 shooting and 0-4 from three just isn’t going to get it done, even on a night when Payton was also terrible as fuck (four points on 2-7 shooting). I will say, though, for all of the bellyaching about Thibs’ rotations in this one, he at least didn’t give Quickley the quick (heh) hook in this one in the first half, letting him spin for 13:48 compared to Elf’s 10:12.

I’ve been saying this to friends for a week, but if the Quick/Elf situation eventually turns into a Mitch/Taj situation from last year where Elf gets the start and plays about 15 minutes, while Quickley gets the lion’s share of playing time and closes both halves, I guess I’d be OK with it. The only downside to that strategy is what happened in Tuesday’s game — you run the risk of Elf getting absolutely blitzed by the opposing point guard to start either half and putting you in a hole that Quickley then needs to dig you out of.

— I mentioned earlier that Noel was playing like shit, but let me just illustrate the most frustrating moment of his from the night real quick:

Noel needs to be brought up on charges for the amount of assists he’s stolen from his teammates this year. Is it legal to wear those super sticky football receiver gloves on the basketball court? Or could we maybe get like a pine tar situation going? Anything to stop Noel from wasting good passes.

— Mitch had a very up-and-down game. He also sent a tweet after the game that was very stupid, because I think it was about the refs calling too much shit on him but comes across like he’s bitching about playing time. He deleted it, but the internet never forgets.

Still, though, Mitch had a couple really nice defensive sequences in this one, none better than this perfectly defended pick-and-roll that ended with him blocking Donovan Mitchell into oblivion:

If I haven’t expressed it enough yet, getting RJ uninvolved in the second half was really stupid and shouldn’t have been allowed to happen, not just for RJ’s sake, but for Mitch’s too. Mitch just plays better with someone who actually knows how to run a pick-and-roll, and that’s RJ, not Elf. Mitch’s only real look on offense in the second half was on a busted play where Elf forced the issue on offense, got a floater blocked, but luckily got the ball back and was able to see Mitch in the dunker’s spot. Having Mitch be actively involved in the PnR throughout the game makes it easier for the PnR ball handler to get clean looks (like RJ’s floaters in the first half) and also helps generate clean looks on the perimeter when the other team is keying towards the rim. It’s really not rocket science.

— Clyde really hates Rudy Gobert. I’m kinda sad the Knicks don’t play Utah again, because hearing him constantly bring up how much Gobert gets paid to be a 12/10 guy and remind the world that Gobert’s dumbness was what brought coronavirus into the NBA was a fun distraction in these two games.

So, yeah. It was fun while it lasted. And I don’t mean this horrid west coast road trip, just that one magical half with Austin Rivers. This road trip can kick rocks. Hopefully returning home on Friday after two days off gives the Knicks the time they need to shake any jet lag and get back to playing some fun basketball at home.