Groundhog Day

A loss to OKC gave rise to a lot of familiar questions (and complaints).

Good morning. We got the coal, just two days late.

Game 30: Knicks 120, Thunder 129

The roller coaster ride continues.

In a New York minute…

The Knicks again came out of the gate seemingly incapable of slowing down an elite offense, but their bench got them back in the game in the second quarter. The starters again struggled to contain OKC when they re-entered midway through the second, but closed the half strong and carried that momentum to the third quarter, twice tying the game before the fourth. In the final frame though, the Thunder couldn’t be stopped, with Jalen Williams coming through with several big buckets to put this one out of reach before the closing minutes.

Three Things

1. The RJ/IQ/Thibs Triangle of Sadness. Have you ever watched a car accident as it was happening? I did once, a couple years ago on the LIE.

It was a sight to behold. The car in front of me and to the right pumped the breaks as traffic started to slow down, but the car behind it clearly didn’t notice. Boom. Shrapnel everywhere. I swerved as best I could, but still got a punctured tire out of the whole exchange, barely making it home before going completely flat.

Now I can add a second occurrence to the list, except instead of a bum tire, my sanity is in need of a patch job.

A cheaper fix, at least.

Did you see it?

After the ball is inbounded to Brunson, Thibs motions over to the bench, and a player at the veeeeeery end of it starts to take off his warmups.

That player was RJ Barrett, who is listed at 6'6" and 214 pounds. On the next stoppage of play 21 seconds later, following an OKC deflection out of bounds, Barrett would replace Immanuel Quickley, who is listed at 6'3" and 190 pounds.

Three inches and 24 pounds. That’s what all this hullabaloo is about.

Not only in this instance, but over years’ worth of frustrations, all of which come down to nothing more than a difference in height and heft.

That’s because when Tom Thibodeau witnessed the 6'5", 211-lb mack truck that is Jalen Williams drive the block so easily on Quickley, all he saw was an exploitable matchup for the other team - something the Thunder could potentially target without having to “create” an advantage, because New York’s small lineup created it for them.

It’s the same thing he’s seen so many times in so many games, which is why (along with the fact that New York’s best player is a 6-foot-nuthin’ guard, and that two more of their rotation players are under 6'6" and barely 200 pounds) the Immanuel Quickley Conversation continues to persist with no answer in sight.

Thibodeau’s answer on so many of those occasions, as it was last night, is to go by the book and replace the small guard with the big wing. On paper, it makes perfect sense. In actuality, it borders on the definition of insanity.

Hence, car accident in real time.

You see, while RJ Barrett may look the part of a prototypical NBA wing, the reality remains that he is anything but. To wit, here was a Williams bucket that went down less than 90 seconds after RJ entered the game - one that effectively ended any chance the Knicks had of winning this one:

New York is in pretty strong position here. Hart has the SGA assignment, while Randle and Brunson are both sagging far off of OKC’s two least threatening shooters. Randle’s placement in particular is key, because if Shai goes left - as Hart is shading him in anticipation of doing - Randle is right there to block the drive and give Josh time to recover.

Except that version of the play never unfolds, because RJ inexplicably comes over to hard double, leaving SGA with his easiest pass of the game and Williams - who, mind you, had already scored 32 points, including 13 in the fourth quarter - his easiest look from three.

This is a losing play by a losing player, and yet it might not register on Barrett’s personal top 10 list from last night.

(His turnover immediately upon checking in for Quickley, as well as his miss on yet another open corner three about 30 seconds later, would both qualify)

Three inches and 24 pounds isn’t nothing, but it isn’t nearly enough to justify the decision Thobodeau made in this game. Immanuel Quickley was electric, perhaps even more so than usual. Nine of his 22 points (on 10 shots, no less) came in the fourth quarter, when he did his IQ thing of being in all the right places at all the right times.

Even so, this would be no big deal if we were talking about a contained incident.

Except we’re not. Instead, this remains the cloud that has hovered over this team for over a year now, where one guy has outgrown his role and the other guy continues to underwhelm in his.

What, precisely, is going to change?

Quickley isn’t getting any bigger, that much we know. And RJ, bless his heart, does not appear to be getting any better, not in any meaningful capacity at least. The defense, 3-point shooting and decision-making all come and go to varying degrees. Inconsistency is his only consistent trait. Meanwhile, his efficiency is now lower than last season, and right in line with his career number. Eiffel 65 sings the theme song to his Cleaning the Glass stats page:

The result is a player who looks the part but upon closer inspection is anything but. Put him in the game do big-wing stuff and watch him come up small. Rinse, repeat.

That leaves Thibs or the front office to make a change of some kind. We know Thibodeau has it in him to bench Barrett in favor of Quickley down the stretch of games because he did it repeatedly last season. Perhaps that’s where we end up again.

But that will only go so far as long as IQ keeps coming off the bench, and that isn’t likely to change, even if the gangbusters Brunson/IQ/Hart/Randle foursome makes all the sense in the world as a starting quartet.

That would mean benching RJ, and effectively admitting that the organization made a mistake by inking him to a four-year, $107 million extension in 2022. It would be a signal to the rest of the league that the would-be crown jewel of the Donovan Mitchell trade is no longer an organizational tentpole.

Do they have the stomach for that?

My guess is no, and that for as frustrating as last night was, things continue as they are. The Knicks are a very solid 17-13 and could have easily won last night were it not for issues that had nothing to do with IQ’s minutes.

But make no mistake about it: this problem is not going away on its own, and it’s one that only the front office can solve, likely with some significant roster reconstruction.

Something, at some point, has gotta give.