Money Mitch & McBride, Oh My

The Knicks (yet again) kicked the snot out of a very bad team.

Good morning! That was an awful lot of fun. You know what’s even more fun?

THIRD PLACE IN THE EAST, BABAY.

Game 72: Knicks 145, Raptors 101

R.I.P Mouhamadou Gueye, 1998-2024

In a New York minute…

Like they often do against bad and/or undermanned teams, the Knicks took care of business early, making 8-of-10 threes en route to 45 points in their highest scoring quarter of the season. The Raps hung around despite the outburst, briefly cutting the lead to 10 early in the second, but an 11-0 Knick run pretty much ended any hopes that this would be a competitive affair. New York’s D clamped down in a third and they took a 31-point lead into the fourth, at which point the only question left was how out of hand things would get.

Pretty out of hand, it turned out.

Three Things

1. Onslaught. There is dominance, and then there is dominance.

Call it a function of Toronto playing with half an NBA roster (and a bad one at that), call it a hot shooting night for the Knicks, or just call it One Of Those Nights in a long NBA season.

Whatever you call it, make no mistake about how good New York is feeling about themselves right now, injuries be damned.

In putting up their most points in a regulation game since November of 1980 and the ninth most points in a non-OT game in franchise history, the Knicks continued to send a message to the rest of the NBA: as you are wearing down, we’re just getting warmed up.

Their 44-point margin of victory was not only the largest of the season, but tied an April 2021 game against the Pistons for their sixth largest ever. Despite the fact that that game was less than three years ago, not a single player who suited up for the 2021 blowout saw the court last night¹. It is a testament to how the front office has continually churned the roster they inherited in an effort to make a good team into a great one.