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Official Game Thread: Knicks at Hawks

lethalweapon3

By lethalweapon3
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lethalweapon3 Grand Master

lethalweapon3

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9372540l-750x400.jpg

“SHAKE WEIGHT, ELFRID! SHAKE WEIGHT!”

 

An interminable, arduous offseason was coming to an end. Now, at long last, it was time for Santa to show up and show out.

I had been not-naughty for as long as anyone could reasonably ask of a seven-year-old. And I put in the work, too – folded my hands all day in class, raising them only when prompted before bodying questions about proper fractions and American Revolutionary history. Straight-As on the report card if you ignored Phys. Ed. completely. I even cleaned my room and helped put away groceries on weekends! I was as much of a saint as Nick could ever hope to be.

Putting up with second-hand gifts and utterly worthless toys for as long as I could remember, I never asked for much. Every year, regardless, cookies and milk were at the ready as I hit the bed early. But let me tell you something about this year, Mister Claus. If MARZON, Walking Giant from the Stars, isn’t under that tree on the wintry morning of December 25, me, you, and my size-2.5 hands are going to have a conversation in that dark alley out back.

“MARZON! MARZON! He’s Right On!” I saw the ads on many cartoon-loaded Saturday mornings and was enthralled by the possibilities. I could be the first kid on the block with a robot! One twice my size, that marches down the hallways and driveways, right in stride with me! Reading the fine print on the box at the Kiddie City toy store, I even ordered my parents to have plenty of Size-D batteries at the ready, since Santa tends to get forgetful in his old age about including them.

Crimmuh Morning, I peer down the stairs and The Box is there! MARZON, you are all mine! My heart swelled with joy as I imagined myself surging toward first place in the NTO (Neighborhood Toy Owner) Standings. I even had a not-so-fairy godmother serving as a helpful elf to assist in its assembly. Me and MARZON are gonna grow old together, bound for greatness!

Well, yeah, about that. MARZON was basically not a mechanical creature at all, but a balloon, in the form of a knockoff C3PO humanoid. The balloon took over a half hour to blow up manually. It moves in one direction, forward, with the aid of a battery-powered panel at the robot’s feet. And here’s what The Box doesn’t warn you: getting the robot to slide into its “slippers” runs the risk of a puncture.

MARZON made it upright, and it even advanced forward for a few feet down the hall. But the invisible, pin-sized hole at its feet gave my Walking Giant from the Stars a 20-minute shelf life on Earth. All the King’s Scotch Tape and All the King’s Men could not save MARZON from his deflating demise. He sure was fun, while he lasted.

Our Atlanta Sports teams are great at producing unexpected and uncomfortable flashbacks for its fans, which is great news if you’re a therapist making bank around town. Our Fine Feathered Friends are particularly good at making things look like they’ve finally caught a break, only to find a way to break our spirits when the products that arrive, fresh out the box, aren’t quite what everyone was waiting and clamoring for.

Several of the Atlanta Hawks’ newest arrivals are trying not to win the annual LaPhonso Ellis-Craig Claxton Memorial Offseason Addition Award. Rajon Rondo (knee), Tony Snell (foot), Onyeka Okongwu (foot), and Kris Dunn (ankle) were all damaged-on-arrival. And after a promising Hawks debut, Danilo Gallinari (ankle) won’t get to face the New York Knicks (7:30 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, MSG Networks in The Big Apple), the club who first made “Il Gallo” into a bit of a legend. Not until February, in all likelihood, since he’ll be sidelined for several weeks.

Lloyd Pierce won’t get much sympathy today from his opposing coach. In his first games running the show for the Knicks, Tom Thibodeau has already had his first-round rookies, Obi Toppin (out, calf strain) and Immanuel Quickley (probable, sore hip), missing valuable time. Backup guards Frank Ntilikina (out, knee), Alec Burks (questionable, ankle), and Dennis Smith (doubtful, quad) can’t seem to reach the floor, while Austin Rivers was slow to get going. For the moment, New York’s stuck with a deflating giant of its own, in former Hawks draftee big man Omari Spellman (out, knee).

As LP finds himself lost in The Land of Unfit Toys, tasked with cobbling together a playoff contender around All-Star candidates Trae Young and John Collins, the pressure on Coach Thibs to win-now comes only from Gotham’s infamous tabloid rags. He and his trusty assistant, Mike Woodson, are simply challenged to spiff up the first-round gems, like R.J. Barrett (17.0 PPG, 37.5 FG%) and Kevin Knox (6.7 PPG, 37.5 FG%). The organizational goal is tangible, marginal improvement for a club that checked out last season on this floor at 21-45 (16-21 versus sub-.500 teams) and only seems to find success when it catches teams, like the Hawks, playing down to the level of its competition.

Playing down. That’s what happened when Atlanta (4-2), glowing from its signature win in Brooklyn the night before, returned home on Saturday and went into the halftime locker room smelling itself after “holding” the Cleveland Cavaliers to 44 points. The Hawks would only score 35 themselves in the closing half, as Pierce errantly thought he could make do with Solomon Hill (minus-15 in 10 minutes vs. CLE), Brandon Goodwin and Bruno Fernando, together, for a long stint. That only set the stage at crunch time for Pebblebrook High’s Finest, a rested and newly 22-year-old Collin Sexton of the Cavs, to upstage the guard taken by Atlanta before him, in the 2017 NBA Draft.

That same night, playing down is also what happened to Victor Oladipo and the Pacers, who were smarting after losing T.J. Warren for extended time due to injury and seeking solace in facing the same Knicks team they defeated soundly in Indy for the season opener. Never getting ahead by more than six points on the visitors, and settling for mindless mid-range and well-contested jumpers, Indiana let Julius Randle (11 rebounds, 8 assists) and Barrett (25 points, 4-for-5 3FGs) hang around the whole game until it was too late to do anything about it.

There’s no “I” in “PARTY.” But there is one, in “PARITY”. That signature road win in Brooklyn? The Wizards have been there, done that, bought the Coney Island T-shirt on their way out of town last night. Cleveland was down in the dumps after popping their undefeated cherry at home versus these Knicks just last week. But Saturday’s comeback win has the Cavs sitting with the same 4-2 mark as the Hawks.

New York smacked around Giannis’ up-and-down Bucks just two days after Milwaukee’s successful Christmas Day game. With a win tonight, the Knicks and Hawks would be side-by-side in the standings, too, at 4-3. Along with the Bucks, so long as Milwaukee doesn’t play down to Detroit tonight like the Hawks (7.3 Net Rating, 5th in NBA; minus-13.5 4th Quarter Net rating, 25th in NBA) did during the final frame of their last home win.

Thibodeau’s imprint is already evident in the focus on getting stops and forcing unwise shot decisions out of their opponents (49.3 opp. eFG%, 3rd-best in NBA). The Knicks’ opponents to date have fired off nearly 40 threes per contest (2nd-most in NBA), but have hit nylon on just 29.1 percent of them, an NBA-low. Turning to Mitchell Robinson (team-highs of 1.7 BPG, 1.0 SPG) as “the anchor of our defense” after convening a preseason battle with Nerlens Noel to man the starting center spot, Thibodeau has quietly, much like Cleveland, crafted a top-10 NBA defense despite having to pair Robinson with forwards like Randle and Toppin.

Elfrid Payton will drive the pressure on Young and the Hawks’ ballhandlers, although it would help having Ntilikina around for defensive purposes. Due to largely inconsistent shooting from Barrett (despite the hot shooting in Indy) and Reggie Bullock (33.9 FG%), the Knicks will saunter off, eventually, when opponents secure defensive rebounds, react decisively off timely passes, and make the most of the open shots New York allows. If Atlanta fails to do these things tonight, especially in the second half, they’ll set themselves up to be somebody else’s SportsCenter highlight.

In the early going, already, everybody in the NBA has bad losses, boastful wins, blown big leads, breakout performances. And just about everyone will have to play with less than their full slate of teammates. Respectfully, Hawks exec Travis Schlenk did not build this Potemkin Village of Depth just to keep up with the likes of the Knicks, Hornets and Cavs. It is on Coach Pierce, the existing Hawks’ starters, and the top-tier sixth-men like Kevin Huerter (questionable, ankle; team-high 1.5 SPG) and Bogdan Bogdanovic to sustain a high quality of turnover-free, two-way play, no matter the caliber of the opponent or the score on the board.

In a season where it seems NBA parity will reign supreme, there will be tough stretches, periods where Atlanta’s absentees will be sorely missed. But this week is not supposed to be one of them, and injuries, or “running out of gas” (tonight being the second “third game in four nights” in a row) are insufficient as an excuse.

Nobody wants these Hawks to downgrade so swiftly, from a playoff contender not to be toyed with, to just the latest Atlanta sports team with unfulfilled potential succumbing to its fatal flaws, relegated to the back of the closet like the defunct, formerly high-demand toys of Christmas Days past.

If you’re still reading, Santa, there is still time to hook me up with a PS5.

 

Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

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lethalweapon3
lethalweapon3

“SHAKE WEIGHT, ELFRID! SHAKE WEIGHT!”   An interminable, arduous offseason was coming to an end. Now, at long last, it was time for Santa to show up and show out. I had been not-naughty

AHF
AHF

Please help me out.  I said that Trae could use a breather during the 4th quarter.  You seem to be suggesting he got one and inherited a lead and blew it. I checked the play-by-play to see if I w

Sothron
Sothron

When you are up by 15 at home against the Knicks in the 3rd quarter you win the game. Not interested in any excuses in this game. We clearly took the foot off the pedal in the mid 3rd and let them com

kg01 Grand Master

kg01

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3 minutes ago, lethalweapon3 said:

Yinka Dare Doo!

~lw3

1. How many squawkers get this reference?

2. The bit about Kel E. WhOubre is even more wow'ing.

3. It says a lot about the K-nix that the Robinson guy is their best prospect even as middling as he is.  Make no mistake, his bid for max status will include all his games against the Hawks since for some reason he's an absolute beast against us.  But, against everyone else, he's pretty replaceable.

4. No K-nix game thread is complete without hollerin' "Ice! ... ICE!" a couple times.

5. I fear things do not bode well for us unless we play with the same intensity we had in Brooklyn.

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bleachkit Grand Master

bleachkit

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12 minutes ago, JeffS17 said:

We need Capela to look like a borderline all-star tonight and I think we lock this game down by the end of the third.  I am hoping the guys come out with a vengeance after that ugly 4th qtr saturday night

Not missing all his free throws would help too. 

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