Game Thread: Knicks vs. Magic-1/30/13

Good evening, friends. After a long two days, we have ourselves another basketball game tonight. The 14-30 are Magic in town for their third meeting of the season with the Knicks. The Magic come in having lost six straight, and it sounds like they'll be without Arron Afflalo.

New York's won a couple uncomfortably close games against Orlando. Recall Carmelo Anthony torching over-sized defenders (Josh McRoberts, Nikola Vucevic) to save the Knicks from pretty poor defense in the most recent game. Also recall Jameer Nelson piling threes on the Knicks in that one. If the Magic want to maintain the former and quit the latter, that'd be fine with me.

The Knicks will be without Jason Kidd tonight, and will start James White in his place, moving Iman Shumpert up down sideways to the two spot. It'll be interesting to see how Shumpert and Raymond Felton divide up the assignments on Nelson and J.J. Redick after Shump took Kyle Korver while Felton got lit up by Jeff Teague the other night. In general, the Knicks have been pretty vehement about strengthening their pick-and-roll coverage over the last few days, so let's see if anything changes/improves.

Tip-off tonight is at 7:30. C'mon in and comment along if you're watching and don't forget to check out Orlando Pinstriped Post as well. Please don't post large photos, .gifs, or links to illegal streams in the thread.

I guess I'm putting this up pretty early, so while we wait, let's all talk about this.