Knicks 116, Nets 98: Scenes from a fast ‘n’ fancy preseason win

First quarter lot of pacegetting the ball up court. kristaps rushing. plumlee 4 fouls

One thing that perplexed me early was a lot of this pick-and-roll defense:

Not a hedge, not an enthusiastic trap, just kind of a soft double leaving someone else wide open. Happened a lot, and the rotations weren’t there to protect it. At least not early on.

Oh by the way, Marshall Plumlee -- who committed FOUR fouls in FOUR minutes — does not get high marks on the Knowing the Rules Of Basketball section of the rubric:

When he wasn’t battering people, Plumlee played pretty decent defense on Brook Lopez. So ... like twice.

Kristaps Porzingis looked far less comfortable in the first quarter than he did in the first preseason game, rushing a few shots from weird spots. This was pretty, though:

I had a lot of fun watching a sorta third unit of Randle-Lee-Thomas-Ndour-Hernangomez, which moved the ball well and repeatedly punctured the defense. Randle and Ndour work nicely together:

(And yes that’s Clyde saying he does yoga in bed.)

My favorite third quarter unit was Kristaps + Brandon Jennings + a bunch of scrubbing bubbles, all of whom ran ‘n’ gan off makes and misses alike and made some gorgeous plays. Randle and Ron Baker each made plays at either end, and this happened (off a Brooklyn make, which came off an equally gorgeous pass that Kristaps mishandled):

Jennings has some of that Marburyesque drive to make every single assist special for the Garden crowd, and I mostly love it. Semi-related: I’d be fine with Jennings basically never attempting a jumper off the dribble. Anyway, Jennings and Melo really helped Kristaps smoooooth things out after halftime.

Randle hit everything by the way. Just everything.

That’s basically it! This one was much more fun than the first one. New York ran and ran and built up a nice big lead so it wouldn’t look bad for the newbies and non-guaranteeds to spin the whole fourth. I think they had fun. I had fun. Here’s a Willy wucket:

In closing, I give you the preseason experience in a single Vine.

It’s a thing of beauty. Recap comin up!