Game Preview: Knicks at Mavericks- 11/02/18

Oh, hello. Tonight the Knicks (2-6) square up against the Dallas Mavericks (2-6). Coming off a pair of tough losses, in overtime to the Spurs and a tough one to the Lakers, they seem to produced a similar distillation to the Knicks. Dallas manages to hover around the middle of the pack in practically every statistical category. So the book is still out on what really makes this Mavs team go. It might honestly be their bench!

They do some fun stuff (they have Rick Carlisle after all) and Luka Doncic is already starting to deserve the ball the most, leading all rookies in scoring with 19.6 per game to go along 6.3 rebounds and 4.4 assists while hitting 40% of his nearly seven threes a game. Yet still it can look like they’re forcing the issue at times. Can they get Doncic and Dennis Smith Jr. sympatico? Or is DSJ the Jimmy Pesto to Luka’s Bob Belcher?

Projected Starters

Key Matchup

The Mavs have suffered from slow starts so they should make an effort to play with an edge at home tonight. Then they’ll have their bench player bringing energy. I don’t know why but something tells me Maxi Kleber and JJ Barea will terrorize Enes Kanter and Trey Burke. Especially with Kleber really putting the right amount of rotation on his revamped shot.

However! The game within the game that we should all be on the lookout for is going to be Dennis Smith vs Frank Ntilikina. They will be forever linked for the Knicks theoretically blowing yet another draft pick on some foreign unknown commodity. Ntilikina is sending that jingoistic rhetoric in reverse these days. With some of the basketball literati finally seeing what we’ve been seeing all along.

Smith gets his fair share of pick and rolls with the behemoth in the middle, DeAndre Jordan. His rather liberated approach to dribbling will have all of it’s freedoms sucked out of the atmosphere if he tries this sort of stuff against Ntilkina.

Now I’m sorry but if you don’t properly throttle ₣ on this drag screen, your guard is about to be walled off and this high dribble has a high probability of being poked away and swallowed whole.

Then on the other side, Smith may be just what the doctor ordered for ₣ to bust loose with a career high in scoring. I’m thinking he’ll get 88 points. He’s too little and just doesn’t want to give the requisite effort. If the help doesn’t come, ₣ should be able to bump, raise and stretch for all sorts of buckets close to the hoop.

Weird Thing

Wes Matthews has made the most three-pointers of any un-drafted player in NBA history. Perhaps Allonzo Trier should set his sights on busting that up one day. He’s only one-thousand four-hundred and twenty-five threes behind.

Prediction

Most of the Posting and Toasting blog boys (and gal) will be joining the Knicks Film School folks at Slattery’s Pub, which is at 8 e36th Street. The game starts at 8:00. ₣ is averaging 8.8 points per game through eight games with eight starts. Noah Vonleh has seized a starting role and is averaging 8.4 points and 8.5 boards. Which is all to say this certainly means the Knicks will win by 8.

Let’s pre game with the best rap song to ever come out of Dallas: