Game Preview: Knicks vs Timberwolves 2/22/19

Peace, crumbs. The death knell soon sound. Repel the tinking clung of a hammering shame, that dumb desperate corpse splayed across an iron spit. Let the embers roar and heal this embitterment. Then lay a self image reborn atop the fetid afterbirth. A breath of life will push out the rot, the ooze, the serpentine calamity, Enes Kanter.

The Knicks (11-41) really know how to put the “decay” in “two decades of abject misery”. The deck is now self immolating because it can’t be wiped clean. A 24-game slate of disaster becoming ash. That first spark will come tonight in the Garden against Minnesota (27-30).

Projected Starters

For the Knicks it sounds like Emmanuel Mudiay will return to the lineup but Frank Ntilikina will remain sidelined. Newcomer Henry Ellenson should be available. Everyone else should be ready to rock after a much needed break.

The Timberwolves are dealing with a variety of injuries, the most serious possibly being Robert Covington who will not travel with the team, but could return soon after this mini road trip. Tyus Jones will likely return. Derrick Rose is on this team and has yet to disappear on the team for a random game. Tonight would be a good time to pull that one.

Coach Ryan Saunders will certainly utilize anyone who he thinks will help secure a victory. With 11 of their next 16 games on the road, according to John Schuhmann (no relation), they are decidedly on the outside looking in. So a gimme against one of the worst teams in the league will need to be treated as a necessity.

Key Matchup

Well, clearly I’m of sound mind, and won’t imagine DeAndre Jordan running to close out on Karl-Anthony Towns as he floats out to the perimeter. So the real question might be what Mitchell Robinson does with his minutes matched up against Towns.

Towns’ jumper is the physical embodiment of a sour face. It scrunches up and just quickly squirts it’s tongue out on the release, letting go a rather scrunched up vomick on your brother’s breakfast. It’s more effort free than it is effortless, but he makes them at a pretty good rate, shooting .389% from deep on the year. According to NBA.com’s shot dashboard, Towns connects on almost 48% of his catch and shoot jumpers and 56% of his shots when a defender is 6 feet or further away. Well what happens when Robinson is six feet away and just unravels his improbably lanky body to deny that sour faced little jump doodle?

Prediction

Timberwolves come out sluggish and can’t make up an early deficit. Knicks have a blistering 41-point third quarter, totally burying the Wolves. Towns gets his ass chapped by Mitchell Robinson who out-rebounds him 16-6. Mitchell rises up for seven alley oops, even throwing one to himself.

Knicks by 12.

But then the Knicks hand Mudiay the controls late in the game, he wheels around and hesitates his way to fading 9-foot pull ups but misses three and has another rejected. Toss in a live ball turnover and the Wolves are out to the races, just barely sneaking by.

Knicks by -4.

Warm Up Music

Train coming and it’s freezing. Whiskey hair, an eternal piss. Have to wash clean an idiot’s mistakes. Wipe it’s sotted ass like pizza grease floating a pickled continuum out to the Spring, it’s own rotten sheepshead. One glowing foul atrocity, gutted by some asshole teenager. And where is this fucking train? Playing in the yard, awake with open sores, in flooded sheets, trying to face this day.

Probably missed it. 24 games to go.