That… was ugly. In what was undoubtedly the their worst game of the year so far, the Knicks fell to the Memphis Grizzlies by a final of 94-83. It was just a miserable night all-around and the game wasn’t nearly as close as the final score would indicate. Amar’e Stoudemire picked up two fouls in the first two minutes, and somehow it was all down hill from there.
Carmelo Anthony sustained injuries to both his hand and ankle, the latter of which knocked him out of the game for good early in the third quarter. It wouldn’t really have mattered if Melo had played the rest of the game, because the Knicks were dreadful in all areas.
Stoudemire proceeded to play what was probably his worst game in a Knick uniform in Anthony’s absence. He went 1-7 from the field on his way to just 6 points, grabbed only 3 rebounds in 20 minutes of play and was -12 on the evening.
The injuries and foul trouble forced Mike D’Antoni to go deeper into his bench than he normally likes to do and much earlier than he ever wanted to as well. Steve Novak and Renaldo Balkman got to spin after a few games off each, but didn’t really do anything of note – Novak hit a three, and Balkman got fouled once.
Bill Walker hit a few threes. Jorts did too.
Iman Shumpert played the worst game of his young career as the Knicks took their first loss in a game that he started. Shumpert was trigger-happy all night, and he set a rookie season high for field goal attempts in a game. At one point, he had attempted more shots than Stoudemire, Anthony and Tyson Chandler combined. The lone encouraging thing about his performance tonight is that his poor shooting did not deter from him staying active on the defensive end of the floor whatsoever, as he recorded four steals and stayed active in the passing lanes. Shump is a rookie, and he’s going to have more games like this. It’s a learning experience; the kid still appears as though he’ll be a good player. I expect we’ll see a very different Shump-Shump on Saturday night against the Thunder.
I wanted to get through this recap with mentioning Toney Douglas, but he broke out of a shooting slump by hitting three straight shots in the fourth quarter after starting 0-9. Maybe it’s the start of something. Probably not.
The bench unit closed Memphis’ lead in the fourth, nearly getting it down to single digits at the end, but they were way too far behind. Still, nice effort from the back-ups.
The lack of ball movement was especially alarming for the Knicks, as they struggled to create offense in half court sets. The Grizzlies were seemingly in every passing lane, Tony Allen and Mike Conley were harassing ball-handlers and Marc Gasol had what seemed like I’m reasonably sure was a billion blocked shots (actual count: four). Both Rudy Gay and O.J. Mayo had strong games for the Grizzlies, the latter was repeatedly left open for threes by Landry Fields, who didn’t really do much of anything in this game either.
On to the next one. The Knicks take on Kevin Durant and the Thunder in Oklahoma City on Saturday night, in a game that Carmelo Anthony may or may not play. The Thunder are without backup point guard Eric Maynor, who tore his ACL. Starter Russell Westbrook will provide another tough test for Shumpert, and the Stoudemire-Serge Ibaka match-up is probably the ripped-iest match-up in basketball. OKC currently has a 10-2 record, while the Knicks are 6-5.
