Game Day: Knicks @ Rockets, 5/2/21

Will May be as generous to the Knicks as April was? They get a gift of a game against the Rockets to start a killer six-game road trip, but even one of the NBA’s cellar dwellers can be potent on any given night.

After about five eternities between games, the Knicks are finally set to take center stage again tonight against the Rockets.

Hopefully they’re well-rested after an extremely rare three days off, because this upcoming road trip is no joke, and tonight’s game is basically a must-win as a result.

The Rockets are pretty transparently and shamelessly tanking in an attempt to keep a hold on their first round pick this year thanks to a very interesting set of stipulations between them and the Thunder. Basically, if the Rockets stay in the top four picks, they keep the pick. If they end up outside of the top four, the Thunder get to swap picks with them… but not only that, the Thunder get to keep the best TWO picks of Houston’s, their own, and Miami’s, meaning that finishing outside of the top four could yield Miami’s pick to the Rockets and essentially jettison Houston’s pick down to the 16-20 range.

All that is to say, Houston wants to lose this game from an upper management kinda perspective, but as we saw last week, sometimes the players don’t really get down with the whole “tanking” thing:

Kevin Porter Jr. managed to drop that masterpiece against the Milwaukee Bucks, the third-best team in the East, in 143-136 win. Any team can beat any other team on any given night in the NBA.

…that said, the Rockets followed that game up with a 113-87 loss to Golden State yesterday, their 11th loss in their last 13 games. So yeah, they stink. The Knicks do not — remember, they’ve won 10 of their last 11!

Basically, this game is a must-win — the Knicks’ other five opponents on this road trip have a combined .626 winning percentage for the year, and one of the teams bringing that number down is the defending champion LA Lakers, who are just getting back to full strength with LeBron James and Anthony Davis returning while trying their best to avoid the play-in games.

The keys to this one: keep doing what you’ve been doing, and don’t take the Rockets so lightly that you let Porter go off again and sink you. Nobody on the Rockets can hang with Julius Randle, RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley, etc. As long as the Knicks continue their recent trend of playing a full 48 minutes, they should be good.

The game starts at 8 on MSG. Come hang with us on Twitter. And if you need some pregame reading, check out Jack Huntley’s latest about the immortal relationship of Tom Thibodeau and Derrick Rose.