Game Day: Knicks @ Grizzlies, 5/3/21
OK, the fun game is over. Now the real road trip starts — five West playoff teams in a row, starting tonight in Memphis against a Grizzlies team fighting for play-in positioning.
Last night was a fun little win, but the dreaded part of this dreaded six-game Western Conference road trip for the Knicks starts tonight.
The Knicks roll into Memphis as winners of 11 of their last 12 games, while the Grizzlies are kinda reeling right now, losing three of their last four — and that one win came against the Magic, which barely counts (and they lost to that same Magic team in their most recent game).
What’s weird is that the Grizzlies aren’t really dealing with any injuries — Grayson Allen is questionable with a hurt hand, but other than that, the gang’s all there for Memphis. It’s possible they’ve gotten too healthy, trying to integrate the newly-returned Jaren Jackson Jr., who will be playing his sixth game of the season tonight. Thus far he’s averaging a not-so-robust 13.6 points on .429/.174/.762 shooting in 21.8 minutes per game. For a big guy whose game has sorta resembled many of the worst aspects of Kristaps Porzingis’ career so far (mostly shooting threes, doesn’t play particularly big for a well-built 7-footer, doesn’t rebound), only making 17.4% of his outside shots is less than ideal.
That said, the Knicks have a pretty big injury problem of their own — Mitchell Robinson remains out with his broken foot, but now Nerlens Noel is potentially going to be out as well with a sprained ankle. Thibs is predictably mum on what the strategy is gonna be sans Noel:
If there’s any team that you can probably get away with running small against, it’s the Grizzlies. Just match Taj Gibson’s minutes to Jonas Valanciunas, and you shouldn’t have any situations arise where you get killed on the boards.
Still, until it’s officially official, let’s hope that Nerlens can suit up.
As far as other keys to this one… Let Julius Randle cook them this time around? Don’t forget, in the last meeting between these two (the first of the Knicks’ nine-game win streak), Randle actually struggled quite a bit on his way to just 15 points on 4-12 shooting (he did have a triple-double, but still). It’s pretty safe to say he’s been quite a bit better than that lately — in the 11 games since then, Randle’s averaging 30.8 points on .477/.464/.875 shooting splits. Kyle Anderson isn’t gonna contain that this time around.
Game starts at 9 PM tonight on MSG (which is actually on the early side for this trip, get some coffee ready!). Feel free to come hang with us on Twitter.
