Knicks Look to Break Skid Against Injury-Ridden Sixers
After five straight losses, and on the second game of a road back-to-back, things are not looking great for the Knicks at this moment.
Unfortunately, even against a Ben Simmons- and Joel Embiid-less 76ers team, things don't appear to be getting any easier. Other teams might salivate at the matchup with Philadelphia — also on the second game of a back-to-back after a road loss to Cleveland on Wednesday — but the Knicks don't really have the luxury of taking even the most injury-depleted team lightly at this point.
The Knicks themselves announced shortly before game time that Bobby Portis would be in for Taj Gibson (back spasms) in the starting lineup, a curious move that won't allow Mitchell Robinson to take advantage of the Embiid-less Sixers frontcourt. Frank Ntilikina remains out with his groin ailment for the third straight game.
With Al Horford most likely moving to starting center for the Sixers in Embiid's absence, it's possible that Miller just didn't want his best interior defender chasing Horford around the perimeter to start the game and risking foul trouble — not that Gibson or Portis would necessarily be able to handle that assignment any better themselves.
Regardless, the Knicks aren't taking the injured Sixers lightly, as they still will field a starting lineup consisting of Horford, Tobias Harris and Josh Richardson, talented players in their own rights.
“I think when you prepare for a team and you look at it, you look across and you say, OK, Al Horford is going to get more touches tonight," Miller said pregame. "They’re going to use Richardson in different ways now. Tobias Harris now is going to be playing maybe more, in more of a scoring role. So those are still some pretty good scorers still that they have that they’re putting out there.
"And they’re a good defensive team. And I think they’re a team too, they’ve been very good at home, obviously, and I think they’ll play to an identity. So I think if that’s who they have, they’ll really be a good execution team and they’ll play off the guys that they have.”
The Sixers have indeed been juggernauts at the Wells Fargo Center this season, going 27-2 on their home floor against 9-21 on the road.
As far as rotations go, and a potential new role for Allonzo Trier in lieu of his mini-breakout against Charlotte, Miller was non-committal but said he would keep an open mind.
"We go into the game and say, 'This is what we need,'" Miller said. "And sometimes we change as the game's going. We have a rotation set, we look at the flow of the game, and say we're going to skip this rotation and maybe use this guy in the other person's place, which is kind of what happened last night. We just got to it, and we felt the way that the game was going, we needed a little bit of a spark in there, and [Trier] played well."
With the Leon Rose era on the immediate horizon, none of it might matter anyway. The countdown is on to a new regime, and potentially an entirely new philosophy.
