Knicks: A comprehensive breakdown of the first ten games

Julius Randle, an All-Star?

I guarantee you, regardless of which pre-season hot takes/predictions articles you read, prior to the start of the 2020-2021 season, none of them had Julius Randle playing like this. Randle is averaging 23.2 points per game, 11.8 rebounds per game, and just over seven assists per game. These are All-Star numbers and perhaps, even more impressive than the last two All-Stars to represent the orange and blue: Kristaps Porzingis and Carmelo Anthony.

Randle’s development both as a play-maker and on the defensive end, have been a sight for sore eyes. Randle currently ranks within the top-10 in both assists per game and total assists, and he is posting the best defensive box-plus-minus of his career. According to trainer, and long-time friend, Tyler Relph, Randle worked tirelessly over the summer to improve his ball-handling, shooting, and footwork. The proof is in the pudding and the hard work has certainly paid off.

The next ten games feature five games against teams with records above .500. Surprisingly, one of those teams is not the Brooklyn Nets. So far, the Tom Thibodeau experiment has yielded positive returns on defense, yet, the offense, sans Julius Randle, has looked like a trainwreck. And if the cure for the Knicks’ offensive woes is Burks, a career 36 percent three-point shooter, who is on his sixth team in eight seasons, that might be all you need to know about the 2020-2021 Knicks.

With that said, there have been positive signs of player development, and signs that the team is more organized and has a clear game plan every night. Whether they execute that game plan is a different story. The next ten games will certainly tell us a lot about our beloved orange and blue.