New York Knicks: Previewing the Upcoming Road Trip
By Toby Jaffe
New York Knicks vs. Denver Nuggets
New York will visit the Nuggets, who have won 15 of their last 18, on May 5th.
The Nuggets remain red hot despite losing Jamal Murray for the year with a torn ACL in mid-April. In fact, Denver is 7-1 since the game in which Murray went down. The load has been shouldered by leading MVP candidate Nikola Jokic, Michael Porter, and the recently added Aaron Gordon.
The Knicks last played the Nuggets at the Garden on January 10th. The game was a thumping, what with the Knicks only mustering 89 points and losing by 25. Both teams have grown quite a bit and changed some personnel since then, and a different kind of game should be expected.
Denver is a difficult atmosphere to play in as a road team, even with COVID-19 fan limits, due to the high altitude. This will be a game for the veteran leaders such as Randle, Rose, and Noel.
New York Knicks vs. Phoenix Suns
Just a week or so after the heartbreaking home loss to Chris Paul, the Knicks will head to Phoenix for a game on May 7th.
The two teams will obviously be familiar with each other. Devin Booker will be looking for a repeat of his MSG performance after scoring 33 points on 54 percent shooting; as will Chris Paul and Mikal Bridges, who joined Booker in doing the bulk of the Suns’ scoring, especially down the stretch. Nerlens Noel and Taj Gibson seem to have a handle on defending DeAndre Ayton and the team overall did a pretty good job of forcing the Suns into tough shots, which, unfortunately, they hit a lot of (especially Booker).
Julius Randle struggled against the Suns at the Garden, shooting 6-17 and turning the ball over 3 times. He will obviously need to be better and could be the difference between winning and losing (as he often is).