The New York Knicks started the preseason with a bang on Tuesday night with a 117-96 win over the Detroit Pistons. After a grueling six months with little basketball (Summer League being the exception), fans couldn’t have asked for much more from the Knicks in their first contest of the 2022-23 season.
New York will hopefully carry that same energy over to tonight’s match-up against the Indiana Pacers. Dare we say… Friday Night Knicks?
Indiana finished below New York in 2021-22 with a 25-57 record and the Knicks should finish above the Pacers again this season. That doesn’t mean that Indiana should be overlooked, though, with the Pacers having players such as Tyrese Haliburton, Myles Turner, and now Bennedict Mathurin.
Friday will be the first of two games that New York will play against Indiana in the preseason and both games will be another way to gauge where the Knicks stand ahead of the regular season. Based on what we saw from New York on Tuesday, here’s what to watch for in the team’s second preseason contest.
3: Who will stand out in the Knicks’ second unit?
One of the main takeaways from New York’s game against Detroit was the team’s depth. Outside of the starting five on Tuesday (Brunson, Fournier, Barrett, Randle, Robinson), players like Immanuel Quickley, Isaiah Hartenstein, and Miles McBride shined.
Quickley should be the first player off the bench if Quentin Grimes does end up taking Fournier’s starting spot this season. IQ worked to expand his game in the offseason by working on attacking the rim, which he put on display in his first outing of the year. Expect to see Quickley do more of the same against Indiana.
Hartenstein was a breath of fresh air at the five after Mitchell Robinson was subbed out of the game. The big man hit two three-pointers and made some crafty passes. Without Robinson in the game, Tom Thibodeau will be able to turn to both Hartenstein and Jericho Sims, who missed the first preseason game with a sore groin and is listed as questionable for tonight.
Entering the game against Indiana, the hope should be to get to see more from McBride, who tallied six steals in 23 minutes on Tuesday. With Grimes out (foot) and Cam Reddish (ankle) listed as questionable, McBride could see more minutes on Friday. His defense has been a plus, but to get more minutes in Thibs’ rotation, Deuce is going to need to be more of a factor on the offensive end.
2: Will Julius Randle continue to show growth?
To put it plain and simple, the Knicks won’t be successful if Julius Randle is the same player in 2022-23 that he was last season. There was talk during the offseason about New York possibly parting ways with Randle via trade, but since that didn’t happen, he’s most likely going to remain a starter as long as he’s on the Knicks roster this year.
Randle’s going to have to adjust to not having the ball in his hands as much as he did over the past two years. In the preseason opener, the first half caused many to begin to think that the 27-year-old was going to continue to be the same player, but he turned things around in the second half.
He scored 15 points in 18 minutes with 10 of those points coming in the third quarter. Randle shot 6-of-10 from the field and 2-of-4 from the 3-point line. He finished with four assists, and perhaps the most impressive thing about his performance was that instead of forcing shots, he found his teammates for open looks.
Remember how last season when Randle was off, the entire team was thrown off? That doesn’t need to be a theme again in 2022-23, and it appears that due to Randle’s new mindset, it won’t be. He may not return to his All-Star form, but as long as the forward continues to progress, fans should be satisfied.
1: Will Jalen Brunson continue to shine?
It’s already been said plenty of times over the last few days, but the Knicks having an actual point guard is worth repeating. It didn’t take long at all for Jalen Brunson to get going on Tuesday night with a drive into the lane that resulted in New York’s first two points in 2022-23.
Being only six-foot-one, the Knicks’ backcourt has been called into question, which is what ignited the discussion about Grimes being the starter. That should still be the case, but Brunson proved once again that although he’s small, he’s going to fight on defense. He isn’t the liability that some have made him out to be.
It will be interesting to see how the 26-year-old performs in his second game with the team. It’s only the preseason, but his first start at MSG couldn’t have gone better than it did. Brunson did something that hasn’t been done by a Knicks point guard in a long time — create offense.
Brunson’s the kind of player that New York has been looking for. He keeps his head down and focuses on putting in the work and it translates over to games. The Knicks were ridiculed for not getting Donovan Mitchell this summer which took attention away from the Jalen Brunson free agency signing, but hey, New York’s point guard is pretty good. And luckily, we’ll get to see more of him in a few hours.
3 fire takeaways from Knicks’ rout over Pistons in preseason opener
The New York Knicks started the 2022-23 season with a bang after defeating the Pistons 117-96 in the preseason opener at MSG.