After falling to the Boston Celtics on Saturday, the Knicks bounced back in tremendous fashion against the Timberwolves last night with a 120-107 win. This was a huge game for the Knicks, who before this matchup, had lost four out of their last five games.
Almost everyone on the Knicks showed out on both sides of the ball, with the team shooting a combined 40% from three.
Entering a relatively weak stretch of games, New York needed this victory to gain some momentum. The Knicks need to win any tough game they can, so to go out on the road and beat a pretty solid Timberwolves team is very awesome.
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This was a tremendous game for almost every player on the Knicks. Specifically, Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson. Don’t get me wrong, RJ Barrett had a very solid game, but Randle and Brunson were big difference makers.
In this game, Randle dropped 31 points, seven rebounds, and three assists while shooting 9-for-15 from the field and 8-for-13 from the three. That’s right — eight threes — which is a new career-high for Randle.
Randle started off hot, hitting five threes in the first quarter and putting the Knicks up big early on in the game. Honestly, and this isn’t a bad thing obviously, but seeing a Randle stat line where he only made one shot that wasn’t a three-pointer is pretty funny.
After a rough five-game stretch, Randle has bounced back with his two recent performances. In the Knicks’ loss to the Celtics, Randle dropped an efficient 29 points. However, New York did not come out with the win.
We all know about Randles’s struggles with consistency. If he can manage to keep this level of play up for a long stretch of the season, we could finally see him return to his All-Star form.
As for Brunson, this was yet another great game for him, as he scored 23 points, eight assists, and five rebounds while shooting 9-for-14 from the field and 2-for-5 from three.
Brunson has been undoubtedly the Knicks’ most consistent player in the starting lineup, hence why they paid him so much money. He has been great throughout the majority of this young season, which is what the Knicks have needed.
Something that could be worth noting in terms of concern from this game is that this was another pretty rough out from New York’s bench. Combined, the bench shot 10-for-32 from the field and 4-for-18 from three.
The bench has been pretty great all season, however, the last two games have been pretty rough for the unit. With Tom Thibodeau’s seeming acceptance to experiment with lineups, we could see a change relatively soon.
Overall, this was a great game for the starting lineup, and not the best for the bench. If these two units can manage to both play well at the same time, the Knicks could become a very deadly team.
On Wednesday, the Knicks face off against their cross-town rival, the Brooklyn Nets. While they will likely still be without Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant is still enough to win the Nets a game no matter who they play. Regardless, if we see continue to see similar performances from the Knicks’ starting lineup, I could see them beating most teams in the Eastern Conference.
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