Excellent start to the road trip beating the teams you should beat. Now comes the hard part, these next 4 games will be tough. Odds are they go 0 for 4. If they are close games and they don't get blown out I'll be happy. 1 or 2 wins and I'll be ecstatic.
Alan Hahn said it best last night after the telecast- You have to start giving the knicks their respect.
Yes, they have a habit of slow starts (trailing houston, down by 6 to memphis) and continuously doing boneheaded plays leading to costly turnovers which allows the opponent to get back into the game, but the knicks are in
4th place alone. I never in my life thought I would say that this season, let alone anytime soon after the last few years, and since our last winning season 8 years ago.
Knicks are
4th/30 teams in 3pt %. Thats not an aberration. That's a factual statstic.
Knicks are
1st in defensive points allowed/FG allowed/ OPP FG% and OPP 3PT FG% with a net defensive rating overall of
3 behind the lakers and the 76ers (which - havent the lakers been getting their ass beat the past month?) according to
Lineups.com - Source
With that being said, the Knicks defense will keep them in the game almost every single night. It's just a matter if the offense will show up, which it has not at times- and can certainly be dreadful. The key things im seeing though, through this winning streak, is that Julius will average 25-30. Barrett has been trustworthy for 18-20pts. D Rose is coming into his own giving 20+ the past two nights and alec burks, pre-covid issues was solid for 12-15. it's just consistency at this point. Would like to see more from the rooks, but obi has it tough playing backup minutes to julius, and being a goon on 3point island when hes on the floor (he's better in my opinion active around the rim for rebounds/offensive rebounds/ slam dunk putbacks).
Denver is an amazing team, but they got blown out by the raptors a few nights ago (look it up!) and are missing murray. Can Nerlens go toe to toe with the Joker? Not on the perimeter, but id rather live with those shots. We know Nerlens will be good at rim protection so Jokic and company will have to play midrange/ 3 point game- Which Jokic has a siiiiiiick mid range game but im sure we can run him off to the perimeter.
the only game on schedule that really "scares" me is LAC, because they've been playing lights out.
We went toe to toe with CP3 and the suns at home before CP3 turned back the clock and went crazy the last 3 minutes. We can keep it close again.
Lebron and the lakers are playing horrible so hopefully we can catch them in their funk still. the ankle will hinder lebron into the playoffs and davis looks rusty after so many weeks out.
If we can win 5 out of these last 7 games, we should be in great position to clinch 4th and have a date with Atlanta, who I think we matchup well against. Cheers to a great season.