Two solid wins for the Knicks to begin the week could be a prelude to a potentially favorable five-game home stand, all versus Western Conference playoff contenders, that begins Saturday hosting the Sacramento Kings. They will then face the Memphis Grizzlies next Monday, Denver Nuggets on Wednesday, the Los Angeles Lakers Saturday and conclude with the Houston Rockets on Monday, Feb. 3.
The Knicks go into the 10-day stretch with momentum having defeated the Atlanta Hawks 119-110 at Madison Square Garden on the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Day, then held off a reeling Nets squad 99-95 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Tuesday. It was the Knicks’ ninth-straight win against Brooklyn and they remained undefeated this season (8-0) when holding opponents to under 100 points.
At 14-8, the Knicks have the ninth best home record in the NBA this season and are 29-16 overall. Monday’s home win over the Hawks was one of the Knicks’ most impressive, beating an athletic Hawks squad that has taken down the Cleveland Cavaliers twice, the team that had the league’s best at 36-6 going into their game versus the Houston Rockets last night. The Hawks also knocked off the Knicks at the Garden 108-100 in their previous matchup. So Monday was a get back game of sorts for the Knicks.
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“This is a team win,” said Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns. “It is a great win. That is a team we have struggled with this year, and we had to find a way to win as a team today and we did it and I am very proud of us.”
Towns maintained that the game was decided on the Knicks’ defensive end of the court. “Just bringing that defensive intensity we brought today. Our offense has been really good all year so just finding that consistency on the defensive end that will take us to another level.”
Indeed the Knicks’ were eighth in the league in scoring at 116.6 points per game at the start of last night’s NBA matchups and were eighth in opponents’ points allowed at 110.7.
Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau noted the performance of forward Mikal Bridges, who scored 26 points but also was part of the collective shadowing of the Hawks’ lethal scoring point guard Trae Young, who in recent years has been a nemesis of the Knicks and public enemy No. 1 to the franchise’s fanbase, as he has relished silencing and trolling the Garden crowd with clutch performances.
Young scored 27 hard-earned points on just 8-22 shooting, albeit going 6-12 from beyond the arc.
“He’s such a tough cover,” Thibodeau said of Young. “There’s a million pick and rolls you have to defend, and sometimes you can defend them really well and [Young] can still make them. I thought he [Bridges] was really disciplined and you have to be that. He kept going, so I think that that’s important. And [Bridges] getting some easy baskets for us. I thought he ran the floor well. He had a good post position, got some easy scores.”