A balanced attack helped the Knicks beat the Pistons, 130-106 on Friday in the team's home opener.
Coach Tom Thibodeau started the usual five, RJ Barrett, Evan Fournier, Mitchell Robinson, Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson against the Pistons, but he wouldn't need them for the whole game.
Here are the takeaways….
- The first quarter was a high-scoring one. Fournier got MSG on its feet by hitting his first three. But the Thibodeau defense wasn’t sharp early as Detroit went back-and-forth with New York for the majority of the opening period. It was actually the second squad of Derrick Rose, Obi Toppin, Immanuel Quickley, Cam Reddish and Isaiah Hartenstein that helped the Knicks go out on an 8-0 run and give the Knicks a 10-point lead after one.
Randle led the Knicks with six points while Robinson and Barrett had five points each after one. After Barrett’s lackluster first game, where he scored just 11 points on 3-for-18 shooting, the former first-round pick was on his way to giving a better performance this time around.
- The second quarter saw the Knicks pull away from this young Pistons team, and it wasn’t just one player. Six different Knicks hit a three as the team scored 42 points in the second period, and were up by as much as 25 points. Some poor transition defense and contested shots -- that were non-calls -- helped the Pistons cut into the lead, but at the half the Knicks were up big, 72-52. The most points the Knicks scored in the first half all of last season was 71, and they already surpassed that.
In the second quarter, the Knicks shot 65 percent (15-23) including 11-of-17 (65 percent) from three in the first half. Brunson led New York with 12 points at the half while Randle and Rose had 11 points each. The Pistons were also just 4-for-15 from the free-throw line to add to Detroit’s troubles.
-The third quarter started off as more of the same, with the Knicks pushing their lead to 29 points. But turnovers and lackadaisical defense, especially in transition, against mostly the first unit let Detroit go on a 23-4 run and cut the Knicks lead to 12 late in the third quarter. The second unit would settle things down and New York went into the fourth quarter up 103-81.
-Thibodeau rewarded the second unit for their closeout of the third quarter by letting them continue into the fourth and play most of it. And the players got out to a 6-0 run, punctuated by a pair of Toppin dunks. The second and third units would close out the final three minutes of the game and won 130-106.
-Quickley bounced back in the Knicks’ second game. After going scoreless on 0-for-6 shooting in 17 minutes Wednesday, the point guard dropped 20 points on 8-for-14 shooting and dished six assists.
-Brunson had another good night leading the offense. He dropped 17 points, second-most on the team, and posted six assists and two rebounds. In two games, Brunson has 15 assists and zero turnovers.
-Reddish, on the other hand, didn’t have the scoring outburst he did in the season opener. In just 11 minutes, the Duke product scored six points and grabbed four rebounds. Hartenstein, after playing over 40 minutes in the first game, saw his workload drop significantly. He was on the floor for 21 minutes, but was still crucial on the boards. He brought down 11 boards (four offensive) and added six points.