A Little PG Goes a Long Way
After their first win of the season, the Knicks already have an appreciation for their point guard situation.
Good morning! We have a jam-packed newsletter with a full recap of Friday night, plus some extended thoughts on the dynamic point guard duo of Jalen Brunson and Derrick Rose. Let’s get to it…
🏙 Game Night 🏙
Who: Orlando Magic
Where: MSG
When: 7:30 pm
Injury Report: Quentin Grimes is out once again. Thibs said he just shot free throws in practice yesterday and that he remains day to day. Cam keeps his spot for now.
TV: MSG & NBA TV
Halftime Zoom: Click here to enter.
What to Watch For: Can the Knicks take care of the winless but feisty Magic? Orlando has lost to the Pistons, Hawks and Celtics, but by a combined 20 points, and Paolo Banchero has looked the part of a first overall pick, averaging 23 & 9 in the three games. New York’s issues first reared their ugly head in their third game of last season, also against the Magic. Hopefully they’ll be on notice this time around.
Game Recap: Knicks 130, Pistons 106
⌚️30 Seconds or Less: The Pistons came out with a purpose, draining some early shots to keep it a one-point game late into the first quarter. The backups then set the tone, going on a 32-11 run in just over nine minutes. The lead remained above 20 until the third quarter when Detroit briefly made things interesting, but a quick push back by the home subs restored order, and the fourth quarter was 12 minutes of garbage time.
💪Team Effort: Thanks to the blowout, every rotation Knick played between 16 and 28 minutes, and everyone scored between six and 20 points.
🤔Rotation Reflections: Cam Reddish, fresh off his eye-opening performance in Memphis, was the first sub to check in the game, along with Isaiah Hartenstein. Cam looked more like the preseason version of himself, hitting just 3-of-8 shots for six points, although he had some nice moments on the defensive end.
Derrick Rose, meanwhile, once again saw his minutes monitored, playing five and change in the first half. Julius Randle stayed in the game for the first nine minutes despite picking up two early fouls, although Obi Toppin doubled his seven first half minutes in the third and fourth quarters, finishing with 21 minutes thanks to this one getting out of hand.
📸 Play of the Game: The always tempting IQ-to-Obi lob was a strong contender here, but I have to give the honor to RJ Barrett, who picked himself up, dusted himself off, and shot better than 50 percent from the field two days after a disastrous showing to start the season.
I went with Barrett’s most impressive bucket of the night - a righty finish, off a lefty drive, after absorbing the contact - but it could have easily been one of several nice assists he had in the first quarter, including a drive and kick to Fournier for three, a hit-ahead on the break to an open Julius under the basket, and a no-look pass to Hartenstein for a dunk.
RJ still hasn’t made a 3-pointer on the young season, but all things considered, a very nice rebound effort from opening night.
😕 Picking Nits: Speaking of Barrett, this is the second straight game the Knicks have slotted him on a smaller, quicker guard at the defensive end. Both times, he’s had his issues.
Take this play, for instance. Detroit is able to get Julius Randle and Mitchell Robinson crossed up, such that Mitch gets switched onto the dangerous Saddiq Bey in the corner. Once that happens, Jaden Ivey might as well have seen a red carpet laid out between the top of the key and the basket.
Once Ivey gets the step on RJ, Robinson shades over to the paint, unsure that Julius will be able to deter Ivey at the basket and knowing that his coach wants the rim protected at all costs. The rookie kicks to the corner, and it’s splash mountain. A little later in the quarter, there was a similar situation, except this time Ivey blew by Jalen Brunson, forcing Mitch to come further up off of a rolling Stewart than he’d have liked, which then led to a lob.
The good news is that there aren’t all that many (any?) other teams in the league with the sort of backcourt lightning that Ja and Jaden provide. Maybe these games were Tom Thibodeau’s version of “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball,” and they’ll be better off for the trial by fire.
Still, it left me wondering whether the door is more ajar for Quentin Grimes starting than we realize. He’s seemingly much better equipped to handle assignments like this, and it would move Barrett over the other team’s best wing - something he’s seemingly better suited for anyway.
💫 Stars of the Game 💫
The Knicks wasted little time giving me a game that made it impossible to honor just three players. There were at least six or seven guys who could reasonably be in contention for these spots. But the committee’s votes are final…
⭐️ Mitchell Robinson: Beats out Obi Toppin, RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley and Julius Randle for the last spot. His rim protection set the tone for this one right off the bat:
This is a great example of the role Mitchell Robinson is often asked to play in Tom Thibodeau’s defense, where he’s usually guarding two players at once. Here, it’s Isaiah Stewart and Cade Cunningham. Watch how Robinson waits until the last possible moment before he springs into action to ensure that Cunningham never gets an opportunity to lob it up to his big man.
A couple plays later, we again saw the Pistons attempt to challenge Mitch at the rim. Poor Cade didn’t learn his lesson, and it led directly to a fast break.
The 2020-21 Knicks were often spurred on by splash plays from Nerlens Noel, either in the form of steals or blocks. It’s part of the reason the Knicks generated 1.4 more transition opportunities per 100 possessions when Noel was on the court - tops among New York’s rotation players that season according to Cleaning the Glass. Hopefully these sorts of possessions become prevalent for this year’s team.
⭐️ ⭐️ Derrick Rose
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Jalen Brunson
Just a couple of point guards doing their thing…
A Little PG Goes a Long Way
While it may now seem difficult to look back to last season and separate out individual instances of high comedy from the collective womp womp of it all, I’d argue that the most uproarious laughter (to keep from crying, of course) occurred on February 16 - the final game before the All-Star break.
That was the night the Knicks blew a 28-point home lead to a Nets team missing all of its vaunted stars. Allow me to refresh your recollection on the gory details:
Up 27 midway through the second, Kemba Walker checks back into the game and the Knicks are outscored by six points over the remainder of the half.
The good times keep rolling to start the third, as New York is outscored by 14 over the first seven minutes. Alec Burks checks in for Walker to temporarily stop the bleeding, and the Knicks enter the fourth quarter up 17. Crisis averted…
…said absolutely no one who had watched that team over the previous two weeks, which featured two blown 20-point leads. Sure enough, Brooklyn outscores New York 38-19 in the fourth as chants of “Brook-lyn” reign down at MSG and I reach for the rubbing alcohol.
Because Knicks fandom is synonymous with masochism, I thought back to that Nets game on Friday night, as the supposedly tanking Pistons had whittled a 29-point lead down to 12 with three minutes left to go in the third quarter.
It wasn’t just flashbacks to the Brooklyn debacle though. It was all of the blown leads, second half meltdowns and general inability to make a big play any time one was needed. That sort of damage takes years of therapy to get over. We had an offseason.
So it was with great exaltation (and exhalation) that we witnessed New York begin the healing process Friday against the Pistons. The most cathartic moment of the game came immediately after Detroit got the margin closer than it had been since early in the second quarter. After trapping Immanuel Quickley immediately across the half-court line, IQ gave up his dribble and was forced to dump it off to Isaiah Hartenstein, who immediately looked for an outlet amidst a swarm of blue and red jerseys.
He found it in the man who is perhaps least-nerved by such situations out of everyone on the roster - the one who set New York on a path to success with his arrival two years ago, and sent them into a tailspin after he got injured last December.
Credit to Cam Reddish for seeing the bright lights lining the runway in front of him and putting the ball on the floor, eliminating the possibility of a clanked jumper in favor of a more high percentage outcome.
But this play was all Derrick Rose. After getting Killian Hayes on his hip to ensure that Hartenstein would be able to deliver a clean hand off, he immediately drives into the teeth of the defense, drawing the attention of four Pistons in the process.
This was the sort of situation that required the savvy and stability point guard, and far too often last season, the Knicks floundered because they lacked exactly that.
But it’s not just situational awareness that Rose brings to this team. Even at 34, he still has arguably the best burst with the ball in his hands on the team, and his handle has all the muscle memory from the days of MVP yore. You don’t improve your team’s scoring margin by nine points per 100 possessions in consecutive seasons on guile alone. When you factor in his improved shooting stroke - a stroke he showed off three times in a five-minute span of the first half during which the Knicks increased their lead by 16 points - it’s obvious that he remains a major pivot point for New York’s hopes this season.
But we’ve also been reminded multiple times over the last two seasons that Rose has his limits. He has averaged 14 minutes a night through two games, and at the speed the second unit seems intent on playing with, that is probably right where he belongs. Credit to him for embracing his role:
“My job is to push the pace. If not, take me out and put somebody in that can fulfill the job. I’m not worried about minutes, never worried about minutes. It’s what’s better for the team. It could be Deuce. It could be times that I don’t play. Who cares? As long as we win, I don’t care.” - courtesy Peter Botte, NY Post.
The contrast between Rose and another former MVP point guard who plays on the opposite coast is staggering, but we’ll let the Lakers worry about their own problems.
Back the Knicks, and their urgent need for stability coming into this season - not for 14 or 16 minutes a night, but for 48. To find it, Leon Rose kept it in the family, as he so often does. But two games in, no one is looking at the most expensive free agent addition in annual dollars that the franchise has ever made and accusing the front office of nepotism. If anything, getting Jalen Brunson on a declining salary that is just inside the NBA’s top 50 (and will likely be outside the top 60 in a few years, if not the top 70) looks like a damn bargain.
Never was that more evident than late in the second quarter, as Brunson dribbled the ball up the court following a Bogdanovic layup - the sixth and seventh consecutive points for Detroit. A 25-point lead was down to 18, and if this were last season’s team, you’s have bet on a Pistons triple to whittle the lead to 15 before halftime.
Nope.
This was the second pull-up 3-pointer Jalen hit in the game, showing that he’s well on his way to demolishing last season’s total of 25 such makes. It’s the last part of his offensive game that warrants any serious development. Given how he’s approached his entire basketball career, no one should be surprised if he winds up checking this box in short order.
That’s what great players do…keep improving even when they’re already great. And make no mistake about it, Jalen Brunson is a great offensive basketball player. Watch him methodically drag Hayes - a stout defender at 6'5" and nearly 200 pounds - into the paint before baiting him for an and-one in the third quarter:
The play was reminiscent of the abuse he dished to rookie Jaden Ivey in the first half. Brunson doing something that induces a shake of the head and a tip of the cap will become the norm, probably more than once a game.
But after last season’s woes, the Knicks needed more than just a shot-maker. Sometimes that means someone to pick up a key charge - something Brunson did again Friday as the Pistons were making their third quarter push, following up the offensive foul he drew on Ja Morant on Wednesday. Sometimes it’s making the right pass while avoiding a boneheaded one. A league leading 15-to-0 assist-to-turnover ratio isn’t a bad way to start there either.
More than anything though, Jalen Brunson has to be a galvanizing force for a roster that ended last season on shaky ground. So far, so good there as well.
The Knicks have a long way to go before the sour taste of last year is fully washed away. Too many of the same players remain for that to not be the case.
But the bones of the 2020-21 team - a team that repeatedly rose to the occasion, not shrunk from it - are also still in place. That group proved just how important the right point guard could be, starting 11-14 and finishing 30-17 after the Pistons kicked their tank into high gear by trading Rose to the Knicks.
Detroit remains in tank mode, while New York has its sights set on continuing their incremental climb towards respectability in a league that is unforgiving to prospective climbers. That’s fine. Doubt has been motivating Jalen Brunson since he was a teenager. He thrives on it. And his approach seems to be infectious for those around him
If the 2022-23 Knicks can embody the spirit of their point guard tandem, the odds are that they, too, will defy the odds. One win is in the books. Adding to that total will require a collective effort, but there’s no doubt who’s going to light the fuse.
In Jalen and Derrick we trust.
🏀
That’s it for today! If you enjoy this newsletter and like the Mets, don’t forget to subscribe to JB’s Metropolitan, or his hockey newsletter, Isles Fix. See y’all soon! #BlackLivesMatter
You can’t take too much from the Detroit game, because they really weren’t playing an NBA team. Sure, they have a few nice young pieces, especially in the backcourt, but NBA teams don’t shoot 4-15 from the line, including missing their first 7, and let their opponents shoot close to 60% in the first half.
You play the schedule they give you, and with this one you take the win and just turn the page.
We have Orlando and then Charlotte at home this week, two games we should have, and two games we actually need given the brutal 7 game stretch that follows, all playoff teams, with 5 of those 7 on the road.
So now isn’t the time for them to feel good about themselves and sleep on either of these next two opponents. This week is all about taking care of business.
Starting next week, we really get put to the test.
Just saying, I was more than corned when Pistons got the score to 12. Not too much earlier Knicks up by 19, my wife was banished from the room, for uttering the Knicks look good. When it went to 12 I was tempted to go tell her see what you did. But she already considered me a prick, so I thought why blow 50 years of marriage. I saw an interview of Rick Brunson by Derek Harper, while Jalen was still on Dallas. He said Jalen has improved on every level, HS, College and thinks he will continue to improve on the Pro Level. I’m very excited this team is completely different than last year.