By Samori Benjamin
The New York Knicks had a workman like effort against the Detroit Pistons on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden and picked up a 118-112 win. The win pushes their record to 11-7 on the season. They were led by their two cornerstone pieces Jalen Brunson and Julius Randle who refused to let the Knicks lose to a Detroit team that had lost 15 straight games entering the contest. Brunson had a game high 42 points, 8 assists, and 6 rebounds. Randle finished with 29 points, 10 rebounds, and 8 assists.
The Knicks let this two-win Pistons team hang around for a large portion of the game, in fact Detroit held a two-point lead entering the fourth quarter. “The end of the first, start of the second, you know, tough shots and fouls hurt us, and then they played very hard,” Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau said after the game. “I knew they wouldn’t go away, and then we were in for a dogfight, so our defense wasn’t very good tonight, our rebounding wasn’t what it needed to be. In the end though we found a way to win and that’s the bottom line, is to find a way to win. You know we won with our offense, so you win games different ways, but obviously we got to do a lot better than we did but like I said the most important thing is to get the win.”
Detroit is led by head coach Monty Williams who is in his first season with the team and was given a six-year $78.5 million contract which is the largest in NBA history.
Williams is a former Knicks first round draft pick from 1994 when the Knicks also that year selected Heisman trophy winner and two sport athlete Charlie Ward in the first round. The Pistons now 16 game losing streak is a franchise record. “When you lose this many games, you’ve got to make changes,” Williams said after the game. “We’re not going to leave any stone unturned, we’re going to look at every lineup possible to give ourselves a chance to win games and grow as a team.”
The Knicks won on the road Friday night in Toronto the following night on Friday evening 119-106 to up their record to 12-7. They will now get ready for their quarterfinal matchup in a win or go home game situation in Milwaukee against the Bucks on Tuesday night in the league’s inaugural In-Season Tournament. It takes place in Las Vegas, Nevada.
