The New York Knicks cut the bull on Tuesday night at home. Now, they’ll look to cut the Bulls.
Fresh off the first victory of their championship defense, the Knicks have an instant opportunity to add to their collection when they face the Chicago Bulls on Wednesday night at United Center. It wraps the first back-to-back on the Knicks’ docket this year, New York was 8-6 in the latter games of back-to-backs last year and put up five sweeps.
The 1-3 Knicks avoided dubious history on Tuesday with a 111-97 victory over the previously-undefeated Detroit Pistons at Madison Square Garden, one that left the 1969-70 Boston Celtics as the only defending champion to lose each of its first four games. Karl-Anthony Towns had yet another double-double with 27 points and 20 rebounds while Jalen Brunson built up a 23-point night with a 13-of-16 output at the foul line. They were two of six Knicks in double figures en route to their best offensive tallies of the season.
Meanwhile, the meandering Bulls, also at 1-3 have struggled out of the gate in the first days of the Tiago Splitter era, which yielded a 134-99 defeat in Boston on Monday night. Norman Powell put up 20 points while touted rookie Caleb Wilson earned 17 but it was mostly a drab affair beyond that: Chicago allowed the Celtics to shoot just under 50% from the field and let up 21 three-pointers in what’s already its second loss by a margin of at least 35 this season.
This will be the first of three meetings between the Knicks and Bulls this season: Chicago, in fact, will be at MSG next Wednesday and the series wraps at United Center on Dec. 1. The Knicks won three of four meetings last year, the most recent being a 136-96 demolition on April 3 at MSG. New York scored all but one of the first 21 points and never looked back, leading by as much as 47 in the blowout. OG Anunoby led the way with 31 points while Brunson had 17 with 10 helpers.
What to Know
What: New York Knicks (1-3) @ Chicago Bulls (1-3)
Where: United Center, Chicago, IL
When: Wednesday, 8 p.m. ET, MSG
Who’s Favored: NYK ―7.5 (o/u: 234.5)
Keep an eye on: Andre Drummond
Though Towns put up his best and perhaps cleanest game of the season (which says a lot considering excessive physicality Detroit put up on Tuesday), an early Drummond rebirth seemed to push things in the metropolitan direction.
Held in check after his first half breakout on opening night (including a minutes surrender to James Wiseman in Sunday’s fourth quarter against Orlando), Drummond helped flip Tuesday’s script with a dominant second period stretch: he got the New York comeback rolling with a putback dunk that erased the Pistons’ last double-figure lead and ended the night with 10 points and eight boards in 14 minutes when all was said and done.
Now comes the hard part: sustaining it. For all their flaws in the early going, the Bulls do have four men averaging at least five rebounds a game, even with ex-Brooklyn Net Nic Claxton sitting out due to a hand injury. That gives Drummond an early opportunity to solidify his depth chart spot, as the Mitchell Robinson-sized vacancy appears to be undergoing a bit of audition process as the Knicks try to get their land legs back.
Bull to watch: Josh Giddey
The Bulls somewhat retooled in an attempt to find any form of sustainable traction this season but one of the de facto staples is Giddey, who has struggled to live up the hype of a nine-figure contract signed prior to last season.
Wilson has lived up to his infantile hype and it’s been somewhat enough to bury Giddey’s early struggles. Monday’s defeat in Boston marked the first time he reached double figures this season (11 on 4-of-7 from the field) and he’s just 2-of-13 with an extra point on the line this year. Giddey enters Wednesday play with the fifth-worst net rating among men that have averaged 20 minutes and appeared in four games this year … and two of those he’s besting are teammates Matas Buzelis and Leonard Miller.
No one’s expecting an immediate return to prominence for the Bulls, especially after last year’s purgatorial trade deadline that seemed bent on acquiring as many second-round picks as possible. But if this rebuild is going to gain any sort of traction, Giddey needs to play up to his paycheck, and that simply hasn’t happened in the early going.
They said it
“I just told him the truth: ‘KAT, [Paul Reed] is killing us on the glass and when he gets a rebound, he’s putting it back. Or anything he gets in the paint, he’s putting it back. If he catches it on the perimeter, guard him,’ and he did those things. I got to tip my hat off to KAT because I thought his shift in his mindset was really big for us in the second half … I challenged KAT and KAT had a tremendous second half. Twenty-seven and 20, he’s more than capable of doing that night in and night out.”―Knicks head coach Mike Brown on Towns’ Tuesday (h/t Jared Schwartz, New York Post)
“In general players got to compete every possession and we’re not there yet. But that’s how I believe they get better. They need pressure. They need to have minutes as well, but they need to feel the pressure of when they’re not playing the way I want, you’re going to sit with me for a little bit.”―Splitter on the Bulls’ early returns (h/t Joe Cowley, Chicago Sun Times)
Prediction
It takes two to make a thing go right and the Knicks land that privilege on Wednesday.
The Knicks have finally stripped their critics of one of their most potent bits of ammunition by getting out of the winless department. Now that have a golden opportunity to build on the early momentum against a downtrodden opponent.
Things might get a tad testy considering the Knicks are coming off a back-to-back but there’s little reason to doubt their ability to show up in a winnable game, even with the early struggles. Yes, the Knicks have dug themselves into a slight hole where the privilege of the benefit of the doubt has slipped from their grasp but they can make progress in re-gaining that benefit by handling Bullish business.
