Returning home from a three-game road swing with three straight wins, the New York Knicks host a Toronto Raptors team playing the second leg of a back-to-back on Monday.
New York concluded its successful road trip on Saturday with a 104-93 defeat of New Orleans, bookending the trip with a pair of defensive efforts holding opponents to fewer than 100 points.
The Knicks began the swing with a 100-91 defeat of Orlando. Combined with a 133-107 rout of Minnesota, New York’s trio of road games improved the Knicks to 8-2 over its last 10.
Jalen Brunson also bookended the road swing with his eighth and ninth games of 30-plus points this season, scoring 31 against the Magic and a season-high 39 versus the Pelicans.
Brunson’s 25.1-point per game average is a dip from a season ago when he earned his first All-Star appearance and a second-team All-NBA selection, posting 28.7 points per game. Some of that is due to opponents having to account for the Knicks’ offseason addition of Karl-Anthony Towns, who is scoring 24.5 points per game.
“It’s different every night,” Brunson said when asked of how teams are defending the Knicks. “I’ve got to stay focused, knowing that it’s not always the same, so I can’t get frustrated thinking it’s gonna be the same or be easy. I’ve got to get my teammates involved and stay aggressive.”
When New York last saw Toronto in a 113-108 Knicks win north of the border on Dec. 9, Brunson went for 20 points and 11 assists. Towns added 24 points and 15 rebounds and Mikal Bridges scored 23 points.
The New York win in Toronto was part of an ongoing Raptors skid, which reached seven games after Sunday’s 114-110 loss to Houston. Toronto squandered a 16-point lead against the Rockets.
A bright spot for Toronto in Sunday’s loss was rookie Ja’Kobe Walter scoring a career-high 27 points. Walter had a string of three straight single-digit scoring performances following his 19-point effort last time the Raptors and Knicks met.
“Now that I’m getting into the game, I realized it’s all just basketball,” Walter said in his postgame press conference. After appearing in just four games over the season’s first month, he has logged 20-plus minutes in nine of the last 11.
Another Raptors rookie, Jamal Shead, delivered a career-high 10 assists in Sunday’s loss.
The youngsters have seen opportunities with Toronto veterans dealing with injuries. Former Knick Immanuel Quickley has been sidelined for almost two months with an elbow injury.
RJ Barrett — Toronto’s leading scorer at 23.5 points per game and another former Knick — missed Sunday’s game with an illness. Scottie Barnes played vs. Houston, but the versatile playmaker scored just six points on 2-of-15 shooting, the result of lingering injury issues per Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic.
“As you can see, he’s not himself. He’s banged up,” Rajakovic said. “He got his hip (injured) the last game, his ankle. There are a couple things that are bothering him. He’s still not himself, (but) he’ll be better.”
–Field Level Media
