(Patrick McDermott/Getty Images North America/TNS)
NEW YORK — Ahead of tipoff against the Chicago Bulls on Friday, Knicks coach Mike Brown said he wasn’t 100% pleased with where his team stood with five games left on the regular-season schedule before the playoffs begin in mid-April.
“You always want your team to be playing at the highest of high cylinders. Do I think we’re there right now? No. Do I have belief in this team? Yes I do,” Brown said. “I’ve seen us play really good basketball throughout the course of the year. Even in games where there’s quote-unquote manufactured pressure. We’ve played really good basketball. So I like what we have in that locker room, and I like the things that we’ve done this year.
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“But I expect more from myself first, and everybody else second.”
If only the Knicks could play the Bulls 82 times a year.
The Knicks, who were without Karl-Anthony Towns (elbow) took the NBA draft lottery-bound Bulls to the woodshed and outscored them 20-1 to begin an all-out avalanche in a 136-96 victory at Madison Square Garden on Friday.
The Knicks led by as many as 47 points, marking their second-largest advantage of any game this season. Their biggest margin of victory was a 54-point rout of the Brooklyn Nets on Jan. 21.
And one game after beating the Memphis Grizzlies, another lottery-bound team, without Jalen Brunson, the Knicks beat the Bulls without their All-Star center. Towns was downgraded to questionable Friday morning, shot around ahead of tipoff against Chicago, then grimaced and grabbed at his arm before leaving the floor and being ruled out for the night with a right elbow impingement.
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Mitchell Robinson started in place of Towns, and the Knicks dominated the Bulls from the opening tipoff. They won the first quarter, 38-16, and the second period, 40-25.
“I thought our start against Oklahoma City was pretty good, and the last game [against Memphis] was pretty good. A lot of it has been our defense. Our defense has been pretty good overall. I think we’re seventh or eighth defensively. So to have a top-10 defense is pretty good, especially because at one point in time we were 22nd or 23rd,” said Brown. “But if you break the defense down by quarters, in the first quarter we’re 19th right now. In the fourth quarter we’re first by a mile.
“So for us to bring that same sense of urgency to start the game defensively, is gonna be big for us. We have to make sure we don’t go out and foul and that pick-and-roll coverage is on point and we’re not giving up any easy (baskets) in transition.”
It all began with Brunson, who scored 17 points on 13 shot attempts, but dished 10 assists to just two turnovers.
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The All-Star guard averaged more assists per game last March (8.9) than any other month of his career. And on Friday, the Knicks didn’t need Brunson to do what he does best–score at a high rate. Ball movement alone was enough to beat the Bulls, who won six of their first seven games of the season and have now dropped nine of their last 11.
The ball found OG Anunoby early and often.
Anunoby scored a game-high 31 points and made seven 3s on 10 attempts, marking his second-highest scoring game of the season. He scored 25 points in the Brunson-less win over the Grizzlies and said in his walk-off interview at MSG that an All-Star missing from the starting lineup doesn’t change his approach to a game.
“No. I’m always trying to be aggressive,” he said. “And if the ball finds me, I’m making shots.”
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Robinson added 17 points, 11 rebounds, two steals and a block, and both Mikal Bridges (23 minutes) and Josh Hart (28) saw lightened workloads as the Knicks made quick work of the Bulls on Friday.
Collin Sexton scored 19 points off the bench for Chicago, but no starters in red and white scored more than 13 points. Guerschon Yabusele, in his first game back at Madison Square Garden since the trade, scored five points on 2-of-9 shooting from the field.
The Knicks remain the East’s No. 3 seed and have a 1.5-game cushion on the No. 4 Cleveland Cavaliers, who own the easiest remaining schedule in the NBA with five games left to play. New York remains 2.5 games behind the No. 2 Boston Celtics, who whooped the Milwaukee Bucks on Friday.
“We’re still trying to fight for [playoff] positioning, so for us, we’re gonna try to keep guys healthy — which is up to the basketball gods and performance staff,” Brown said. “We’ll just play our guys to try to win games and continue to get better in different areas offensively and defensively while trying to get a win.”
The Knicks got a win. In fact, they have two in a row. They’ll have a chance to make it three against the No. 5 Atlanta Hawks on the road on Monday.