Knicks

The first few minutes of the game saw both teams rely heavily on the three-point shot as Cam Reddish and Julius Randle both knocked down a pair of threes each ...

Sure, some of it had to do with the Knicks defense and their offensive execution, but this was just as much the Knicks playing well as it was the Wolves not showing up. The Knicks never managed to regain their first-half form, but they were able to do just enough on both sides of the ball to keep the double-digit lead. While the talk of the town and the highlights will turn to Randle and his otherworldly shooting performance (still can’t believe he made 8 threes), he still had a couple of spurts where he had careless turnovers, looked out of it defensively, and held the ball too long. The Knicks went on to weather the storm that was the Anthony Edwards show to start the half and capitalized on some bad Wolves fouls and overall uninspired play the rest of the quarter to take a 103-80 lead heading into the final period. Minnesota scored seven unanswered points in the first 1:09 of the period to cut the lead to 16, the lowest in the second half. And all of a sudden there were terrifying flashbacks to last Wednesday’s game against the Hawks. The first few minutes of the game saw both teams rely heavily on the three-point shot as Cam Reddish and Julius Randle both knocked down a pair of threes each for the Knicks and Kyle Anderson and Karl-Anthony Towns knocked down one each of their own. The rest of the quarter was a bit slower paced and ended up being pretty even, but the Knicks still managed to take a 76-52 lead heading in to the break. Coming out of the timeout, the Knicks coach drew up a beautiful play to get Brunson going downhill and he ended up finding Barrett in the right corner for a wide open three. Inexplicably silent for the Wolves was their young phenom Anthony Edwards, who is averaging a career-high 22.8 PPG this season, but only managed to score five points on five shots in 20 minutes. The bench unit then started the second quarter where they left off en route to a 10-0 run capped off with another Obi Toppin 3 at the 9:13 mark of the quarter. But like Saturday against Boston, they could not find a way to defend the outside shot, and the game remained a back-and-forth affair.