Through much of the first half of Tuesday evening’s contest against the Detroit Pistons, the Knicks discovered themselves still buried in the hunch from the season’s first three video games: shoddy protection, missed baskets, and sluggish transitions. At one level in the first half, they fell 13 factors behind.
Then came the third. New York outscored Detroit 60-47 in the last 24 minutes of play, holding its opponents to just 13 factors in the third and finally working away with a 111-97 lead by the time the clock wound down.
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The effort was largely spearheaded by Karl-Anthony Towns. The 30-year-old middle fully turned it around after the break, ending with his fourth double-double in 4 video games so far this season. His 57 % taking pictures from the subject was second on the group, only to Andre Drummond (5-for-7).
But it wasn’t until a near-brawl with Pistons beginning middle Paul Reed halfway through the third that Towns actually stepped up; he completed the first half a minus-14.
Reed, who scored practically one-third of Detroit’s 50 first-half factors (16) and completed with a team-leading 22 factors and 5 offensive rebounds, got tangled with Towns as teammate Duncan Robinson cut New York’s lead to 10 halfway through the third quarter. The two immediately grew to become heated, but the referees stepped in before issues could escalate and dealt Reed a Flagrant 1.
Then came the shift. After making his two free throws from the flagrant — his only two free throws of the evening — Towns exploded for 16 of his 27 whole factors and tacked on eight of his 20 rebounds, recording his fifth 20-20 as a Knick.
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After the recreation, head coach Mike Brown recommended Towns for the approach he rebounded and said he had a very frank dialog with the middle at halftime.
“KAT’s a grown man. He’s obviously a perennial All-Star. I just told him the truth: ‘KAT, the guy is killing us on the glass, and when he gets a rebound, he’s putting it back. Anything he gets in the paint, he’s putting it back. If he catches on the perimeter, guard him,'” Brown said. “And he did those things. I’ve got to take my hat off to KAT because I thought his shift in his mindset was really big for us in the second half.”
The conflict between Towns and Reed ignited a fire inside the whole Knicks roster, serving as a catalyst for a more aggressive effort on both ends of the court.
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It was just the enhance New York needed to clinch their first win of the season after seemingly falling sufferer to a championship hangover.
“[Reed] played great in the first half. I think we were able to not let him loose on the offensive boards. He was really impacting the game,” Jalen Brunson said after the recreation. “For [KAT] to step up as he did throughout the game was something that we needed.”
Towns, however, credited the turnaround to the whole group.
“I thought we did a better job picking up our intensity and our physicality, and we just executed at a high level,” he said. “… We’ve just got to worry about the controllables, which is us playing our best, executing at a high level, and bringing that physicality to the game.”
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He added that with one win under its belt, the group has to shift all of its power toward a second one rather than dwelling on Tuesday’s success.
“Gotta get the next one — that’s the only thing on the mind,” he said. “… All year, it’s going to be us improving, going through the ups and downs of the season. We just got to stay steady, keep believing in each other, keep pushing each other to another level.”
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