Lavers vs Knicks Discussion

[Herbert]

That was a good game last night. I'm sure it was frustrating for both Lakers and Knicks fans.

Takeaways

Knicks
Julius Randle is undoubtedly the star of the Knicks. He ended up with 20 points, 16 rebounds and 5 assists. All star numbers. But looking on social media fans are still disappointed. I'd take him on my Mavericks any day of the week. A huge problem right now , is that the Knicks still don't have a reliable co-star to keep the defense honest and relieve some of the pressure off of Randle. Sometimes Julius looks really good off of the double team and other times not so much. Once he learns how to deal with it, its gonna take his game up another level. I think his primary challenge this year will be adjusting to the new rules and handling consistent double teams whenever he gets near the paint. I also don't care for how they officiated him this game. The refs gave him fouls on a lot of bang bang plays where they should have instead just not called anything. And then later on Melo pushed him to the ground lol and just gets a tech.

Overall the Knicks offense is just missing some flow. And for whatever reason, the defensive intensity just dropped off the map. In the same way that Russell Westbrook got hot and brought the Lakers back from the deficit, Immanuel Quickley got hot and saved the Knicks in the 4th quarter while Randle had to sit due to foul trouble.

Lakers
This was a game in which the Lakers had to battle back from a 25 point deficit! I'm not sure they would have been able to do it without Russell Westbrook coming in the third quarter and dropping around 20 points that was insane. Anthony Davis needs to play better. When Lebron's not out he's the man. Now it was mentioned during the game that AD maybe dealing with some kind of illness so that could have affected his performance. But he got outplayed by Julius Randle and if you're a top 5 player he needs to hit 30 points, grab 10-13 rebounds and just dominate on the offensive end. Lakers have a lot of work to do. I still believe their ceiling is much higher than what they've shown so far this season.