Knicks start west coast trip with huge win in San Francisco

The Knicks embarked on a four game west coast trip that started last night in San Francisco against Steph Curry’s Warriors. And it resulted into a huge 119-104 victory against a former Championship team that lacked Klay Thompson and lost Draymond Green to a pair of technicals in the second quarter.

RJ Barrett scored a career-high 28 points – with 14 of them in the first quarter – to which he added 5 assists while Julius Randle, continuing his All Star routine, was just one dime from a triple double. So he ended up with 16 points, 17 rebound and 9 assists.

“We come into every game feeling like we should win the game or give ourselves a chance to win the game. We’re a good team and we’re playing a good team basketball game.”

– Julius Randle

The Knicks’ backcourt did an impressive job as well. Mitchell Robinson recorded 18 points and 8 rebounds while his backup Nerlens Noel had 6 points, 11 rebounds and 4 blocks.

Early in the second quarter, the Knicks build their largest first half lead, 11 points which were blown a couple of minutes before halftime. However, they never allowed the Warriors to move ahead. And after Green got his second technical foul and was ejected, the game flowed in just one direction.

Slowly but surely, the lead increased to as many as 19 points in the fourth quarter and Curry wasn’t able to save his team.

Elfrid Payton had 15 points, Reggie Bullock scored 12 and Alec Burks who made his return last night finished with 11 points and 5 assists on a 6-8 shooting off the bench.

Stephen Curry led the Warriors with a game-high 30 points but he barely shot the three, going 5-14 from behind the arc. On top of that, the two time MVP also added 4 turnovers to his stats. Andrew Wiggins had 17 points and 9 boards and James Wiseman contributed with 15 and 8.

Tom Thibodeau’s defense worked flawlessly once again as the Warriors were kept under 40% from the field and under 25% from long distance. The Knicks shot much better than they did in their previous wins of the streak, and went 46.3% from the field and 45.8% from the three point line.

Next-up: The Knicks (8-8) will face the Kings (5-10) tonight from 10:00 pm.