Game Day: Knicks vs. Lakers, 4/12/21

The Knicks are riding a two-game win streak and looking to get back over .500 against the injury-riddled Lakers. But the Lake Show is holding up pretty well without LeBron and AD. Can the Knicks string together three straight?

The Knicks have their mojo back.

I (and I’m sure others) was really starting to worry that things were going off the rails last week. Losing five of six games — and routinely blowing leads to do it — made it feel like the Knicks of old. A team that was good enough to compete some nights, but ultimately not good enough to close out. But these last two games, it’s like they rediscovered their verve.

It helps that RJ Barrett had turned into a clutch shooting machine. And it helps double that Julius Randle has continued his development curve by absorbing the best shot that every team has on a daily basis and making the right decisions about when to score and when to find his teammates.

Tonight’s back-to-back finds the Lakers visiting Madison Square Garden, but not nearly the Lakers as their title-contender selves. Both LeBron James and Anthony Davis are still out, trying to recover from injuries and get healthy for the playoffs. The Lakers do have their new addition, Andre Drummond, though, and that could prove troublesome for the Knicks.

Drummond’s a rebounding beast, particularly on the offensive glass, and that’s not a category where the Knicks have been shining without Mitchell Robinson. They need to not let a repeat of the Celtics game happen where they can’t get a rebound.

Crazy as it is to say out loud, as long as the Knicks can play their usual brand of solid defense and not get abused on the boards, they have enough firepower to mitigate whatever this version of the Lakers can throw at them. And the Lakers don’t really have any defenders good enough to check Randle 1-on-1, so if their strategy is similar to the Grizzlies’ the other night where they just try to double the crap out of him, Barrett, Reggie Bullock, Immanuel Quickley, Alec Burks, and any other shooter on the team is going to have to step up and make the Lakers pay.

The game’s at 7:30 tonight on MSG. Feel free to comment along here or join us on Twitter.