The Lakers had one of the frontrunners for MVP along with arguably the best-ever on the court. But the Knicks had far more depth.\u00a0Advantage: depth.<\/b>
\nThe Lakers had one of the front-runners for MVP along with arguably the best ever on the court.
But the Knicks had far more depth.
Advantage: depth.
Games like this are what the Knicks envisioned when they built the supporting cast around Jalen Brunson.
They had six players score in double digits as they beat the Lakers 112-100 on Sunday night at Madison Square Garden, extending their win streak to six.
It wasn\u2019t Brunson or Karl-Anthony Towns, who was just named an All-Star reserve earlier Sunday, who led the Knicks in scoring.
It was OG Anunoby who carried that load for large stretches of the game, finishing with 25 points.
His offensive rebound and subsequent dunk put the Knicks up 12 with just under three minutes left, pretty much putting the game away.
Next up was Landry Shamet off the bench, going off for 23 points, his second-highest scoring game of the season. He drilled six 3-pointers.
After that it was Josh Hart, with one of his finest showings of the season.
He added 20 points and went 3-for-4 from 3-point range.
Towns had 11 and Mikal Bridges had 10.
It allowed Brunson, who was struggling with his shot, to become more of a distributor.
He had just 12 points on 4-for-15 shooting but recorded a season-high 13 assists.
He added seven rebounds as well, nearly recording the first triple-double of his career.
This Knicks resurgence of late had largely come on the back of a dramatic defensive turnaround.
They had little answer for Luka Doncic, but hardly any team has this season.
He recorded 30 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists.
But the Knicks were strong defensively elsewhere, holding the Lakers to 28.6 percent shooting from 3-point range.
LeBron James, in what could possibly have been his last game at MSG, had 22 points, six assists and five rebounds.
He had a vintage alley-oop dunk in the third quarter, but he didn\u2019t overly hurt the Knicks.
Notably, Doncic and James combined for just eight points in the fourth quarter.
It is the fifth time in this winning streak the Knicks held their opponent to 100 points or fewer.
The Knicks went into halftime down four, but began the second half with an 18-9 run to take a five-point lead before the Lakers called timeout.
On back-to-back possessions in that run, Towns corralled an offensive rebound and followed with a putback.
After falling behind by two, the Knicks used three straight fast breaks to rip off a 6-0 run near the end of the third quarter.
Anunoby had an uncontested dunk, then stole the ball from Gabe Vincent en route to another uncontested dunk.
Then on the next possession, Brunson found Shamet, who caught his pass midair and made the layup to give the Knicks a four-point lead.
An aggressive Tyler Kolek provided a spark off the bench with eight points, though forced some ill-advised shots during a stint in the fourth quarter.
At one point in the second quarter, he took four straight Knicks shots \u2014 a made jumper, followed by two missed 3s, followed by a made 3.
When the Knicks lead shrunk to four points in the fourth quarter, his drive forced the Lakers defense to collapse, and he kicked out to a wide-open Hart for a 3-pointer, growing the lead back to seven.
Both teams are near the bottom in the league in bench scoring, but it was a clear Knicks advantage Wednesday.
They had an 11-point edge in that department.
This was by far the biggest test yet of whether the Knicks have truly turned a corner.
They passed with flying colors.
Tickets were historically expensive, with fans wanting to see James and Doncic and one of the premier franchises in the sport.
But it wasn\u2019t any of the stars who dominated.
The role players stole the show.<\/p>\n