The Lakers had one of the frontrunners for MVP and perhaps the best to ever grace the court.
But the Knicks had much more depth than their own two All-Stars.
Advantage: depth.
Games like this are what the Knicks envisioned when building the supporting cast around Jalen Brunson.
Six players scored in double figures as they defeated the Lakers 112-100 at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, extending their win streak to six.
There were a total of four All-Stars on the floor: Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Luka Doncic and LeBron James.
But it was a trio of non-All-Stars in OG Anunoby, Landry Shamet and Josh Hart who made the biggest difference.
“That’s what we’re capable of,” Hart said. “We have a lot of depth, we have guys who can knock down shots, guys who can make plays. It won’t always be JB or KAT’s night, but we have enough guys to score points. It shows we don’t have to force anything.”
It wasn’t Brunson or Towns, who was named an All-Star reserve earlier Sunday, who led the Knicks in scoring.
It was Anunoby who carried that burden for large parts of the match, finishing with 25 points.
His offensive rebound and subsequent dunk tied the Knicks at 12 with just under three minutes remaining, virtually putting the game away.
Next up was Landry Shamet off the bench, who left with 23 points, his second-highest scoring game of the season.
He drilled six three-pointers.
Then it was Josh Hart, with one of his best performances of the season.
He added 20 points and went 3-for-4 from 3-point range.
Towns – who didn’t fill in the stats but was the best player at plus-23 – had 11 and Mikal Bridges had 10.
Sunday was the third game in a row. Anunoby and Hart, who averaged 16.2 and 12.3 points respectively, have scored 20 or more points
It made Brunson, who was struggling with his shot, more of a distributor.
He had just 12 points on 4-for-15 shooting, but recorded a season-high 13 assists.
He also added seven rebounds, nearly recording the first triple-double of his career.
“If the shots aren’t falling, you have to impact the game somewhere else,” Brunson said. “I always saw two [defenders]so I just tried to make the right play at the right time and we got a good look at it. I’m just going to play defense like they played. They were shooting shots. The way we moved the ball was great.”
This Knicks resurgence of late has largely been the result of a dramatic defensive turnaround.
They had little answer for Doncic, although almost no team has that this season.
He recorded 30 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists.
But elsewhere, the Knicks were strong defensively, holding the Lakers to 28.6 percent shooting from three-point range.
James had 22 points, six assists and five rebounds in what could have been his last game at MSG.
He had a vintage alley-oop dunk in the third quarter, but he didn’t overly hurt the Knicks.
It is striking that Doncic and James combined for only eight points in the fourth quarter.
It is the fifth time in this winning streak that the Knicks have held their opponent to 100 points or less.
“We were able to get closer to the game plan in the second half,” coach Mike Brown said. “It resulted in the Lakers scoring 44 points in that second half, which was huge for us.”
The Knicks entered halftime trailing by four, but started the second half on an 18-9 run and took a five-point lead before the Lakers called a timeout.
After back-to-back possessions in that point, Towns secured an offensive rebound and followed it with a putback.
An aggressive Tyler Kolek provided the spark off the bench with eight points, but forced some ill-advised shots during a fourth-quarter stint.
Both teams are near the bottom of the league when it comes to bench scores, but it was a clear Knicks advantage on Wednesday.
They had an 11-point lead in that department.
“It’ll be someone different every night,” Shamet said. “We know that and we have a group that believes in that. It’s about us all pitching in and doing what we can, night by night, knowing that it might look a little bit different.
“We have a locker room full of guys who want to win and are willing to sacrifice for each other.”
This was by far the biggest test yet to determine if the Knicks have truly turned a corner.
They passed with flying colors.
Tickets were historically expensive and fans wanted to see James and Doncic and one of the best franchises in sports.
But it was the Knicks role players who stole the show.
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