Cries have been incessant lately, with fans and media wondering when Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau will change his starting line-up to bring in exciting rookie point guard Immanuel Quickley in place of Elfrid Payton.
Payton responded with his best game in a few weeks in Chicago on Wednesday night, helping the Knicks to a 107-103 victory over the Bulls at United Center.
Payton scored 20 points, eight rebounds and four assists in 35 minutes – his most playing time in seven games – and Quickley added nine points in just 13 minutes.
Julius Randle made contact with five 3-pointers to finish with 27 points, while RJ Barrett scored 17 for the Knicks (10-13). They only reached 10 wins until their 34th game last season, when they started 10-29 and finished the year with a score of 21-45.
Zach LaVine scored 24 points and Thaddeus Young added 19 off the bench for the Bulls, who shot just 6-for-36 (16.7 percent) from a 3-point range. Lauri Markkanen scored just four points in the second half and nine in total for Chicago, after taking 30 points on Monday in a 110-102 victory over the Knicks.
The Bulls (8-12) narrowed a 18-point deficit early in the fourth quarter to three, 99-96, with 5:45 left after a 20-5 run. But a key 3 from Reggie Bullock (nine points) and a short jumper from Payton complemented the lead to eight.
Payton played just 18 minutes in Monday’s defeat, with Quickley taking 30 off the bench. But the Knicks’ starting point guard scored half of his team’s points in a 12-4 game opening. He finished 10 in the first quarter on 5-for-7 shots, while Randle buried three straight 3-pointers late in the period as the Knicks built a 34-17 lead.
The 10 points over the first 12 minutes matched Payton’s high output for all of his previous six games.
Payton also got seven rebounds while playing the entire quarter, and Quickley dropped a runner in the first minute of the second. Fellow rookie Obi Toppin also hit a 3 when he first entered the game and then a jumper again for his five points in 10 minutes.
Quickley’s recent offensive rise – 20.6 points per game over his five previous appearances – brought the No. 25 overall pick in the draft to second place among all NBA rookies in scoring (12.6 ppg in total), despite that he played less than 20 minutes (19.7) per outing. He is alone behind # 1 of the Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards overall roster with 13.6 points per game.
The Bulls closed on a Lavine jumper in the middle of the second quarter to within 10 minutes. But Barrett scored eight of his 14 first-half points in the period, though his expensive inbounds turnover in the closing seconds led to a late lay-up by Young for a 63-52 Knicks lead at the break. Before the game, Thibodeau had emphasized the importance of avoiding such disappointments.
“You have to bring in the energy for the whole game,” said Thibodeau. “Once you have bad luck, one man comes back slowly, the other complains to the officer, whether it is frustration, thinking you made a mistake, you end up giving up an open shot or a lay-up.
‘We can’t afford that. So we need discipline. There will be missed calls, there will be some frustration. Come back. If you have something to say to an umpire, do it during a dead ball. You cannot do it while the game is in progress. “
The Bulls continued to misfire from 3-point range, missing their first six attempts to open the third quarter. Chicago climbed back within nine hours with 2:22 left in the period, but Quickley and Randle’s subsequent three seconds (his fifth) gave the Knicks a 91-76 lead on their way to the last quarter.