It’s the same thing for him every night, Derrick Rose said — a tough point-guard matchup.
Sunday will be no different when Rose and the Knicks visit Toronto to face the Raptors and All-Star/Olympian Kyle Lowry.
“It’s the same type of thing as every guy in the league,” Rose said. “Every point guard in the league is tough. Kyle, he’s playing on a great team. He’s doing a good job of leading that team. He has another guy [All-Star DeMar DeRozan] beside him, where he’s a killer. He’s a monster, too, and he plays off of him. He gets him going early and gets him going throughout the whole game. But they’re doing a great job of playing off one another, and you can tell that’s why they’re winning games.”
The Raptors (26-13) are coming off a 42-point fourth quarter against the Nets.
Another Kyle was heavily discussed Saturday after Knicks practice: reserve center Kyle O’Quinn, who is averaging a career-best 2.1 offensive rebounds with seven in his last three games. But O’Quinn has been doing more.
“When we were in that good stretch, Kyle was playing great, giving us big lift off the bench with his rebounding, his blocked shots,” coach Jeff Hornacek said. “He was making the shots, he was rolling to the basket, and I think he started to do that again recently and we played better, so there’s a lot of correlation. When he plays well, we do decently.”
Mom, apple pie and all that good stuff makes life better — but especially mom. Rose said having family members, including his mother, Brenda, at Thursday’s game was good for the psyche.
“It’s always good to have family in town, family around,” Rose said. “My son’s not here, but my mom’s here, my brother’s here.”
Rose was at the center of a firestorm last week, when he skipped a game and flew to Chicago for personal matters without telling the team. He was fined nearly $200,000.
“My problem wasn’t missing my family. It wasn’t that,” Rose said. “They just came in town and just wanted, for sure, to see the Chicago game. And when they’re here, it’s a fun city to be in. So they do a lot of things while they’re here.”
