Detroit – Tobias Harris smiled while giving his answer.
He played against the Knicks in the playoffs last year with the 76ers, and does it once again this year as a key holder in the Pistons.
What has noticed about the personality of the Knicks team this year compared to last year?
“It is a different dynamic, sure,” Harris said in the morning of the day in Shounding before game 3. “That is all that I am going to say … it is part of our game plan.”
The Knicks made two exchanges of great success and spent significant capital during the low season to acquire Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges to rise to a contender that could be with the Celtics and other elite teams in the East. But they lost Julius Randle and Donte DivinCenzo in the trade of cities and Isaiah Hartenstein left free agency.
Randle, Divinnzo and Hartenstein tested much of the Knicks Arena last year as three of their toughest and most physical players. That identity has lost his leg this year without them.
And through the first two games of the series, the Pistons, who have built their duration of the reputation in this season of rupture in the opponents overcome, intimidated the Knicks in terms of their physicality and aggressiveness.
Last year, the Knicks were generally the thugs. That was certainly true when they beat Harris’s 76ers in six games in the first round.
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In the first two games in this series, the Pistons launched the first blows and the Knicks played with their back foot.
“We are playing very hard. Enter, try to establish the tone, be aggressive,” said Ausar Thompson on Thursday morning. “Make the referees and the other team adapt to us.”
Harris himself has largely paired with Towns, who has four inches and 22 pounds in him. On paper, that should allow cities to impose their size to Harris and other defenders of the Pistons.
But he had It is not really a leg capable of Through the first two games.
“I definitely hug him,” said Harris. “For me, it is just being physical. Making sure that it is the difficult aspect of Bar. Make sure everything you are getting, you have to work for it.”
