The New York Knicks defensive play is keeping them on the winning side of the game. The Kicks had driven the Denver Nuggets to a 109-93 victory during last Sunday's game in New York.

The Nuggets had missed all of their first 15 shots during the period. Good thing Ty Lawson's layup at the buzzer had ended the almost 13-minute drought. New York outscored Denver 31-8 in the quarter.

Knicks Head Coach, Derek Fisher said "I thought probably defensively that was the difference in that quarter. We scored 31 points in the first quarter as well even though it may not have looked as pretty as it did in the second quarter but someway we found a way to hold them to eight points and I thought that was the difference in the game."

Carmelo Anthony and J.R. Smith both had 28 points even though they struggled with their new offensice strategy. But it was not the offense that clearly made the team win, rather it was their defensive style.

Anthony said "I thought in that second quarter we played great defense, buckling down, keeping them out of transition. It led to our offensive end. Once we got stops on the defensive end, we felt confident enough to go down there and make some shots and run our offense and do what we had to do."

Arron Afflalo had 18 points and Ty Lawson had 17 points coupled with nine assists Kenneth Faried chipped in 16 points for the Nuggets. The team had lost seven of their last eight games.

To this Afflalo commented "I noticed that we only had scored six points pretty much that whole quarter and I knew we hadn't made a few free throws, but I didn't recognize the fact that we hadn't been able to score the ball from the field."

On the other side of the bench, Denver coach Brian Shaw had this to say "I thought we started out the game getting what we wanted, but it was an exchange, we were scoring, they were scoring. In the second quarter we were tentative offensively and we had a long drought with no penetration, turnovers missed free throws and they slowly continued to score."