NEW YORK — Nate Robinson showed his game is much more than dunks, scoring 27 points Monday to lead the New York Knicks to a 99-91 victory and a split of a home-and-home series with the Detroit Pistons.
Chosen earlier in the day to defend his slam dunk title at All-Star weekend, Robinson made five 3-pointers, one during a 7-0 spurt that started the fourth quarter and gave the Knicks the lead for good.
Fellow reserve Al Harrington and Wilson Chandler each added 17 points as the Knicks bounced back from consecutive losses, including Saturday’s 94-90 defeat in Detroit, and improved to 18-6 on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Rodney Stuckey scored 22 for the short-handed Pistons, who had their three-game winning streak snapped. They led after three quarters with a gutty effort but simply didn’t have enough firepower with four of their top six scorers out.
Already missing Ben Gordon (strained right groin), Tayshaun Prince (sore left knee) and Will Bynum (sprained left ankle), the Pistons were even further weakened when Richard Hamilton came down with an upset stomach.
Detroit hung around into the fourth quarter, but Stuckey appeared to run out of gas, scoring his only two points of the period in the final minute.
Ben Wallace scored a season-high 16 points and grabbed 14 rebounds, and Austin Daye and Charlie Villanueva also had 16 points for the Pistons.
Robinson did most of his damage in his 13-point second quarter from the perimeter, though he thrilled the crowd late in the period with a dunk off an alley-oop pass from Chris Duhon for a 12-point lead. The Knicks led 57-43 at the half.
Detroit turned it around by holding the Knicks to 11 points in the third, their worst quarter of the season, and led 70-68 going to the final period.
The Pistons were down only one with 10 minutes left before Harrington, Danilo Gallinari and Robinson made 3-pointers in a 13-4 spurt that gave the Knicks an 88-78 lead, and they held on from there.
Gallinari finished with 16 points and David Lee had 11 points and 15 rebounds for New York. The Knicks missed their first six shots in falling behind 7-0, made five of their next six to grab the lead, and it was tied at 23 after one.
NOTES: Eddy Curry is expected to miss about six weeks after knee surgery, the latest setback for the injury-plagued Knicks center. The team said he would have an arthroscopic procedure on Monday to remove loose cartilage in his left knee and begin rehabilitation within a week. Curry has played only seven games this season. ... Robinson will compete against Gerald Wallace, Shannon Brown, and either DeMar DeRozan or Eric Gordon on Feb. 13 in Dallas. ... Stuckey came in averaging 21.9 points when Hamilton and Gordon are out.
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