Toppin does ‘a lot of good things’ in first NBA preseason game

“I felt great,” Toppin told reporters after the game. “I had four other people on my team out there talking me through every step of the way. I felt comfortable with those guys. I’ll go to war with those guys every day.”

This was the first of two exhibition games the Knicks will play in Detroit. They play again at 7 p.m. Sunday. They then play two exhibition games at Madison Square Garden against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday and Friday before beginning the regular season Dec. 23 on the road against the Indiana Pacers.

Toppin took his first steps as a NBA rookie three weeks after the Knicks drafted him with the eighth pick in the first round. He entered the game with 4:17 left in the first quarter and missed his first two shots but then scored on a strong post move and also made a couple of other early effort plays, saving a ball from going out of bounds, for example.

“It was kind of a shock as soon as coach called my name and told me to go to the scorer’s table,” Toppin said. “I was like, ‘Uh oh, this is my time.’ I had other guys out there with me. I wasn’t really nervous or scared just because I knew everybody else was going to pick me up. I just went out there and did what I do best and that was play basketball.”

Toppin scored six points in the first quarter and then got his first poster-worthy dunk in the second quarter off an alley-oop assist from Kevin Knox.

Toppin made 4 of 9 shots from the field and 3 of 5 free throws. He committed four fouls and had one turnover.

Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said Toppin did well and was very aggressive to start the game. Toppin had two points in the second half after scoring nine in the first. The Pistons paid Toppin more attention after his first-half scoring outburst.

“That’s the thing about the pro game: to read the game,” Thibodeau said. “The game will tell you the play to make. When the help comes, if there’s two on you, then that’s what you want. You’re trying to get two on the ball to force the defense to collapse. Then once that happens, if we have the right spacing, we should be able to get high-percentage shots off of that. So sometimes you beat them with your scoring. Sometimes you beat them with your pass. You have to understand that. For his first game, i thought he did a lot of good things, and he saw when things work a certain way in the first half, sometimes it’s different in the second.”