Knicks vs Bulls: New York Must Pull out Victory in Pivotal Game

The New York Knicks will travel to take on the Chicago Bulls on Tuesday night in a game that is massively more important to them than the Bulls. 

Chicago leads the Eastern Conference by two games. The Knicks are tied for eighth with the 76ers and they have just a 1.5 game lead on the Milwaukee Bucks who lurk in ninth place. 

This makes the game vital for the Knicks for two reasons. 

The first is the most obvious. They don't want to lose ground in the race for the playoffs. After this game with the Bulls, the Knicks will travel to Milwaukee to take on the Bucks. 

New York has been playing well lately (7-3 in their past 10), but if they slip here and lose two straight tough road games then they would likely find themselves on the outside looking in on the playoffs. Not to mention, they would have just eight games to make up the ground. 

Those remaining eight games are no cakewalk, either. That stretch features tough home games against the Miami Heat, Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Clippers and a road game against the Atlanta Hawks. 

The other big factor here is that this very well could be the team the Knicks face in the first round.

The Knicks need to win to give them the confidence—and the Bulls the doubt—it will take to have a shot at pulling off that upset. 

They went a long way towards accomplishing this with a 100-99 victory over the Bulls on Sunday, but that will all be for naught if they travel to Chicago and get trounced. 

The Knicks need this one to keep their momentum going. It is vital to their playoff hopes and important to their chances once they get to the postseason.