New York KnicksvsToronto Raptors

New York and Toronto meet at Madison Square Garden with the Knicks 15-5 at home across their last 20 games and the Raptors 6-14 on the road over the same span. Neither team has league table data on record for this season, so those splits are the fullest picture available. The model makes New York a 54.6% favourite and projects a 90-89 result.

The Knicks have won 15 of their last 20 at home, scoring 116.15 and conceding 104 per game in that stretch. Their last five games produced two wins, with scoring dropping sharply to 85 per game against 85.2 conceded. They come in 7 days after their 8 October fixture.

Toronto are 6-14 across their last 20 away games, scoring 113.6 and conceding 116.3 — the only road split in the data. Their last five brought three wins at 93 scored and 90.8 conceded per game, again well below the 20-game road rate. They have had 5 days since their 10 October outing.

Eight meetings are on record and the Knicks have won all eight, outscoring Toronto 943-822, an average of 220.63 points per meeting. The closest of the eight was a five-point New York win; every other meeting was decided by six or more. Eight games is a usable but limited sample, and a margin model built on scoring rates does not weight it directly.

Both splits carry the same caveat: no overall season record is on file for either side, so there is no baseline against which to measure home or away performance. What stands out is the gap itself — New York win 75% of the home games in the sample, Toronto 30% of the away games. That 45-point difference is the largest single split in the data.

The schedule is not congested: 7 days between games for New York, 5 for Toronto. The notable feature is the distance between the 20-game splits and recent scoring — New York's home games have averaged 220.15 combined points and Toronto's road games 229.9, while the last-five figures are far lower, though those are not venue-specific. There are no promoted-team adjustments or season-opener flags attached to either side.

The model gives New York a 54.6% win probability against 45.4% for Toronto, at medium confidence. Its projected score is 90-89, a margin of 1.3 points, on roughly 180 combined points — well below both the 20-game splits and the 220.63 average of the head-to-head series. The margin distribution is bunched: 33.3% home by 1-10 and 29.6% away by 1-10, with 21.3% home by 11 or more and 15.8% away by 11 or more.

The data supports a narrow New York edge rather than the comfortable one the 8-0 head-to-head record implies: 54.6% and a 1.3-point projected margin describe something close to even. Pulling the other way are the Knicks' 15-5 home split and Toronto's 6-14 road split. The projection would look wrong if the scoring ran closer to those longer-sample rates instead of the lower recent figures the model has picked up — that gap is the main reason the margin distribution is as wide as it is.