Julius Randle will be out of the lineup and Jalen Brunson will be taking command even more than usual. He'll most likely see a ton of attention from teams during this stretch forcing him to find the open man leading to a nice uptick in assists. He had 8 and 9 assists in his only 2 games last year without Randle, too.
Another key here is that Hartenstein is back. With him, Brunson has hit in 3 straight and has averaged 8.4 assists in his last 10 with him. The Hornets are also just a beautiful matchup allowing THE MOST assists in the past couple of weeks and rank 8th on the entire season. Love this spot for Brunson!
