Captain Comeback

The Knicks, behind their leader, responded in a big way against Milwaukee.

Good morning! Nice of the Knicks to wash a lot of that icky OKC taste out of our mouths yesterday afternoon. They’re back at it tonight, facing off at 7:30 in MSG against a Pistons team that has everyone healthy except for Jaden Ivey. I’ll be on halftime, so come say hi.

Game 40: Knicks 140, Bucks 106

• The Knicks came out with the energy you’d expect after a distressing loss.

• Jalen Brunson put the team on his back out of the gate, scoring 23 in the first.

• After a 10-0 New York run increased the halftime lead to 23, Jalen injured his right shoulder while getting a shot blocked, immediately going to the locker room.

• He returned several minutes later, checked right into the game, and helped close the door on Milwaukee. He finished with 44 points in 29 minutes.

• The Knicks - and Jalen in particular - broke out of their shooting slump, hitting 43.9 percent from deep, although OG & Mikal continued to struggle from outside.

• Cam Payne was back in the rotation in a big way, with Landry Shamet appearing to be on the outs for the moment.

• The Bucks had no answer for KAT.

As you can probably tell from my usual tenor here, it takes a lot to stress me out.

Maybe it comes from covering this team for as long as I have, or maybe it’s the daily responsibility of ensuring the safety of two small humans in my household, but whatever it is, I don’t worry easily.

Well that steely resolve was tested midway through the third quarter last night, when Jalen Brunson lay on the ground, holding not only his right shoulder but the hearts of Knicks fans everywhere in the palm of his hand.

You could tell from the look he shot to the bench that whatever it was was serious:

Even the way he was letting his right arm hang down was enough to make me break out into a cold sweat.

The flashbacks to last year were instantaneous. How snakebitten could one franchise be? Were the New York Knicks simply destined to break any nice thing they had? If James Dolan’s facial recognition technology could see me now, it would have read me as pure, unadulterated fear.

And on top of all that, the outcome of the game still hung in the balance.

New York had their version of a workmanlike first half, scoring at will against an overmatched defense and doing well enough to limit Milwaukee’s offense, save for some Giannis putbacks and tip-your-cap makes from Damian Lillard. The lead got up to 23, and briefly to 27 after Brunson first went out, but then got down below 20 after a Giannis dunk. Timeout Knicks.

Then, like a gift from the gods, out of the locker room he emerged.

Not even bothering to take a seat on the bench or stop to talk to his head coach, Jalen Brunson beelined it to the scorer’s table as if he hadn’t just given every living Knicks fan a cardiac episode. It was the sort of moment that has become commonplace for him - defying reason and expectation in furtherance of the only thing he cares about:

Winning.

And win he did, in impressive style over a Milwaukee team has righted the ship following a 2-8 start and came in winning three straight.

Did anything that happened eliminate the concerns stemming from Friday’s debacle? That depends on your viewpoint.

If the only thing that matters to you is how New York performs against the sort of elite competition that can truly stress their few significant pressure points, than this win probably didn’t mean much. The Bucks have one high-end perimeter defender, and Jalen sent him to the bench with three fouls while fans were still filing into the arena. Similarly, they have no one well-suited for Karl-Anthony Towns, who made a meal of Milwaukee in his own right. It’s a far cry from OKC’s impenetrable fortress of solitude.

On offense, the Bucks have their A-listers but present several safe hiding spots. Those hiding spots are worth everything to a defense with something to hide. The depth questions also remain, with Landry Shamet the latest reserve sent to the Thibodeau doghouse, not getting off the bench until garbage time.

All of the above is true.

But until this version of the Knicks finds success in the postseason, every game is a proving ground, regardless of the opponent or circumstances. And these circumstances were notable to say the least.

Mike Breen said it himself at the top of the broadcast: the Thunder game was the worst home loss of the Tom Thibodeau era. He wasn’t wrong. No matter how well you match up with a particular opponent, there’s no way to know for sure how a team still finding itself is going to respond to adversity, and Friday’s loss was as adverse as it gets.

Sure, it helped that the shots finally, mercifully started to fall, and that JB sees a Thanksgiving-level spread whenever he faces someone in a Milwaukee jersey. But they still had to go out and get it done.

And get it done they did, in damn impressive fashion.

That’s gotta be worth something.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫 (OKC Edition)

Before we get to last night’s honorees, a quick retroactive SOTG for Friday night, after which I didn’t have the heart to praise anyone.

⭐️ Karl-Anthony Towns

⭐️ ⭐️ Jalen Brunson

Frankly could have with Cam Payne for either of these spots, but the tie goes to the two players who had to do the heavy lifting against the best defense in modern NBA history. They were far from perfect in several ways (and that’s before we even get to the defense), but Bronson and Towns managed to combine for 50 points on 31 shots, which is commendable against any team, let alone that one.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Josh Hart: One of the easier choices of the season. Came with a different level of energy than the rest of his teammates, reminding everyone who needed reminding that he’s a far bigger part of the solution than any problems the Knicks might have.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫 (Milwaukee Edition)

⭐️ Cameron Payne: He’s back!

We saw it a little bit on Friday night, but this was the closest thing we’ve seen to the bench spark plug that led New York’s bench attack early on this season.

Payne wound up with 18 points on 6-of-10 shooting in just 14 minutes, helping gain some separation between the two teams in the second quarter. The quick trigger returned, with four makes in seven attempts from deep as Payne played like there’s no tomorrow.

That’s when he’s at his best, and it’s how the Knicks need him to be from here on out.

⭐️ ⭐️ Karl-Anthony Towns: This was the fourth time this season KAT has scored at least 30 points on 16 or fewer shots, tying him with Clyde and Nate Robinson (!) for fourth place in franchise history behind only Patrick Ewing, Bill Cartwright and John Starks (!!)

Like so many games already this year, you don’t realize it’s happening until you look at the box score and do a double take.

Don’t mistake it for empty calorie stat stuffing though. On the contrary, Towns makes scoring look so easy that his misses stand out like a sore thumb while the makes are widely expected.

He had a bunch of those on Sunday, but none more important than the 11 he scored while Brunson received an extended rest to begin the second quarter. He punished a Bucks defense that had no good answer for him one-on-one, doing exactly what many called for him to do more of on Friday night. He owned the paint and commanded everyone’s attention.

Throw in 18 boards (five offensive) and four dimes (including two beauties early in the fourth on back to back cuts by Mikal and Josh), and it was another All-NBA kind of night for KAT.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Jalen Brunson: The easiest choice of the season.

Simply coming back onto the court after a moment that felt eerily reminiscent of Julius Randle’s torn shoulder from nearly a year ago would have been more than enough to get him this spot. The fact that he scored 12 more points after the injury to end up with his 23rd 40-point game¹ as a Knick was icing on the cake.

Brunson’s 44 was the most points scored by someone playing under 30 minutes in franchise history, and is tied for the eighth most points in NBA history by a player garnering so few minutes. It goes to show how automatic he was inside the arc, making 11-of-16 attempt from two, but the real story - besides possessing the indomitable will of Rocky Balboa - was Brunson’s 3-ball, which returned with a vengeance. After hitting just seven threes in his previous 10 games, JB nailed half of his 10 attempts last night, shooting with more confidence than he has in quite some time.

Whatever the Knicks are going to be this season, they’ll need this version of Jalen Brunson to get there.

Final Thought

26-14 after 40 games. Win tonight, and that’s a 54-win pace. They haven’t had more since the 90’s.

Maybe everything hasn’t gone to hell after all.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

1. Regular season and playoffs combined.