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MILWAUKEE — The Knicks went from bricking to clicking.
Three days after their frigid shooting night against the Cavs, the Knicks caught fire in Brew City — where it was an unseasonably warm Friday — while trouncing the Bucks without Giannis Antetokounmpo, 127-98.
The Knicks alternated hot streaks from their three best players. Jalen Brunson owned the first quarter. Karl-Anthony Towns took over the second. OG Anunoby put the game away in the third quarter. The final 12 minutes felt like extended garbage time before the inevitable win for the Knicks (38-22), who finished 2-1 on their Midwest road trip and were happy to go home.
“This is how we played offensively throughout most of the year,” coach Mike Brown said. “So for us to be able to space the ball correctly, make quick decisions with the basketball while touching the paint, playing off two feet, was huge.
“We got a lot of mileage just from playing the game the right way. So I applaud our guys for playing the way they did on both sides of the ball tonight.”
Brunson finished with 27 points and seven boards in 30 minutes. Towns, the NBA’s leader in double-doubles, had 17 points and 13 rebounds. Anunoby had his best game since returning from his toenail avulsion, scoring 24 points while shooting 5-for-7 on 3s.
“It’s always good when you make shots,” Anunoby said.
The Knicks needed that good result. They were coming off that disheartening defeat three nights earlier in Cleveland against a rising Finals contender. Their schedule pivots to the toughest five-game stretch of the season — v.s. San Antonio, at Toronto, vs. Oklahoma City, at Denver and at the Lakers. All those opponents are top six in their respective conferences.
The Bucks (26-32), though, are just about average. And the conditions were ripe for a Knicks bounce-back. They had two days off before tipoff after a short flight from Cleveland.
They were fully healthy outside of Miles McBride, who spoke before the game and described his recovery from sports hernia surgery as a “slow process.”
The Bucks, meanwhile, were again missing Antetokounmpo, the megastar who sat his 14th consecutive game with a strained hamstring. The Bucks had been playing better lately without Antetokounmpo, but they’re clearly a couple of levels lower without him.
So the Knicks had a great opportunity Friday and took immediate advantage. They held a double-digit lead in the first quarter and led by 20 at the break. The same offense that looked broken in Cleveland was humming at Fiserv Forum.
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Brunson brought his chef’s hat to cook. He dropped 22 points in the opening quarter on 9-of-10 shooting with three rebounds and two assists.
Towns picked it up in the second quarter with 12 points. The Knicks went into halftime with 77 points while shooting 60 percent on treys.
It came after a hard and critical look at the film of the defeat to the Cavs on Tuesday, when they scored just 11 points in the third quarter — a season low for them in any quarter — while shooting 3-for-24.
Brunson said that defeat went beyond just missed shots.
“Let’s not be results-based. Let’s be process-based,” the point guard said. “And the process wasn’t there.”
The process looked perfectly fine against the Bucks — Brunson’s included.
“Our physicality offensively was there because we set screens the right way and then we played fast,” Brown gushed. “So it takes all of us to do it and when you do it and have one of those guys [like Brunson], he’s going to be able to break loose. That was good to see tonight.”