Knicks defense falters again in 3rd loss to Bucks this season
NEW YORK — Julius Randle and Jalen Brunson have something in common: They have each scored 40 points against the Milwaukee Bucks this season.
Brunson almost did it a second time in the first of consecutive games against the Bucks on Saturday.
He put on a first-half masterclass with 21 points in the first two quarters and ended the day with a game-high 36 points.
It was quite the scoring outburst against an elite-level guard in Damian Lillard for a player who’s considered by some to be too small to win a championship.
The results, however, have been constant — regardless of a monster night for a Knicks scorer.
Saturday’s 130-111 loss to the Bucks marks the Knicks’ ninth straight loss in the series since the Bucks won the title in 2021.
The Knicks lost games five, six and seven of the streak by a modest combined total of 15 points.
And have now lost each of the last two games by 20 or more.
“Our offense isn’t the problem really. We’re scoring 110,” Brunson said in the locker room postgame. “But letting up 130 is not ideal. The offensive side of the ball we can fix that easily or make a couple of tweaks. But the defensive side of the ball, we need to be better.”
Brunson scored 45 in the In-Season Tournament opener in Milwaukee and the Knicks lost by five. Randle erupted for 41 in the Tournament quarterfinal, but the Bucks won by 24.
Brunson’s 36 on Saturday didn’t help the Knicks where they needed it most.
“I mean we lost. Stats don’t really mean s--- when we’re losing,” Josh Hart said. “I don’t think anybody can tell me how many points [Nikola] Jokic or Jamal Murray or Michael Porter Jr. — how much they averaged last year [with the Denver Nuggets]. But they got a f------ ring. At the end of the day, the stats don’t mean anything. We can’t play to get stats. We got to play for wins and play together.”
Defense. Yep. It’s that word again.
The Knicks are 13-5 when they hold opponents to 115 points or fewer this season.
They are 3-7 when they don’t, and of the 10 games they have allowed more than 115 points, seven have been against legitimate championship contenders.
The Knicks are a middle-of-the-road team on the season by defensive rating metrics. They rank dead-last in defensive rating — allowing 124.8 points per 100 possessions — since the Bucks hung 146 on them in the In-Season Tournament quarterfinal on Dec. 5.
The defensive struggles predate Mitchell Robinson’s potential season-ending ankle injury, but his absence only compounds matters for a team suddenly light at the center position.
But where do the Knicks start? Brunson says there’s no one area the team can improve to flip a switch on the defensive end.
“It’s collectively we need to be better, run them off the three-point line, not foul,” he said. “There’s a bunch of things we can go on and say we need to be better at. Collectively and entirely we need to be better.”
Randle sees it, too. His 41-point explosion against the Bucks was sullied by a team that managed to score 105 more points than he did.
“I think [these last] two games [against Milwaukee], the majority [of our issues] has been on defense,” he said. “We’re struggling to get stops. We’ve gotta clean that up.”
That is not indicative of a Tom Thibodeau-coached team.
Thibodeau’s signature is a gritty defense that translates no matter which players are on the floor.
The Bucks, of course, are a different kind of animal.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Lillard scored 77 points as a trio, and Malik Beasley and Bobby Portis combined for eight threes and 41 points as alternate scoring options.
The Bucks have shot 50% or better from downtown in all three of their matchups against the Knicks this season. The Knicks also got pummeled on the glass, 53-41, on Saturday, a deficit largely attributed to Isaiah Hartenstein’s early foul trouble.
“They got a lot of weapons. So, you gotta fly around,” Thibodeau said postgame. “There’s times where we did it, times we didn’t do it as well as we should have. I thought that every aspect of the game, we were a step behind: defensive transition, usually we’re a very good rebounding team. We didn’t rebound the ball. We didn’t score in transition, ourselves. Just a low-energy type game. So we gotta bounce back.”
The Knicks have another game against the Bucks on Monday, marking the fourth of five games against Milwaukee this season with each of the first four coming before the calendar changes.
The team welcomes, maybe even relishes in the challenge of owning such a difficult schedule. It’s clear the Knicks, and particularly their stars, can score.
Now, it’s time to get back to the basics.
It’s time to string together some stops.
