The Knicks entered their NBA In-Season Tournament quarterfinal game on Tuesday night against the Milwaukee Bucks on the road ranked third in the league in overall defensive rating and first in opponents points allowed at 106.
Uncharacteristically, it was a lack of defense that was at the root of their elimination from the event. The Knicks gave up the most points in a game they have played all season, losing 122-146 and being eliminated from the inaugural showcase.
It was an outlier that the Knicks defense put up little resistance in seeing the Bucks shoot 60.4% (55-91) in total and 60.5% on 3-point attempts (23-38). Two-time league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo spearheaded the charge with 35 points (15-22), 10 assists and 8 rebounds. Damian Lillard added 28 points and 7 assists for the 15-6 Bucks (No. 2 in the Eastern Conference), which will now face the 11-8 Indiana Pacers (No. 6) in Las Vegas this afternoon in the semifinals.
The Los Angeles Lakers (13-9) will meet the New Orleans Pelicans (12-10) in the other semifinals match up. The 12-8 Knicks, No. 5 in the East, will resume their schedule tomorrow in Boston versus the conference’s current No. 1 seed Celtics (15-5), which lost to the Pacers 122-112 in the East’s other tournament semifinal game.
The Knicks will host the Toronto Raptors at Madison Square Garden on Monday before beginning a six-day, four-game Western Conference road trip next Wednesday. They’ll return to play in New York on December 20 but will be in Brooklyn to meet the Nets.
“It’s hard to win on the road against a team like that,” said Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau of the Bucks.
“We were slow reacting tonight. We didn’t play well tonight. Now the challenge is go home, don’t change how you look at each game. Every game reveals things to you.”
Brunson assessed the Knicks’ performance succinctly.
“Defensively, we didn’t really do anything all game. That’s the story. That’s it,” he said. “They hit a lot of shots. They got comfortable. It’s on us to make them uncomfortable.”
Bucks first-year head coach Adrian Griffin was encouraged by his team’s showing.
“Tonight was a huge step. We wanted to get to Vegas but when we get to Vegas we’ve got to take care of business. We’ve got two games to win there,” he emphasized. “I thought tonight our team was the better team. Our bench was terrific and I thought the crowd was terrific. It had all the makings of a playoff game.”
Lillard viewed the onslaught as his team’s top performance.
“I thought this was probably our best offensive game,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to turn into a team that does that every night, but I do think we have that type of explosiveness. We can’t depend on having these types of nights every time, but it’s definitely a look at the kind of nights we can have offensively.”
Knicks forward Julius Randle, who scored a season high 41 points on Tuesday, was named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week on Monday.
Randle averaged 24.7 points on 54.9 percent shooting with 13.3 rebounds and 7.3 assists in 36 minutes per game, in three games during the league’s schedule from November 27 through December 3.
