Floor leader Brunson is a serious MVP candidate
MILWAUKEE — This is nothing new.
Not for a Bucks team unable to stop Jalen Brunson from scoring all season nor for a Knicks team with front-row seats to one of the best shows in basketball.
It’s Brunson’s MVP campaign coming to an arena near you, and while it might be difficult to make a case for the Knicks’ All-star guard to win the award outright, it’s clear he belongs in the conversation.
It’s hard to find five players having a better season than Brunson, who led the Knicks to a come-frombehind victory over the Eastern Conference’s No. 2-seeded Bucks on their own Fiserv Forum floors on Sunday night.
Just another day at the office for a guard whose ascent to stardom has reached a crescendo when it matters most at the end of the season.
“I see him play like that all the time,” said starting center Mitchell Robinson. “It’s great. It gives us a chance to win.”
Brunson scored 43 points on 50 percent shooting in the victory for the Knicks, who handed the Bucks their fourth straight loss and sixth defeat in their last seven games while simultaneously snapping their own skid of four losses in New York’s previous five games.
Brunson scored 17 of the Knicks’ first 25 points and tallied 23 points by the half before the Bucks deployed a variety of defensive tactics, all of which proved futile after a 10-point Milwaukee halftime advantage morphed into a 122-109 victory for the Knicks.
“We trapped him. It was effective,” said Bucks head coach Doc Rivers. “We were in a drop a lot. I thought that hurt us. Overall we switched some and then tried to Omaha [trap him].
“You just watch him, man. He has seen every coverage. You can see that. Hell of a player, and his conditioning level is just off the charts.”
Brunson is now averaging 37.2 points per game against the Bucks this season. The star Knicks guard has four games with 36 or more points, including Sunday’s 43-point night and a 45-point game from November.
In short, he has the Bucks’ number — an important note given Sunday’s victory puts a Knicks-bucks second-round playoff series in play.
The Knicks are now tied with the Orlando Magic for the Eastern Conference’s No. 3 seed, but the Magic hold the tiebreaker holding a 3-1 record in the season series.
If the Knicks and Bucks finish second and third and each advance past the first round, they will face each other in Round 2, where a Milwaukee team incapable of defending the point of attack could face their kryptonite head-on.
“I don’t know, the ball goes through the hoop against them,” Brunson said after the game. “I’m averaging 37 but we’re 2-3 [against the Bucks this season]. Before tonight we were 1-3. So no matter what the points were, we weren’t getting wins. Obviously tonight we found a way to win. But their game plan was working for the first four games.”