Knicks' Bench Crushed Milwaukee Twice. The Rebounds Made It a Rout.
GOATIFYThe scoreboard said New York Knicks 117, Milwaukee Bucks 85. The more revealing numbers came from the middle of the game: New York won the second quarter 32-13, let a 24-point halftime cushion shrink to 13, and then won the fourth by exactly the same 32-13 margin. It was a 32-point victory that contained an unmistakable warning about how quickly control can slip, followed by an equally clear demonstration of how to take it back.
Jalen Brunson scored 23 points, Karl-Anthony Towns contributed 21 and 16 rebounds, and OG Anunoby hit five threes for 19. Those familiar names carried the headlines, but the bench supplied the game-changing minutes. Tyler Kolek scored 12 in 15 minutes, Andre Drummond gathered 14 rebounds, and Miles McBride finished a remarkable plus-39. The Knicks' fourth consecutive win moved them to 6-4 after an 0-3 opening; the Bucks fell to 1-10 with their seventh straight defeat.
Tuesday's result at Madison Square Garden was not a tale of New York having an untouchable shooting night. Its three-point edge was just one made basket, 17-16. The decisive advantages were the extra possessions, pressure on Milwaukee's interior, and the ability to respond when the visitors briefly rediscovered their offense.
Kolek and McBride turned a close first half into a 24-point lead
New York entered the second period with only a 26-21 advantage. Nothing about a five-point lead after 12 minutes guaranteed a rout, especially against a Milwaukee team capable of making threes in bunches. The shift came when the Knicks stopped depending entirely on their starting scorers to generate the next good possession. Their reserves raised the tempo without abandoning the physicality that later defined the game.
Kolek and Anunoby combined for a 10-point burst that pushed the lead to 36-23. After Ousmane Dieng briefly interrupted the sequence with a three-pointer, Kolek scored again and New York launched another 10-0 run. Brunson and Anunoby closed the half with successive threes, leaving a 58-34 score. Milwaukee managed only 13 points in the period. An advantage that had been one or two possessions became a mountain within minutes.
Kolek's final line was unusually efficient for a reserve asked to change the flow rather than dominate the ball: 12 points on five-of-six shooting and four assists in roughly 15 minutes. He made two of three from long range. Those numbers matter because the game had offered Milwaukee chances to recover whenever Brunson went to the bench. Instead, Kolek provided an alternative source of creation and was confident enough to finish plays himself. He was a connector, not merely somebody filling minutes.
McBride's contribution illustrates a different form of influence. He scored only eight points, but New York outscored Milwaukee by 39 across his 25 minutes. Single-game plus-minus does not prove that one player caused every swing in a lineup, and it depends heavily on teammates and opponent combinations. Still, such a stark number fits the larger story of how well the Knicks' second unit functioned on both ends. It supplied defense, activity and timely spacing at the moment the Bucks needed a stabilizing run.
That reserve output had practical implications beyond Tuesday's margin. Coach Mike Brown did not need to play any starter more than 28 minutes on the first night of a back-to-back. Josh Hart remained out because of illness after two absences related to ankle soreness; New York nevertheless maintained useful depth and avoided asking an exhausted starting five to carry every important stretch. Cleveland arrives Wednesday, and preserving energy while winning emphatically is a valuable combination.
The second-quarter lesson is not simply that New York can make threes. Anunoby hit five over the full game, but the real breakthrough was the quality of its rotation minutes: defensive stops flowing into possession after possession, accompanied by enough shooting to punish a Bucks defense that could not settle.
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The Knicks created the possessions Milwaukee could not recover
The most punishing mismatch appeared after missed shots. New York collected 59 player rebounds to Milwaukee's 32, including 18 offensive boards. Even allowing for differences in how box-score providers classify team rebounds, the direction of the contest was unmistakable. The Knicks earned repeated opportunities to keep possessions alive while the Bucks struggled to secure enough stops that ended with a rebound. That is especially costly when a team is already behind.
Towns supplied the backbone with 16 rebounds alongside his 21 points, adding three assists and two steals. He has now opened the campaign with 10 consecutive double-doubles, a streak that puts him alongside prominent names in Knicks history and one shy of Willis Reed's franchise benchmark of 11 to begin a season. A 21-point night is significant on its own, but the rebounding tells more about how Towns affected this particular opponent. His presence protected the defensive glass and pushed the matchup toward New York's physical strengths.
Drummond's work was even more compressed: 14 boards in approximately 15 minutes, with five offensive rebounds. It is an extraordinary amount of glass work in limited court time. His two points were almost incidental. When a reserve center can win that many loose possessions without having plays called for him, a team gains freedom to play through its guards and wings while maintaining a strong interior presence. He gave New York the kind of second-unit identity that can survive cold shooting.
The rebounding margin also helps explain why the three-point numbers deceive. Milwaukee made 16 of 44 from beyond the arc; New York made 17 of 44. A single extra triple does not produce a 32-point blowout. The Knicks attempted 89 field goals to Milwaukee's 79 and also visited the free-throw line 25 times to the Bucks' 10. New York made 20 free throws, Milwaukee nine. Extra tries at the rim and extra trips to the stripe accumulate into a margin the deep-ball comparison cannot account for.
Milwaukee's starting frontcourt never established a comparable platform. Myles Turner had three points and three rebounds, while Kyle Kuzma scored five and grabbed five. Together they made only two of 11 field-goal attempts. The pair's modest production is not the complete explanation for a team defeat, but against Towns and Drummond it was a severe disadvantage. Jaime Jaquez Jr. scored 16 and Ryan Rollins had 14, yet those perimeter contributions could not repair the gap inside.
New York's 18 offensive boards were especially damaging because they often came after the Bucks had already forced the kind of missed shot they wanted. Defensive execution means far less when the possession does not actually finish. In that sense, the 117 points tell two stories at once: New York scoring and Milwaukee failing to secure enough chances of its own.
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Shop Now ↗Milwaukee cut it to 11. New York answered with another 32-13 quarter
The Bucks were not out of the game at halftime simply because a comeback looked improbable. They won the third quarter 38-27, their best stretch by far, as Jaquez and Rollins helped create better perimeter opportunities. Ryan Rollins made four threes in the contest, Jaquez provided steady drives and 16 points, and Milwaukee's offense briefly looked capable of making the previous half irrelevant. Dieng's late three trimmed the deficit to 85-72 at the end of the period.
The opening possession of the fourth made it closer still. Kel'el Ware finished an alley-oop for 85-74, reducing the margin to 11. That was the moment the Knicks needed a composed response rather than another stretch of coasting. They delivered one immediately. Towns hit a three, Kolek made another, and the offensive flow returned to the side that had controlled the second quarter.
Towns added another three early in the period. Kolek's driving finish stretched the lead to 96-76 with just under ten minutes to play. Then Anunoby hit consecutive threes that made it 106-78 with approximately six and a half minutes left. What had briefly been a manageable 11-point game became a blowout again. New York won the final frame 32-13, exactly mirroring the second-quarter margin that created its original cushion.
The symmetry is more meaningful than a neat statistical curiosity. New York could impose its identity early, lose its grip for a quarter, and still return to the same winning mechanisms. Towns gave it a frontcourt scoring outlet when the pressure rose, Anunoby restored the outside threat, and Kolek continued the second-unit momentum. The Bucks, by contrast, could not sustain the better ball movement and shooting they had found in the third.
Milwaukee's context is difficult but does not excuse the result. The Bucks played without leading scorer Tyler Herro, sidelined by a bruised right knee. They were also on the second night of a back-to-back. Those are real constraints for a team already struggling to build a stable offensive hierarchy. Yet a 1-10 start and seven consecutive losses require more than a healthy scorer to explain. The failure to rebound and the inability to defend for four quarters were visible even in moments when Milwaukee's shots were falling.
Both clubs face another test on Wednesday. New York hosts Cleveland, and Milwaukee welcomes the Los Angeles Lakers. It would be premature to treat one November win as proof of the Knicks' championship ceiling, just as it would be simplistic to reduce the Bucks' season to an injury report. But Tuesday supplied something concrete: New York can win without squeezing every minute from its starters, while Milwaukee has yet to show it can withstand a physical opponent through all four quarters.
Four straight victories have taken the Knicks from an 0-3 start to 6-4, but this one stood apart for the breadth of its contributions. Brunson supplied the familiar control, Towns scored and rebounded, Anunoby made the shots that ended any suspense, and Kolek, McBride and Drummond turned the reserve minutes into an advantage rather than an interval to survive.
There is an obvious caution in the third-quarter lapse. New York let Milwaukee climb from 24 down at the half to within 11 early in the fourth. Better opponents will not always allow the Knicks a second 32-13 quarter to settle matters. But the immediate correction, combined with such a commanding edge on the boards, made Tuesday more than a routine win against a struggling team. The Bucks briefly found an opening; the Knicks closed it with force.
