It didn’t look like Jalen Brunson would score 40 points on Sunday. It looked scarier than that when he left the game in the third quarter and went back to the locker room with an apparent shoulder injury.
He returned and came back out on the court to thunderous applause, leading the host Knicks past the Bucks 140-106 blowout. Brunson finished the night with 44 points (16-of-26 shooting), six assists and one turnover. This was Brunson’s 17th 40+ point game as a Knick, tying him for third all-time in Knicks history with Carmelo Anthony (Patrick Ewing, 30, and Bernard King, 23, are ahead of Brunson).
As to Brunson’s shoulder, Brunson brushed off questions about it postgame, while coach Tom Thibodeau said his star point guard had “a little bit of a stinger, he’s fine.” Josh Hart had a better line about his friend, a big Philadelphia Eagles fan (via the Associated Press).
“Yeah, he wanted to see the score of the Eagles game,” Hart said. “So I told him next time he could just ask somebody and not go into the back, but to each his own.”
Brunson had 23 of his points in the first quarter. Karl-Anthony Towns added 30 points for New York. Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 24 and Damian Lillard had 22 for Milwaukee.
