New York had watched most of a 24-point halftime lead disappear when Milwaukee scored the opening basket of the fourth quarter. The margin was down to 11. Over the next five minutes and eight seconds, the Knicks outscored Milwaukee 21–4. Karl-Anthony Towns and Tyler Kolek supplied the first 15 of those New York points, and OG Anunoby made consecutive threes to turn a contest that had reopened into one the Bucks could no longer reach. The Knicks won 117–85 at Madison Square Garden on November 10, extending their winning run to four games and improving to 6–4 after beginning the season with three defeats.

Towns finished with 21 points and 16 rebounds, extending his run of regular-season double-doubles to 14 games, a sequence that dates to April 1 according to Field Level Media. Jalen Brunson led the Knicks with 23 points. Anunoby scored 19, with five three-pointers. For Milwaukee, Jaime Jaquez Jr. scored 16 and Ryan Rollins 14. The Bucks fell to 1–10, their poorest start through 11 games since 1993–94, and have now lost seven straight. The two teams took exactly the same number of three-point attempts, an unusual starting point for explaining a margin of 32. New York's advantage came primarily from what it did inside the arc and how often it earned free throws.

Two runs settled the game

Milwaukee kept the game close in the first quarter and had several narrow leads. Landry Shamet's three made it 18–16 for the Knicks late in the period. New York finished the opening quarter ahead 26–21, then started creating a different kind of game in the second. Kolek made a three to put the lead in double figures and supplied scoring during a period when the Knicks could operate without relying exclusively on Brunson to make the first decision. Brunson and Anunoby both made threes late in the half, with Anunoby providing the final basket before the break. The Knicks had won the quarter 32–13 and led 58–34.

The next 12 minutes contained Milwaukee's strongest answer. The Bucks scored 38 in the third, more than in the first half, and New York scored 27. Then Jaquez found Kel'el Ware for an alley-oop at the start of the fourth to make it 85–74. The difference between that basket and the final margin matters. Milwaukee had forced New York to restart its offense with the game still in reach. The Knicks responded with points from a starting center, a reserve ball-handler and a wing. At 106–78 after Anunoby's back-to-back threes, Milwaukee faced a wider deficit than it had at halftime, with substantially less time to find another response.

New York's second and fourth quarters had identical 32–13 scores. The combined margin in those two periods was 38 points. Milwaukee actually outscored the Knicks by six across the first and third quarters combined, a reminder that the final score folds several distinct passages into one number. For the Bucks, their 38-point quarter deserves examination for what produced an effective stretch of offense. The difficulty was sustaining enough control at both ends once New York was challenged. For the Knicks, the decisive evidence was the ability to produce a second sustained response after the first lead had become vulnerable.

The play-by-play shows why the response was more than a sequence of made jump shots. McBride assisted Towns' first three of the fourth quarter and then drew an offensive foul on Ware. On the next Knicks possession, Towns missed two free throws, but Shamet retrieved the second miss and assisted Kolek's three. Later, after a Milwaukee basket, Kolek supplied the pass for Towns' driving finish that brought New York to 100 points. Between Anunoby's two threes, the Bucks committed a shot-clock violation. The stretch combined a recovered miss, a foul drawn on defense, a drive and a possession in which Milwaukee could not get a shot away.

The arithmetic behind 117–85

The Knicks made 17 of 44 threes and the Bucks made 16 of 44. The difference from beyond the arc was three points. New York made 23 two-pointers to Milwaukee's 14, accounting for another 18 points, and its 20 made free throws against Milwaukee's nine supplied the remaining 11. Those figures come from separating total field goals into twos and threes and comparing the two teams' scoring at the line. They explain how a game with almost identical three-point results ended in a rout. A reader who saw Anunoby close the door with two threes saw an important moment in the game, but that moment alone explains little about where New York built the full advantage.

Offensive rebounds were another part of the separation. The Knicks had 18 and the Bucks seven. An offensive rebound can produce an immediate putback, give a shooter another look or allow an offense to reset against a defense that has already done much of its work on a possession. The game totals cannot tell us how many of those rebounds became points without matching each one to the next events in the play-by-play. They do show that New York repeatedly denied Milwaukee the end of a defensive possession. The Knicks also attempted 25 free throws to Milwaukee's 10. Even with the Bucks converting nine of their 10, they could not make up for the difference in opportunities.

Towns offers a useful example of how those categories intersect. The NBA's player log records five makes on 14 field-goal attempts, two threes from nine tries and nine free throws from 14 attempts. Those are modest shooting percentages for a 21-point night, but the attempt volume at the line still supplied nine points. His 16 rebounds, 13 of them defensive, also meant Milwaukee got fewer opportunities to extend the possessions he ended with a board. He added three assists. His double-double is worth noting for its continuity across seasons, and the underlying numbers show that his value in this game survived an uneven night as a jump shooter.

A rotation that could keep Brunson fresh

Brunson's 23 points gave New York its leading scorer, and the bench helped keep the game from depending on the captain's minutes. No Knicks starter played more than 28, according to the Associated Press. Kolek scored 12, with an influence at two useful moments: the second-quarter separation and the fourth-quarter response. Andre Drummond collected 14 rebounds in 15 minutes. Miles McBride, also known as Deuce, scored eight, and the Knicks were plus-39 during his minutes. That last figure is a team margin while a player was on the floor. It reflects teammates, opposing lineups and the timing of the runs, and it cannot assign 39 points of individual value to McBride.

The rotation context gives those contributions some practical weight. The Knicks were beginning a back-to-back, with Cleveland due at the Garden on Wednesday. Josh Hart missed a third straight game. The previous two absences were associated with right ankle soreness, while the AP reported that an illness kept him out against Milwaukee. In that situation, Towns' work on the glass, Drummond's rebounding behind him and productive guard minutes from Kolek and McBride gave coach Mike Brown room to distribute the workload. Those roles overlap in places, especially when a lineup needs to finish defensive possessions, but their contributions let the Knicks keep different ways of scoring and recovering the ball available throughout the game.

The approach has roots in the roster that won the 2026 championship. New York acquired Anunoby in December 2023 and Towns at the start of the 2024–25 season, with Brunson already in place. They eventually helped the franchise beat San Antonio in five games and win its first championship since 1973. The league's review of the title run credits Brunson's creation, Towns' passing and rebounding and Anunoby's two-way play. In the playoffs, Towns averaged 15.9 points, 10.6 rebounds and 4.9 assists, while Anunoby made 48.9 percent of his threes. On Tuesday, their influence took a different statistical shape, with Anunoby contributing the more efficient outside shooting and Towns creating more value at the line and on the glass. The same personnel gave the coach several ways to answer the game in front of him.

Milwaukee's rebuild meets an immediate test

Milwaukee's starting point is the July trade that sent Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to Miami. In return, the Bucks received Tyler Herro, Jaquez, Ware, Kasparas Jakučionis and draft assets, including the selection that became Nate Ament. All five matter to the story of this game. Herro, the team's leading scorer, missed his first game of the season because of a bruised right knee. Jaquez led the team in scoring and delivered the pass for Ware's fourth-quarter dunk. Jakučionis and Ament scored 11 and 10 off the bench. The transaction gave Milwaukee pieces across several positions, and November is providing an early look at what those players can do together and what the rotation needs when its leading scorer is absent.

Availability explains a portion of the offensive challenge against New York. The results before Tuesday reveal a broader problem. Milwaukee's one win came against Indiana on October 26. Among the defeats that followed were a 32-point loss to Houston and a 25-point loss to Cleveland. Field Level Media counted eight double-digit losses in the Bucks' first 11 games. Their game in New York added a particularly clear example of two things to monitor in the weeks ahead: how often the defense can end a possession after forcing a miss and how effectively the offense can score when the three-point totals are even and it is getting few trips to the line. The third quarter showed Milwaukee could generate points for a stretch without Herro. The second and fourth supplied the more urgent evidence about consistency.

New York had already beaten Cleveland 109–97 on November 7, when Towns had 29 points and 13 rebounds. He made 11 of 21 field-goal attempts in that game, compared with five of 14 against Milwaukee. With Cleveland next on the schedule, that contrast illustrates the different shapes the same center's production can take inside one winning run.

Both teams were scheduled to play again on November 11, the Knicks at home against Cleveland and the Bucks at home against the Los Angeles Lakers. The short turnaround gives the result a practical consequence. New York can take its fourth straight win into the next game with starters who played fewer minutes than a tight finish would typically demand. For Milwaukee, another game arrives before there is much practice time to address the gaps on the glass and at the line. The records are still early-season records. The evidence from the Garden is specific: over 48 minutes, the defending champions sustained pressure in several different ways, and when the score narrowed, they had enough contributors to make the next stretch decisive.

Sources

Archive photograph: Karl-Anthony Towns during the 2022 NBA All-Star weekend in Cleveland. Erik Drost, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Shown at reduced resolution.

Talal Osman

Source: www.nba.com