Opposing defenses are doing anything they can to try and slow down the red-hot Jalen Brunson.
He has scored 30 or more points each of the Knicks’ past three games, shooting 54.2 percent from the field and an incredible 52.0 percent from 3-point range.
Since coming back from his sprained ankle, he’s scored 30 or more points six times in 11 games.
That has led to opposing coaches sending double teams his way more and more. And it hasn’t fazed him.
Brunson scored 20 of his 35 points in the first quarter of the Knicks’ 117-101 win over the Raptors on Tuesday night in Toronto. As the double teams emerged, he became more of a distributor.
“He was really patient with it,” coach Mike Brown said after the game. “He played off of two feet. He made on-time, on-target passes. He was fantastic when they started sending two at him, whether it was to hit them or it was to blitz them in a pick-and-roll. I also have to give the guy that hunts in the middle of the floor and the rest of the guys that space the floor the right way, I gotta give them a lot of credit too, because they helped Jalen make his decisions easier.”
Brown believes the Knicks have begun to find their identity.
“We’re starting to figure out who we are,” Brown said. “I’ve said this before, early in the season, we had a lot of injuries during the preseason, so I didn’t have a good feel for this team or as good a feel as I needed to have. And that’s part of the reason we struggled on the road. It’s a lot of the reason why we struggled on the road to a certain degree. Once I started getting more comfortable it helped the group get more comfortable.”
Jordan Clarkson’s 12 points on Tuesday brought him to 8,283 points off the bench in his career, passing Manu Ginobili (8,278) for ninth all time since the league began tracking that stat.
