Brunson scores 45 in second straight 40-point game, Knicks beat Bulls 128-117
CHICAGO (AP) — Jalen Brunson scored 45 in his second straight 40-point game, and the New York Knicks beat the Chicago Bulls 128-117 on Tuesday night.
Brunson delivered his 10th 40-point game this season after scoring 43 in a win at Milwaukee on Sunday. He joined Bernard King and Patrick Ewing as the only Knicks players with multiple streaks of 40-point games in one season. Brunson, who played at Adlai Stevenson High School in suburban Lincolnshire, Illinois, nailed seven 3-pointers.
“Outside of the city, where I went to high school, it's a special place," Brunson said. “I have a lot of people from there come to the game and support me. That means more to me than scoring 45.”
OG Anunoby scored 24. Donte DiVincenzo hit a heave from midcourt to end the first half and finished with 21 points, helping fourth-place New York win its second in a row after losing four of five.
Josh Hart scored 17 and grabbed 13 rebounds, and the Knicks also got some payback for a loss at Chicago on Friday. The two teams close out the regular season in New York on Sunday.
DeMar DeRozan led the Bulls with 34 points. Coby White scored 24 and made two 3-pointers, giving him a franchise single-season record 205. Nikola Vucevic added 26 points.
There was a comical play early in the second quarter after Andre Drummond poked the ball away from New York's Bojan Bogdanovic on the perimeter. Torrey Craig scooped up the ball and tried to throw an alley-oop off the backboard to himself with no defenders in sight and Chicago down by nine.
A trailing Drummond, thinking it was for him, went up. The players collided and the ball hit everything but the bottom of the net. Drummond injured his ankle moments later going for a rebound on the Knicks' end and exited the game.
“I just wanted to try to create some excitement,” Craig said.
Coach Billy Donovan called time after the missed dunk and let Craig and his teammates know he was not happy.
“To me, it was just really disappointing,” he said.
The Knicks went on a 13-2 run to start the second half and led 81-64 after Brunson's three-point play. The Bulls got back into it, with DeRozan scoring 15 in the quarter, and pulled within four early in the fourth.
A dunk by Anunoby and a 3 by Brunson made it 112-103. Brunson also nailed a step-back 3 off a nasty crossover to bump New York's lead to 117-104 with 5:45 remaining.
Brunson torched the Bulls 24 in the first half as the Knicks grabbed a 68-62 lead.
He made 4 of 5 3-pointers, including one with about a minute left to make it a nine-point game before things took a wild turn in the closing seconds. Vucevic hit one from the top of the key with six seconds remaining. White then stole the inbounds and set a franchise single-season record with his 205th 3 when he pulled up from the wing, and DiVincenzo hit a halfcourt heave to send New York to the locker room up by six.
Before the game, Donovan said he had not been contacted by Kentucky about replacing John Calipari and insisted his “total commitment” is with the Bulls. He acknowledged he was flattered by the speculation.
“You always are, right? But I haven’t spoken to anybody," he said.
Donovan was an assistant at Kentucky under Rick Pitino and coached Florida to NCAA championships in 2006 and 2007. He left in 2015 to coach the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder and is in his fourth season with the Bulls.
Chicago guard Ayo Dosunmu (bruised right quadriceps) missed the game. Donovan wasn't sure how long he will be out.
UP NEXT
Knicks: Visit Boston on Thursday night.
Bulls: Visit Detroit on Thursday night.
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This story has been updated to correct the opponent for New York's next game. The Knicks are at Boston on Thursday, not at Brooklyn.
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