Huge Second Half Pushes Knicks Past Bucks

AP Photo/Frank Franklin II

By Kenneth Teape (@teapester725)

Friday, April 5^th, 2013

Post Game Recap

Final Score: Milwaukee Bucks: 83 New York Knicks: 101

The Knicks were honoring the 40^th anniversary of the 1972-1973 championship winning team and the current Knicks put on an amazing performance in the third quarter to push them past the Bucks tonight at Madison Square Garden.  The win pushed the Knicks NBA high winning streak to 11 games, the longest since the 1993-1994 team that made a run to the NBA finals.  The Knicks magic number to clinch the Atlantic Division is now sitting at two, as the Nets sit six games behind the Knicks with seven to play. They also currently hold a 1 ½ game lead over the Pacers for the coveted second seed in the Eastern Conference.  The Knicks will now have a day off before heading into Oklahoma City Sunday night and put their 11-game winning streak on the line. 

  

-Positives

• The third quarter for the Knicks tonight was utterly dominating and they put away the Bucks during this time.  After a lackluster first half in which the Knicks struggled and scored only 36 points and trailed the Bucks by nine, they came out with a different mindset and approach in the third quarter after watching the ceremony for the 1972-1973 championship team.  The Knicks got on track from deep, knocking down eight three points in the third after making only one of their 12 attempts in the first half.  This overwhelmed the Bucks, who went into halftime with a nine point lead to heading into the fourth quarter down 12, punctuated with a heave at the third quarter buzzer by Jason Kidd that found the bottom of the net.

• Carmelo Anthony went off yet again for the Knicks, becoming the first player since his idol Bernard King in 1984-1985 to score 40+ points in three consecutive games.  Tonight he ended the night with 41, going 17 of 28 from the field, three of seven from the three point line and a perfect four of four from the charity stripe.  Anthony put on a show in the third quarter, going seven of nine from the field and two of three from deep for 18 points as the Knicks pulled away from the Bucks. Anthony has scored an unprecedented 131 points in his last three games and is doing it efficiently, shooting 64.2 percent and going 58 out of 81 from the field.  In tonight’s game another impressive stat for Anthony was the 14 rebounds, a game high.  With the Knicks lacking any big men available outside of Tyson Chandler, Anthony made sure he helped on the glass and put on a dominant performance.

• J.R. Smith got back on his efficiency swing tonight, playing sidekick to Anthony and scoring 30 points in the game.  Smith went 11 of 22 from the field, including a very good five of 11 from the three point line and three of four from the charity stripe.  Smith also had a big third quarter to go along with Anthony, scoring 12 points of his own coming out of halftime.  Smith was monkey see, monkey do with Anthony in the scoring department but also in the rebounding one as well, as Smith grabbed 10 rebounds of his own to lend a helping hand to the shorthanded Knicks frontcourt.

• It was an impressive night for the Knicks on the glass, who have been a lower echelon rebounding team all season.  Tonight they outrebounded the Bucks 50-40, even more impressive by the fact that the Knicks were without Kenyon Martin tonight and had Chandler as the only big man available.  The strong performances on the glass by Anthony and Smith really helped the short-handed Knicks tonight who put on a dominant performance in the second half yet again en route to another victory.

• The effort on the boards combined with the effort on the defensive end is what kept the Knicks in the game before the offense came around in the second half.  On the night the Knicks held the Bucks to 38.2 percent shooting on 29 of 76 from the field.  The Knicks made it difficult on the Bucks all night, as they held them to 21 points or less in every quarter but the second.  The Knicks outscored the Bucks 32-26 in the paint also, another telling stat into just how difficult the Knicks made it on the Bucks to score tonight.

-Negatives

• In such a dominant performance there were not many things that the Knicks did poorly tonight.  The only negatives that stick out is their offensive performance in the first half, as the Knicks struggled with their shot and could not mount any type of offensive attack.  They have to avoid that kind of start come playoff time because there are not many teams they will be able to keep up with scoring only 36 points in a half.  One reason for the halftime deficit was the inability to slow the Bucks down from the perimeter, as Brandon Jennings and J.J. Redick lit the Knicks up from the perimeter, combining for nine of 17 from the three point line.  The Bucks shot an impressive 12 of 30 from the three point line on the night, the only negative defensively for the Knicks on the night.