The drive for Eastern Conference playoff seeding has New York Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau in a tizzy.
“I have no idea what day it is,” Thibodeau said. “It’s the best time of the year.”
New York had Thibodeau floating on clouds after rallying past the Bucks for a 122-109 victory in Milwaukee on Sunday.
The Knicks (46-32) enter Tuesday’s visit to the Chicago Bulls in fourth place in the East but still can finish as high as No. 2 in the conference with four regular-season games remaining.
“It’s important but we got to build off that,” Knicks leading scorer Jalen Brunson said. “We haven’t been playing our best as of late. So this was definitely a big win for us so we have to build off that.”
Brunson struck for a game-high 43 points to lead four Knicks in double figures while adding eight assists and six rebounds. His latest surge against the Bucks raised Brunson’s season scoring average versus Milwaukee to 37.2 points in five games.
Not one to downplay the feat, teammate Donte DiVincenzo said: “But he just had 35 two games in a row. He does it against everybody.”
To be sure, Brunson reached that threshold during Thursday’s home win against Sacramento and a narrow loss at Chicago one night later.
Fighting with the Atlanta Hawks for home-court advantage in the East play-in tournament game between the Nos. 9-10 seeds, the Bulls topped the Knicks 108-100 on Friday behind 25 points and 13 rebounds from Javonte Green, both career bests.
Chicago (37-41) was unable to sustain the momentum at Orlando on Sunday, losing 113-98. The Bulls maintained a one-game edge on Atlanta for ninth place and also hold the tiebreaker.
“We can’t play the Jekyll and Hyde game,” said Bulls leading scorer DeMar DeRozan, who had a game-high 30 points against the Magic. “We have to find some consistency these last couple of games. We’ve just got to.
“We have to be desperate and have a desperate mindset. We need to leave it all out there on the floor. … We have (four) games left; we have to make sure we are trending in the right direction.”
Bulls coach Billy Donovan doesn’t hesitate to identify one area of improvement: ball security.
Chicago committed 21 turnovers against Orlando, with DeRozan (seven) and Ayo Dosunmu (five) on the books for most on the team.
“You don’t want to take all the credit away from a team that forces that many turnovers, but we’re not going to win turning the ball over 21 times, and a lot of it was careless and sloppy,” Donovan said. “Our fundamentals needed to be a whole lot better than they were. DeMar is usually a pretty good guy taking care of the ball, so it’s a little bit uncharacteristic. But there were plays by everybody I thought that contributed.”
The Bulls were without Alex Caruso, who is fighting ankle and toe issues.
The Bulls have won two of the past three meetings against the Knicks, who will host Chicago in the regular-season finale on April 14.
–Field Level Media