Bucks-Knicks Preview

By SANTOSH VENKATARAMAN
Posted Jan 20 2012 2:28PM

New York Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni is calling his team's poor play a "crisis."

A feud between Milwaukee Bucks coach Scott Skiles and volatile shooting guard Stephen Jackson, meanwhile, seems to be getting worse.

The Knicks have dropped four straight while the Bucks are 0-8 on the road and won't have Jackson in Friday night's matchup at Madison Square Garden.

New York stars Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire struggled in a 91-88 home loss to Phoenix on Wednesday, combining for 35 points and shooting 12 of 44.

"I know we're 6-8, I know we're in a little bit of a crisis here," D'Antoni said. "But we're playing hard, playing good defense. There's some good things we're doing. We've just got to figure out the one part and that's the part that should be easiest.

"It's become a problem, and if we solve it, we'll be pretty good. We just have to do it sooner rather than later."

Milwaukee (4-9) is off to its worst start on the road since losing its first 16 in the 1976-77 season. The Bucks' latest issue involving Skiles and Jackson, though, began after a 105-95 home loss to Denver on Tuesday.

Jackson did not play in the second half after missing all six shots and scoring two points in 17 minutes. He later said that he would take the blame for the defeat if that was Skiles' intention after Milwaukee's third straight loss.

Both parties said that the remarks were a non-issue at practice Thursday. Jackson, though, missed the morning shootaround Friday and will not play, with Shaun Livingston starting in his place.

"An unexcused absence from shootaround and will not play tonight," Skiles said. "That's all I am going to say about it."

Jackson has totaled 18 points and shot 6 of 26 over the last three games.

"I wear my emotions on my sleeve, what you see is what you get and I say what I feel," Jackson said Thursday. "That's just me."

Both teams continue to struggle offensively. The Knicks have failed to reach 100 points in six straight games, their longest such stretch with Anthony and Stoudemire together.

"We can't keep making excuses," Stoudemire said. "We need to start pushing forward and get over the hump offensively."

The Bucks shot 41.8 percent Tuesday. Skiles also did not use Andrew Bogut over the final 17 minutes after the center had two points and five rebounds.

"We're not close to really understanding yet how hard we have to play and how hard we have to compete and attention to detail and a whole bunch of things like that," Skiles said.

Milwaukee has won 10 of 12 meetings with New York, taking three of four last season as Brandon Jennings averaged 20.5 points.

Anthony made his Knicks debut with 27 points and 10 rebounds in New York's lone win, 114-108 at home Feb. 23. He and Stoudemire combined for 53 points in the other matchup at MSG, but Jennings led Milwaukee to a 102-96 victory with 37 points March 25.

Bucks beat Knicks 100-86 for first road win

By BRIAN MAHONEY
Posted Jan 20 2012 11:39PM

NEW YORK (AP) Brandon Jennings and the Milwaukee Bucks finally won on the road, and naturally it was at Madison Square Garden.

They play better in New York than the Knicks do.

Jennings scored a season-high 36 points, and the Bucks beat New York 100-86 on Friday night for their first win in nine road games this season.

"Brandon was good. He made some big shots for us," Bucks coach Scott Skiles said. "When we got some separation in the second half, he was carrying us a bit offensively."

The Bucks snapped a three-game overall skid and won for the sixth time in their last seven trips to New York, where the Knicks heard frequent boos after turning the ball over or missing shots right at the rim all night in their fifth straight loss.

Milwaukee dominated the second half behind Jennings, who loves to make the Knicks pay for passing on him with the No. 8 pick in the 2009 draft.

"I love the city just in general. You know it's the Mecca of basketball," Jennings said. "I'm always here in the summer playing basketball in the streets in New York, so you know it's not just The Garden. It's the vibe of New York."

Carmelo Anthony scored 35 points for the Knicks before he was ejected with 1:33 left after picking up his second technical foul of the game after an confrontation with Jennings. Jennings thought it was because of a hand gesture he made after a 3-pointer, adding that "everybody wants to be tough guys between the lines and stuff," but that wasn't the only time Anthony seemed frustrated.

"I don't like to be punked out there so I think that's where the frustration just set in and it started trickling down," Anthony said. "Maybe it was my fault that the frustration set in and I apologized to my teammates for that, but I don't like being in them situations like that. I don't know how to handle those punking situations too well."

The Knicks are averaging just 88.4 points during their skid.

"We're just not sharp and it looks like our legs are deader than the other guys,"' Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni said. "It looks like they're running circles around us a lot of times."

Shaun Livingston added a season-high 18 points for the Bucks in his first start of the season in place of shooting guard Stephen Jackson, who was benched after missing the morning shootaround.

Jennings scored 17 points in the first half, then really toyed with the Knicks in the third quarter. A livid D'Antoni came well onto the floor after calling timeout to scream at point guard Toney Douglas for something after Milwaukee scored to open a 10-point lead, and then Jennings blew it open.

He had two jumpers and two dunks during an 11-2 run, stealing the ball cleanly from behind from an unsuspecting Douglas on one of the dunks, as Milwaukee extended its lead to 78-62 with 2:13 left in the third.

"I thought we played very well," Skiles said. "I thought it may have been our best defensive game. We had very few defensive breakdowns."

The Knicks' only home victory against Milwaukee in the last 3 1/2 seasons was on Feb. 23 in Anthony's first game after being traded from Denver, when it would have seemed impossible to think the Knicks would be so inept offensively. And with the Nuggets coming in Saturday at 11-5, it seems possible the blockbuster trade was a mistake on the Knicks' part.

The deal, along with waiving Chauncey Billups in December to make salary room to acquire Tyson Chandler, left New York with little offensive firepower beyond Anthony and Amare Stoudemire. Both continue to struggle shooting, with Stoudemire hearing loud boos after missing one easy putback in the second half, and there is just nobody else to pick up the slack.

"The mood is obviously not good after a loss, especially to a team you know you should beat. And it's been that way, it's been that way for the last five games," Chandler said. "We have to turn it around, but things are not going to turn around on their own. I've been saying that. We have to make things turn around."

The Knicks have been held below 100 points in seven straight games, tying their worst stretch since D'Antoni became their coach. They shot just 37 percent from the field.

The Bucks got back Mike Dunleavy and Luc Mbah a Moute from injuries, but really all they needed in this one was Jennings, who made six 3-pointers.

Milwaukee opened a quick nine-point lead in the first quarter before settling for a 27-23 edge. Jennings, who went two spots after New York took the long-departed Jordan Hill in 2009, then scored 12 in the second quarter, getting a rebound of his own miss and putting it back for a 55-51 advantage at halftime.

NOTES: Washington (0-6) is the NBA's lone winless road team. ... The Knicks also went seven straight games without 100 points from Dec. 15-27, 2009, according to STATS, LLC. ... Though Jackson referred to his benching as a suspension, it technically wasn't because he's not losing a game's pay. He will likely be fined, the penalty that he assumed came with missing shootaround. Asked about his disappointment in having to sit out in New York, he said: "Of course I want to play, regardless whether it's New York, Africa, Tibet. I don't (care) where it is. I want to play."

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Follow Brian Mahoney on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Briancmahoney

Notebook: Bucks 100, Knicks 86

By Josh Newman, for NBA.com
Posted Friday January 20, 2012 11:05PM

THE FACTS: Brandon Jennings scored 23 of his game-high 36 points between the second and third quarters as the Milwaukee Bucks picked up their first road win of the season, 100-86, over the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks, who received a team-high 35 points from Carmelo Anthony, have now lost five in a row, the last three of which have come at home.

QUOTABLE: "I really don't blame them. We're not playing well enough not to be booed."
-Knicks head coach Mike D'Antoni on his reaction to the booing from the home fans throughout the second half.

THE STAT: You can play defense all you want, but if you don't score, you're not going to win many games. Friday marked the seventh time in 15 games this season that the Knicks failed to crack the 90-point mark as they fell to 1-6 in those contests.

TURNING POINT: The Bucks and Knicks were tied at 50 with 46 seconds to play in the first half. At that juncture, the Bucks went on a 29-17 run spanning the rest of the second quarter and all of the third quarter to take a 79-67 lead into the fourth. Jennings began to catch fire late in the second and into the third as he netted 23 points between the two periods, while taking advantage of the Knicks' problems at the point guard position.

QUOTABLE II: "I'm over that situation now, it was three years ago. I'm a Buck now, I'm making the best of this situation and I'm trying my hardest to get this team back to the postseason."
--Jennings on the fact he was a one-time target of the Knicks, who ended up passing on him in the 2009 NBA Draft.

HOT: The electrifying 6-foot-1 Jennings, who leads the Bucks in points and assists per game, was coming off a 30-point effort on Tuesday at the Sixers. He followed that on Friday evening with his 36 points. That marks Jennings' third game of at least 30 points this season and his eighth of at least 20.

NOT: Anthony caught fire early, scoring 13 points and shooting 4-for-7 from the field in the first quarter. Those good times quickly ended however as he followed that with an 0-for-6 second quarter as the Knicks trailed, 55-51, at halftime. The shooting woes didn't get much better as Anthony finished just 11-for-26 two days after shooting 5-for-22 in a home loss to the Suns.

INSIDE THE ARENA: New York Liberty guard Cappie Pondexter and Jersey Shore's Vinny Guadagnino sat courtside.

ROOKIE WATCH: Bucks rookie forward Tobias Harris had come on of late, scoring 12 points in 22 minutes of a loss at the Sixers on Monday and 14 points in 27 minutes of a home defeat to the Nuggets on Tuesday. Friday evening was a different story for the native New Yorker as he scored two points and took all of one shot in only 7:39 of playing time.

NOTABLE: The Bucks are not known to be a good defensive team in transition, yet the Knicks did not take advantage. They could only muster 12 fast-break points after turning the Bucks over 19 times.

UP NEXT: For the Knicks, Saturday vs. Denver, Tuesday @ Charlotte, Wednesday at Cleveland. For the Bucks, Sunday @ Miami, Monday vs. Atlanta, Wednesday at Houston.

• Bucks: Hobson, Jackson
• Knicks: Davis, Jordan, Lin

• Bucks: Delfino, Jennings
• Knicks: Anthony, Anthony

• Lead Changes: 6
• Times Tied: 11

• Arena: Madison Square Garden, New York, NY
• Officials: #43 Dan Crawford, #63 Derek Richardson, #65 Sean Wright
• Attendance: 19763
• Duration: 2:15