By the closing minutes at Madison Square Garden, Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns had little reason to leave the bench. The New York Knicks had already done enough damage. Milwaukee’s defenders looked worn down, its offense had disappeared again, and the scoreboard displayed another ugly result. Knicks 117, Bucks 85.
New York didn’t need another heroic performance from its stars. Brunson scored 23 points, Towns added 21 and 16 rebounds, and OG Anunoby buried five three-pointers. The defending champions won their fourth straight game. For Milwaukee, the numbers cut much deeper. Seven consecutive losses. A 1-10 record. Eight defeats by double digits in the opening 11 games.
Just five years ago, Giannis Antetokounmpo carried the Bucks to their first NBA championship in half a century. Now he wears a Miami Heat uniform, and Milwaukee can barely survive an opposing team’s second unit. Tuesday’s defeat exposed something worse than poor shooting or a bad matchup. The Bucks still haven’t figured out how to play basketball without the superstar who made everyone else’s job easier. Taylor Jenkins can change the pace, redraw the plays, and shuffle his rotations. None of that guarantees an answer when opposing defenders stop respecting Milwaukee’s first option. Against New York, that problem turned a competitive opening into a 32-point beating.
How New York Tore Milwaukee Apart
For eight minutes, Milwaukee looked capable of making the Knicks uncomfortable. The Bucks moved the ball, found openings around the perimeter, and briefly grabbed the lead five times during the first quarter. Myles Turner scored Milwaukee’s opening basket. The visitors traded blows with the defending champions rather than immediately surrendering the paint. Then Landry Shamet changed the temperature. His three-pointer with 3:31 remaining put New York ahead 18-16. The Knicks closed the quarter on an 11-5 run, taking a 26-21 lead. Shamet and the reserves attacked slow Milwaukee closeouts, while confused defensive assignments left shooters too much breathing room. The five-point deficit remained manageable. What followed wasn’t.
New York’s perimeter defenders began disrupting Milwaukee’s dribble handoffs and squeezing the space around its ball handlers. When the Bucks couldn’t complete their first action, the possession often deteriorated into extra dribbles and hurried jumpers. Anunoby and Tyler Kolek punished them at the other end. The pair combined for ten consecutive Knicks points early in the second quarter. Kolek’s three-pointer pushed New York ahead 34-23 with 8:43 remaining. Another 10-0 burst followed after Ousmane Dieng briefly interrupted the momentum with a Milwaukee three. Brunson and Anunoby finished the half with consecutive shots from beyond the arc. New York led 58-34 at halftime. Milwaukee had scored 13 points in the entire second quarter. When the first handoff failed, Milwaukee lacked the chemistry to find a second answer. The Knicks didn’t need a complicated defensive scheme to expose that weakness.
Still, the visitors briefly fought back. Milwaukee poured in 38 third-quarter points, finally attacking with some pace and conviction. New York couldn’t keep the same defensive grip, and the Bucks reduced their deficit to 85-72 entering the fourth. Jaime Jaquez Jr. then found Kel’el Ware for an alley-oop, cutting the lead to 11. For a moment, the comeback carried real weight. Milwaukee had dragged a seemingly finished game back into uncomfortable territory for the home crowd. New York answered with a 20-2 run. Towns attacked the interior, Kolek kept the ball moving, and Anunoby punished Milwaukee’s collapsing defense with consecutive three-pointers. The Knicks stretched their advantage to 106-78. The Bucks never mounted another serious challenge.
New York won the final quarter 32-13, matching its second-quarter domination. Milwaukee scored 38 points in the third but managed just 26 across the second and fourth quarters combined. That isn’t ordinary inconsistency. A team cannot disappear offensively for half a game and expect its defense to survive the punishment.
Towns and Drummond Expose Milwaukee’s Frontcourt
Karl-Anthony Towns didn’t need 40 points to humiliate Milwaukee’s frontcourt. His 21 points and 16 rebounds exposed a problem that went beyond the score. The Knicks owned the glass. New York collected 59 player rebounds. Milwaukee managed 32. That 27-rebound difference meant the Bucks repeatedly defended possessions without collecting the one thing that could end them: the basketball. Andre Drummond made matters worse. The reserve center grabbed 14 rebounds in 15 minutes, giving New York an enormous physical advantage whenever Towns rested. Together, the two big men pulled down 30 rebounds, nearly matching Milwaukee’s entire team.
The Knicks secured 18 offensive rebounds to Milwaukee’s seven. Curiously, those 18 extra offensive boards produced only 11 second-chance points. New York didn’t exactly turn every loose ball into a scoring feast. But the damage extended beyond the points. Each offensive rebound forced exhausted defenders to turn around and begin again. Players who had already guarded a long possession suddenly had another closeout, another screen, or another box-out to survive. The extra work swallowed precious seconds and delayed Milwaukee’s transition opportunities. The Knicks didn’t have to score immediately to make those possessions hurt. Every missed box-out arrived like an overdue invoice. Milwaukee kept paying for work it thought it had finished.
Turner and Kyle Kuzma provided little resistance on the scoreboard. Towns scored 21 points while Milwaukee’s veteran duo combined for eight on 2-for-11 shooting. Turner managed three points on 1-for-7 shooting; Kuzma contributed five. With Turner missing five of six threes, New York could crowd the paint. Milwaukee signed Turner to stretch opposing defenses and protect its own basket. Against the Knicks, he supplied neither a reliable perimeter threat nor enough interior resistance to offset the rebounding deficit. Ware showed more promise, collecting eight points, four rebounds, and two blocks. He made all four of his free throws. For a rebuilding team, those flashes matter. Yet Milwaukee cannot keep asking its youngest players to compensate for veteran frontcourt performances this poor. A championship franchise deserves room to rebuild. It does not deserve a free pass for getting pushed around underneath its own basket.
Without Herro, Jaquez and Rollins Were Left Taking Turns
Tyler Herro watched from the sideline with a bruised right knee. Milwaukee’s leading scorer had averaged 21.4 points through his first ten games, and Tuesday marked his first absence of the season. The Bucks missed his shot-making immediately. Herro provides the kind of pull-up shooting that forces defenders to chase over screens. Without him, Milwaukee struggled to create advantages before the shot clock became a problem. Jaquez tried to compensate. The former Miami forward scored a team-high 16 points on 6-for-13 shooting. He attacked gaps around the lane and fought for five rebounds, using his strength to manufacture opportunities that rarely came easily. Ryan Rollins offered a different response. The guard scored 14 points on 5-for-9 shooting, including four three-pointers in six attempts. His perimeter accuracy gave Milwaukee one of its few dependable scoring outlets.
Jaquez attacked inside while Rollins supplied outside shooting. Yet their individual production never forced New York to abandon its defensive priorities. That’s the difference between collecting points and running an offense. The Bucks made 16 of 44 three-pointers. New York hit 17 of 44. From beyond the arc, the teams finished separated by a single made basket. Look inside the numbers, though, and the mismatch becomes obvious. Milwaukee shot 30-for-79 overall, converting 38% of its attempts. New York made 40 of 89 shots, finishing at 44.9%. The Knicks also scored 38 points in the paint to Milwaukee’s 28. More damaging, New York attempted 25 free throws and made 20. Milwaukee reached the line just ten times.
That tells a much uglier story than the three-point percentages. The Knicks attacked bodies, forced contact, and created opportunities near the rim. Milwaukee too often settled for jumpers because its offense couldn’t break the first defender. Antetokounmpo once made that problem disappear through sheer physical violence at the basket. A single Giannis drive could pull three defenders into the lane, opening a corner shooter or a cutter behind the defense.
Without that gravitational pull, Milwaukee’s complementary players suddenly face much harder assignments. Jaquez can attack a mismatch. Rollins can punish an open perimeter look. Herro can create his own jumper. But Milwaukee still lacks a dependable two-man action that forces disciplined defenses to rotate. Jenkins needs to find one before possessions become a nightly parade of isolation attempts. Herro’s return should help. Pretending his absence explains a seven-game losing streak would be convenient nonsense. The Bucks had already lost six straight with him available.
New York’s Bench Looked Like a Team. Milwaukee’s Looked Like a Search Party
The Knicks didn’t simply beat Milwaukee with Brunson and Towns. They crushed the Bucks while giving their stars relatively comfortable workloads. No New York starter played more than 28 minutes. Kolek scored 12 points on 5-for-6 shooting and distributed four assists. He attacked openings in Milwaukee’s defense without trying to turn every possession into a personal highlight. Miles McBride added eight points, but his most revealing number came elsewhere. New York outscored Milwaukee by 39 points with McBride on the floor.
Plus-minus never tells a complete individual story. In this case, the number captured how badly the Knicks controlled the game across different lineup combinations. Drummond dominated the boards. Kolek organized the offense. Shamet supplied timely shooting. New York’s reserves understood what their teammates needed. Milwaukee’s bench, by contrast, supplied plenty of minutes and very few dependable answers. Different combinations struggled to protect the paint, control possessions, or rescue stalled offensive sets.
The Knicks have earned the luxury of defined roles. They won the 2026 NBA championship by defeating San Antonio in five games. After opening this season 0-3, they have won six of their next seven. Milwaukee doesn’t need championship-level depth tomorrow. It does need five players who can share the court without repeatedly losing track of who should create, who should cut, and who should secure the rebound. For now, Jenkins keeps searching for combinations that can survive both ends of the floor. New York already knows which combinations it trusts.
A 1-10 Reality Check for Taylor Jenkins and the Post-Giannis Bucks
Milwaukee’s rebuild didn’t begin with Tuesday’s blowout. It began when the franchise decided the Giannis Antetokounmpo era had reached its end. On July 6, the Bucks sent Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to Miami. Milwaukee received Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., and Kel’el Ware as its central rotation pieces. Rookie prospects Kasparas Jakučionis and Nate Ament joined the longer-term plan. Additional first-round picks and a future pick swap gave Milwaukee assets to pursue another competitive roster. The return created possibilities. It did not replace Giannis.
Antetokounmpo gave Milwaukee 13 seasons, two MVP awards, and a championship that erased a 50-year drought. He transformed the Bucks from a franchise hoping to matter into one that could realistically chase June basketball. Losing that kind of player changes every possession.
Milwaukee also replaced Doc Rivers with Taylor Jenkins after Rivers stepped down in April. Jenkins arrived with a reputation for developing younger players and promoting a faster, more aggressive style from his years in Memphis. The hire offered Milwaukee a chance to modernize its approach. But a new playbook cannot manufacture a superstar’s scoring gravity, and a different rotation cannot fix every defensive mismatch. The early numbers make that painfully clear. Through November 10, Milwaukee owns a 107.5 offensive rating, ranking 27th among 30 NBA teams. Its 122.6 defensive rating ranks 29th. The Bucks’ minus-15.1 net rating also ranks 29th. That’s not one broken part of a promising machine. That’s a team failing on almost every meaningful level.
Milwaukee scores 106.3 points per game and allows 121.2. Only one team averages fewer points, while just two surrender more. Its 1-10 opening matches the franchise’s worst 11-game start since 1993-94. Eight of those ten defeats have come by double digits. A rebuilding team can live with missed jumpers, young players learning coverage, and ugly nights against superior opponents. What it cannot accept indefinitely is the absence of basic competitive resistance. Tuesday made that distinction impossible to ignore.
Jenkins must determine whether Turner can anchor the paint, how Ware fits beside the veterans, and which perimeter combinations can actually defend together. Jaquez, Herro, Rollins, and the rookies offer different pieces of a future roster. But Milwaukee needs to stop confusing a collection of interesting players with a coherent basketball team. The danger isn’t simply that the Bucks will lose games while they rebuild. It’s that repeated blowouts become normal. Once a locker room starts treating 20-point deficits as routine, the coaching staff faces a problem no offensive adjustment can solve.
The Lakers Arrive Before Milwaukee Can Recover
The Bucks return home Wednesday, November 11, to face the Los Angeles Lakers. There is no day off to bury what happened in New York. Another game arrives immediately, and the locker room must prove it still has some fight left. Jenkins doesn’t need a miracle against Los Angeles. He needs defenders who finish possessions, guards who attack the paint, and veterans who refuse to let another scoring drought swallow an entire quarter.
The Knicks offered Milwaukee a brutal comparison. One franchise lost its old identity and spent years building another championship team. The other traded the greatest player in its history and now struggles to hold together for four quarters. Giannis once gave Milwaukee the confidence that almost any deficit could disappear. Eleven games into life without him, the Bucks look frightened of the next one.
READ ALSO: Victor Wembanyama Overwhelms Suns With 40 Points and Nine Blocks
FAQs
Why are the Milwaukee Bucks struggling without Giannis Antetokounmpo?
Milwaukee lacks reliable shot creation, interior defense, and rebounding. Without Giannis drawing multiple defenders, the Bucks struggle to generate easy scoring opportunities.
What was the final score of Knicks vs. Bucks on November 10, 2026?
The Knicks defeated the Bucks 117-85 at Madison Square Garden. Milwaukee fell to 1-10 and suffered its seventh consecutive loss.
Who led the Knicks in their win over Milwaukee?
Jalen Brunson scored 23 points. Karl-Anthony Towns added 21 points and 16 rebounds, while OG Anunoby contributed 19 points.
Who did Milwaukee receive in the Giannis trade?
The Bucks acquired Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware, Kasparas Jakučionis, Nate Ament and draft compensation from Miami.
Who do the Milwaukee Bucks play next after losing to the Knicks?
Milwaukee hosts the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday, November 11, 2026. The Bucks enter the game seeking to end their seven-game losing streak.
