SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Jalen Brunson should’ve played with latex gloves and a surgical mask with the way he dissected the Kings.
The point guard shredded the Kings with precision, dropping 42 points as the Knicks won an exciting contest, 98-91, in front of a jacked up crowd in Sac-town.
Brunson was the engine, the steering wheel and the tires.
He knocked down 17 of 28 field goals in 36 minutes, including the biggest shot of the evening — a floater off a quick dribble that gave the visitors a 96-91 lead with 37 seconds remaining.
The Knicks (40-27) have won three straight, moving 1 ½ games out of third in the East.
The performance followed a 45-point game from Brunson two nights prior in Portland, when teammate Donte DiVincenzo declared, “He’s an All-Star point guard, that’s what they do.”
Except Brunson has been more than an All-Star this season.
He’s on pace to become the first Knick guard named to All-NBA since Clyde Frazier in 1975, nearly 50 years ago.
Brunson is also inching up the list of best players at his position across the league.
If there’s an adjustment to remove the giant hybrid ball handlers from the conversation — specifically Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Luka Doncic — then Brunson could be a top-3 point guard.
It depends where he’d be ranked among Stephen Curry, Damian Lillard, Tyrese Haliburton, Jamal Murray, Trae Young and De’Aaron Fox.
On Saturday, Brunson outplayed one of the players on that list, Fox, who had an inefficient 20 points on 5 of 19 shooting.
Brunson, meanwhile, served the Kings with scoring à la carte, an assortment of 3-pointers, floaters, pivots and drives.
He found angles that shouldn’t exist, like with 5:46 remaining when he threaded an and-one layup from underneath two defenders with swinging arms. The exception Saturday was foul shots.
Two nights after he took 17 from the line, Brunson had just four foul shots Saturday. It didn’t matter. Brunson scored 43 percent of the winning team’s points.
“It’s something that we know, like, alright if we’re not making shots, we can still rely on him to start the engine up and keep going,” Josh Hart said.
With DiVincenzo still misfiring, OG Anunoby way off Saturday and Julius Randle in street clothes, Tom Thibodeau once again leaned on his point guard.
“He’s going to make the right play,” the coach said. “He’s not going to fight a double team. The game will tell him what to do. And obviously when teams are loaded up, we want to play more out of transition. And when we do that, we’re hard to guard. … The one thing about Jalen, he just wants to win. You can double him the whole game to get the ball out of his hands, he’s not going to fight it. He’ll make the right play. That’s who he is.”
The Kings, like the Knicks, are experiencing success after decades of putridness.
They’re still not considered contenders, but the combination of Fox and Domantas Sabonis have elevated them to playoff contention.
They’re also young and fast, with Fox among the NBA’s quickest, which the Knicks said was part of their game preparation.
“We know they’re going to push the ball a lot. So we just have to make sure we get back on defense, that’s the biggest thing,” Isaiah Hartenstein said. “Just making sure after missed shots or turnovers, try to keep our turnovers low. Just get back on defense, that’s the biggest thing.”
Sabonis was a handful.
The skilled big man, who leads the league in triple-doubles, hammered the paint and dropped 21 points with 14 boards.
But Brunson was the difference.
