ORLANDO, Fla. – The Knicks were without Jalen Brunson again, albeit with a different injury than the one that had sidelined him earlier this month.
Brunson suffered a sprained right hand in Wednesday’s loss in Miami, and he sat out on the tail end of back-to-back games Thursday against the Magic.
He was spotted outside the locker room after the Knicks’ 111-106 loss wearing what appeared to be a hard plastic brace covering his hand and wrist.
“I think he’ll be evaluated when we get back [to New York, so we’ll see where he is,” Tom Thibodeau said after the game, adding he was “not sure” if Brunson already had undergone X-rays.
The $104 million point guard had missed five of six games with a bruised left foot from March 5 until returning to the lineup in Saturday’s win against the Nuggets. He departed his only appearance between those dates on March 9 in Sacramento at halftime.
Brunson, who averaged 24.0 points and 7.0 assists in three games since returning to active duty, was replaced in the starting lineup by Immanuel Quickley. Thibodeau didn’t specify how Brunson was injured against the Heat, saying it was “just during the course of the game.”
Mitchell Robinson also had been listed as questionable with what the team called a contused right knee, but he was in the starting lineup and contributed two points, 12 rebounds and four blocked shots in 31 minutes.
The Knicks had been torched for an average of 133.5 points in their previous two games, with the Timberwolves and the Heat combining to connect on 59.2 percent of their field-goal attempts, including 30 of 52 makes (57.7 percent) from 3-point range.
One game after the Heat hit six of seven 3s in the fourth quarter, the Magic hit seven of eight from long distance in the final period.
“We have to be better,” Thibodeau said.
A video showing Miami’s Jimmy Butler clutching Robinson’s leg from behind without a foul getting called, preventing the center from getting up the court, went viral after Wednesday’s game.