Jalen Brunson gives Knicks ‘everything’ in loss to Pistons

Jalen Brunson did all he could to lift the Knicks to a win on a night that the team looked listless at times against the Pistons.

The Knicks star finished with 31 points in 44 minutes on the court — a new season high — in a 120-111 loss at Madison Square Garden.

The effort came after Brunson had been listed as questionable to even play in the game earlier in the day on Saturday.

Brunson made a surprise appearance on the Knicks’ injury report with a lower back contusion causing a bit of concern over his status for the game against the Pistons.

He left Thursday’s win over Charlotte after a hard collision in the third quarter led to him missing the game’s last 14-plus minutes.

Brunson was revealed to be good to go less than an hour before tipoff.

“I was good enough to play once the game-time decision came around,” Brunson said.

Brunson shot 11-for-21 from the field while the Knicks struggled as a team to make shots.

The Knicks star shot 3-of-7 from 3-point range as well in the loss.

“He gives you everything he has,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said after the loss. “You’re disappointed in the loss, but I’m not disappointed in our team. I want us to learn, I want us to get better and we have to respond the right way to this.”

The Knicks didn’t get off to the hottest start against the Pistons. Brunson had the Knicks’ only basket for nearly the first four minutes as the Pistons put up 13 points in the meantime.

Down by 11 early, Brunson put up four of the Knicks’ next five points in the first quarter to pull his team back within single digits.

“The game starts at 7:30. We’ve got to be ready at 7:30,” Brunson said about the slow start.

In the second quarter, he completed a four-point play, knocking down a deep 3 and drawing the foul. He hit the free throw to pull the Knicks within six with 6:34 left in the opening half.

“I think the thing that probably got us going is once when our ball pressure picked up and we caused some turnovers and we got into the open the floor, we got some easy baskets,” Thibodeau said while discussing Brunson’s impact.

“Then we got a pretty good rhythm. We still had 27 assists. We shot a good percentage, and if we had rebounded the ball, we probably could have won the game. That’s what we have to learn from. We got it down to four going into the fourth, and then we needed to make a couple of stops there. And we didn’t.”