Knicks ripped by lowly Kings as Jalen Brunson exits with ankle injury

SACRAMENTO — Jalen Brunson’s Achilles’ heel is his right ankle.

The Knicks point guard came up limp with 7:45 left in the first quarter of Wednesday’s 112-101 defeat to the Kings when he twisted his right ankle while dribbling near the 3-point line.

There was no contact on the play — Brunson just tried to plant his foot and it turned, underscoring the instability of the tendon.

Brunson hobbled through a couple more possessions before being subbed out, then retreated to the locker room for the remainder of the game.

He finished with four points, his lowest total in almost two years.

The Knicks (25-15) were trailing 16-8 when Brunson left. They never recovered against the Kings (11-30), who’ve mostly stunk this season but are winners of three straight.

It’s the same right ankle that sent Brunson into a month of recovery last season because of a sprain.

He sprained it again in November and missed two games.

He turned it a couple times in the playoffs, too, but managed to recover without missing time.

Now?

It was hard to predict the severity so soon after the injury, but the turn didn’t appear too severe.

Either way, Wednesday was further evidence the Knicks are lost without their star point guard.

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They shot an abysmal 8-for-41 from deep, with their deficit always in double digits after halftime. Karl-Anthony Towns had an opportunity to shine as the featured scorer without Brunson, but instead shrunk and finished with just 13 points on 5-for-14 shooting in 33 minutes.

Miles McBride, who replaced Brunson at point guard, shot 4-for-14, including 2-for-8 on treys.

On the other side, the Knicks were dissected by an old friend, Precious Achiuwa, who dropped a season-high 20 points with 14 boards in 39 minutes.

Russell Westbrook, at 37, added 17 points and 11 assists.

It was an embarrassing display and a disappointing evening for Knicks coach Mike Brown, who was canned about a year ago by the Kings.

Brown returned Wednesday to adulation. Reporters fawned over him in his pregame news conference.

“I can say this personally and professionally, what happened to you was cold blood, brah,” a Sacramento scribe said into the microphone.

Brown, who revealed he partook in revelrous drinking in the off night in Sacramento (“I heard about it afterwards,” the coach said), received a nice ovation during introductions.

The appreciation was easy to understand. Brown resurrected the franchise from irrelevance during his 2 ½ seasons, which ended abruptly and without a real explanation for the firing about a year ago.

After his dismissal, the Kings retreated to lottery-bound, but apparently can still beat the Knicks — easily — without Brunson.

“Our businesses, like most businesses, they’re tricky,” Brown said. “And people look at results a certain way. Every job I’ve took, I started to have a feeling of, okay, this is a business and at the end of the day you can only control what you can control. And it’s not much in our business and so for me no matter what job I had, when I got fired, if I got fired, I’ve always been appreciative of the opportunity.”