Giannis Antetokounmpo is making it harder not to dream about Knicks possibilities

There will be three of these games this year, two of them before Feb. 1, which may or may not be some kind of artificial benchmark for what the Knicks look like, or are going to look like for the important part of the season.

The Knicks playing the Bucks at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum was always going to be interesting, anyway, because the Bucks still fancy themselves one of the essential teams in the East, and they still have Giannis Antetokounmpo on their team. That alone made Tuesday night’s early-season tilt a nice alternate choice to Game 4 of the World Series.

But, of course, until Antetokounmpo either is traded or emphatically demands that he’ll be a Buck for life, there’s going to be the Giannis Element lurking just beyond the Knicks’ periphery.

Mikal Bridges admitted Tuesday morning at their shootaround that he’s aware of the chatter, certainly on the day a few weeks back when it was revealed that Antetokounmpo had expressed a desire to play in New York, if the Bucks do indeed move him: “There’s nothing any of us can do. I just went on with my day.”