Bucks rookie Brandon Jennings lifted Milwaukee past New York Friday night at the Garden. PHOTO BY OREN VOURMAN / LSV

NEW YORK – The visitor’s locker room at Madison Square Garden is composed of three rooms. It has a fairly small box shaped room that is probably no bigger than the average bedroom.

It is adjacent to the showers, which face towards the east, and to the north is a bigger room for the players to be taped, iced down and patched up.

Unfortunately for Bucks forward Kurt Thomas, who collected four rebounds and had one blocked shot in Milwaukee’s 114-107 win over New York, none of the three rooms were big enough for him to get his things from his locker that stood to the left of Bucks point guard and Rookie of the Year candidate Brandon Jennings.

With more than a dozen reporters from various outlets surrounding Jennings, who scored 22 points and dished out a game-high eight assists in the win Friday night at MSG, Thomas twirled his arms in the air, as if issuing a traveling violation.

“C’mon now, you got two minutes, two minutes, get this thing wrapped up,” said Thomas, the former Knick, half-jokingly.

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” replied Jennings, with a huge grin on his face, perhaps best known for the flat top of fuzzy black hair he sports. “Can you please repeat your question,” he asks politely to one of the media contingent, vying for a prime position as they hold out their recorders.

If it’s hard to imagine how a team such as the Bucks generate as much buzz as they do with a record below .500 (22-26), it’s mostly due to the nightly performances of Jennings, who is half ring leader, half show-stopper.

While not the greatest of shooters (Jennings went 8 of 23 from the field), the 6-foot-1 first round pick from overseas by way of Oak Hill Academy is a virtuoso at manipulating his way to the basket where he shuffles his hands, moves the ball in mid-air and either slams the ball off the backboard, over the rim and down the twine, or with his feet firmly planted at the free-throw line for a chance at easy money.

“I changed my shoes. That was the best thing about the second half,” remarked Jennings on the third quarter turnaround. “I couldn’t make no shots with the shoes I had on. We came out with more intensity [in the second half] and the [middle of the court] was open for us and either you attack the rim or you pass it out.”

Even with Jennings second half dramatics, in which he scored 19 of his 22 points, it was David Lee who was playing for keeps. With a season-high 32 points and 15 rebounds, Lee may be one of the best buys in basketball. His 30th double-double was also his third 30-plus point game on the year and his 18th 20/10 in the 2009-10 season.

Lee’s assault on the basket would produce many cheers from the 19,247 fans at the Garden, none of them loud enough though to silence Jennings and Bucks Turkish import 6-foot-10 forward Ersan Ilyasova, who finished with a game-high 25 points, most of them in the paint.

Each team ended the game with only 11 turnovers apiece, but it was Milwaukee that had 27 second chance points to the Knicks’ 17 and 13 fast break points to New York’s 7.

Since being snubbed for a spot on the All-Star team, David Lee has been on fire. Lee finished with a season-high 32 points. PHOTO BY OREN VOURMAN / LSV

The Knicks lead in the first half by as many as seven points and were up 59-54 at the half. The Bucks would outscore New York 36-22 in the third quarter and never looked back, as they led by as many as 13 points in the fourth quarter.

“They just got a lot of offensive rebounds,” said Knicks head coach Mike D’Antoni. “They beat us to the basket, beat us to the screen, beat us to everything. That’s not a good combo.”

Argentinean forward/guard combo Carlos Delfino was one rebound shy of a double-double and finished the game with 13 points and nine boards.

Starting for the Knicks, guard Nate Robinson had 13 points, seven assists and four rebounds.

“We’re still searching,” said D’Antoni on the battle that is the fourth quarter. “Again, there’s a lot of times during the game we start to sag a little bit. We just don’t have any kind of collective spirit to overcome it.”

NOTES: Knicks forward Danilo Gallinari will attempt to become the first Knickerbocker to win the Foot-Locker 3-Point Shootout, when he battles reigning champion Daequan Cook in Dallas, Texas on Saturday, Feb.13, at American Airlines Center as part of the All-Star Weekend festivities.

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