Knicks need more than Brunson for deep playoff run
Jalen Brunson, as valuable a player as there is in pro basketball this season, any team and anywhere, dropped an old Yankee number on the Spurs Friday night. He dropped 61 on them, one less than the Knicks record set by Carmelo Anthony ten years ago, one more than Bernard King’s 60. And if a 3-pointer had fallen at the very end of overtime, it would have been 64 and the Knicks would have won the game. The shot didn’t fall. Brunson couldn’t do it alone, the way he couldn’t do that in the playoffs last season.
Brunson is a tough kid, on the toughest Knicks team in almost a quarter-century exactly, the aging and wounded team that somehow still managed to make the Eastern Conference finals against the Pacers. Patrick Ewing, in his last Knicks season, on his last legs, played only 62 games that year and Marcus Camby played 59, for a team that included Jalen Brunson’s dad, Rick, and an assistant coach named Tom Thibodeau.
But that Knicks team grinded its way to 50 regular season wins, the way this Knicks team is trying to do the same. It finished with the third-most wins in the Eastern Conference, the way this Knicks team still can. The 1999-00 Knicks overcame a lot. These Knicks, led by Rick Brunson’s kid, have overcome more.
Now we will see if, and when, they can get Julius Randle back and OG Anunoby, see if — and when — the band is back together if they can do what Jeff Van Gundy’s Knicks did, and make it to the conference finals for the first time since Jeff was coach. They have beaten everybody in their conference except the Celtics. Even with all the injuries, they came out of Friday night’s loss, and after that rousing, Brunson-led second half comeback, just two games behind the second-place Bucks, and with the same number of losses as the third-place Cavs.
Of course, just because of the way the season has gone, Mitchell Robinson, who just got back in the game, seemed to be limping in overtime, after Isaiah Hartenstein fell hard on his right hand after a flagrant foul. That kind of year. Still the Knicks kept coming until Brunson’s last 3-pointer was just a little bit too strong, despite a performance to there as strong as any Knick guard has ever produced in the team’s history.
He still couldn’t do it alone, the way he couldn’t do it alone against the Heat in the playoffs with Randle slowed by injury and the series so often looked like Jalen Brunson against the world. It is hard for a player his size to carry a team all the way through the playoffs. Steph Curry is 6-2, same as Brunson is, but as admirable as these Knicks are, and as hard as they play, there was a lot more talent in the room when Curry’s Warriors were winning all those titles. Brunson needs all the help he can get if these Knicks are going to make it back to the conference finals, at the end of what has been this crazy and entertaining season.
Donte DiVincenzo has been even more a player than the Knicks thought they were getting. Bojan Bogdanovich has been less. Miles McBride, who had a chance to make a winning jumper at the end of regulation in San Antonio, has given them more than they
could have expected. But Randle’s bum shoulder has kept him on the bench for two months. Anunoby, and stop me if you’ve heard this one before, was still a DNP in
San Antonio with “right elbow management.”
When Friday night’s game was over Brunson was asked when he might take a moment to process that he was now one of only three Knicks to ever score 60 or more points in a game.
“When I retire,” Brunson said.