The Madison Square Garden crowd rose to its feet. This was the moment fans had been waiting for.
Knicks All-Star guard Jalen Brunson had the ball in his hands with less than 90 seconds of play and his team down one.
Brunson, a shoo-in for All-NBA honors this season, has come up big in this very moment time and time again for the Knicks, who willed their way to the East’s No. 2 seed in large part thanks to the star guard’s heroics.
But on this night, in this series — and on this very possession — his heroics were nowhere to be found.
On a night where Brunson struggled from the field, and on a pivotal possession with the rock in his hands, the star guard whipped the ball to the left wing, where a wide-open Josh Hart missed a game-tying three.
Philadelphia’s All-Star Tyrese Maxey drilled a three on the other end to put the Sixers up by four.
Timeout, Tom Thibodeau: Another crack at a big-time bucket for big-time Brunson, one of the NBA’s most clutch players of the season.
Brunson got an advantageous matchup against Sixers forward Tobias Harris, but on his drive to the rim, the 6-8 Harris’ length disrupted the star guard’s floater.
Two swings, two misses for the Knicks’ heaviest hitter.
Two games against the Philadelphia 76ers are enough to address the elephant in the room, even if Game 2 resulted in a wild, last-second 104-101 victory over the Sixers to take a 2-0 series lead.
If the Knicks are going to win this first-round series and advance to face the winner between the Milwaukee Bucks and Indiana Pacers in Round 2, they’re going to have to do so without Brunson’s normal explosive scoring.
Brunson shot just 8-of-29 from the field and 1-of-6 from three-point range for 24 points in 38 minutes against the Sixers in Game 2.
He shot 8-of-26 from the field for 22 points in Game 1.
And he shot 40% from the field and 30% from three-point range through four outings against the 76ers during the regular season.
“I just love the way he’s wired. And so just keep going. You never know when something changes,” Thibodeau said after Game 2. “And I don’t know: he’s rebounding the ball. He’s playmaking. He’s not hesitating. And look, they’re paying a lot of attention to him, which is opening up other things for us. So just keep going, and that’s what I love. I want all our guys like that.”
Even in victory, consecutive poor shooting performances against the Sixers is atypical of the Knicks’ star guard.
When the Knicks and Sixers played in consecutive games in mid-March, for example, Brunson bounced back from a 6-of-22 shooting night in a disappointing loss to shoot 58% from the field for 20 points and nine assists in a blowout victory on March 12.
Brunson is almost always Teflon with the ball in his hands, his eyes fixed squarely on the bottom of the net, and the game, the season — in this case a series — resting squarely on his shoulder.
On this night, and in this series against a Sixers defense he’s struggled to solve, Brunson’s eyes will need to be peeled, fixed squarely onto his teammates.
“They’ve been playing amazing,” he said after the game. “If only I could get up to that level at some point.”
The issue, of course, is the length: the size the Sixers deploy at the point of attack to stifle the 6-2 Brunson when he’s in attack mode.
Kelly Oubre Jr. is 6-8 and defends Brunson the length of the floor. Nicolas Batum, also 6-8, checks in off the bench to play the same role. And the pair of Sixers guards in Tyrese Maxey and Kyle Lowry hound Brunson when matched with him, too.
If Brunson is able to get by his primary defender, the Sixers collapse, but use their length to their advantage, both helping on Brunson’s drive while also playing the passing lanes.
“We’ve seen it. We played them a lot. We know it’s coming,” Thibodeau said after Game 2. “Hit the gaps. Trust each other. If you’re open, shoot. We always think force the defense to collapse. Doesn’t matter whether zone or man. Get it into the paint. Once it collapses, trust the pass. Create open shots for each other. If you’re open, shoot it.”
Brunson made his impact outside of the scoring column finding his teammates with more success in the second half. Isaiah Hartenstein, for example, finished with 14 points, eight rebounds, four assists and four blocks, but had no points at the half.
Brunson hunted Hartenstein looks largely in the third quarter, when it became clear Joel Embiid, limited by a meniscus injury, could both help on Brunson and get back to his man quick enough to stop the play.
The All-Star guard’s shot wasn’t falling but he found other ways to lead the Knicks to victory.
“That’s big, that’s what makes him a leader,” Hartenstein said after the win. “I feel like, there’s a lot of scorers that would have just gave up, kind of just slouched down, not really cared about defense, but for him to be mentally strong not having the shots fall but still defending good, trying to make the big plays at the end speaks a lot to his character.”
“The way they’ve been conducting themselves, the way they’ve been playing,” Brunson added on his teammates, “the confidence and just not getting fatigued or wavered when things aren’t going our way, and we’re staying strong, we’re staying poised and composed. Long story short, we’re sticking together no matter what.”
Games 1 and 2 likely won’t be the last of Brunson’s shooting slump. He doesn’t play well against the Sixers. It’s a regular-season trend following the star guard into the playoffs. He knows he needs to be better for this team to reach its fullest playoff potential.
The Knicks might not see the same explosive scoring nights from Brunson in this series. Oubre, Batum, and 76ers head coach Nick Nurse have something to say about it.
The Knicks are prepared, however, to find ways to win even when their star scorer isn’t lighting it up.
And as long as the end result is a victory, Brunson could care less about how poor he shoots.
“The one thing about this team: no one really cares who’s doing what [or] who gets the credit for what. We just want to go out there and win,” he said after the game. “I could play bad again and we win, that’s fine for me.”
