Let’s get this straight and get rid of the most stupid part of this whole story even before we get started: Jalen Brunson is not why the NBA Finals are now a series.
Brunson surely is not a problem—any problem—for the Knicks, no matter how you look at it, let alone after a run that saw the Knicks put together 13 consecutive wins only disrupted once but a couple of neophytes playing out their minds.
If next October there is a banner hanging from the MSG rafters, you damn better believe that’s mostly
‘cause of the arrival of the promised guard in Manhattan.
Hell, you don’t even need to go so far away into the future, and just check the present of the New York Knickerbockers: the Garden is back hosting the Finals for the first time since freaking 1999. The second-greatest run in postseason history, winning 13 in a row, exists only because Brunson once decided to put pen to paper when he was unemployed in the summer of 2022. The Knicks hadn’t had a captain since forever after “Captain Clutch” came and conquered and got that capital C virtually stitched on his chest.
We all stopped wandering the point-guard-searching desert that we started to explore all the way back in the early aughts, only because of Brunson’s homecoming.
All of that said, the Knicks need hella more from Jalen Brunson right now.
Dirty Victor entered the NBA Finals as the clear-cut favorite to win the Finals MVP award. Two punches in the mouth were all oddmakers needed to flip the odds, placing Brunson on top and Karl-Anthony Towns close below. As things stand after the Game 3 loss, FanDuel is still listing JB as the favorite to get the award at +105, with Violent Vic back in second place at +165.
That tells you everything about how important, impactful, and well-regarded Brunson is, even when he’s clearly, definitely, soundly not at the top of his game.
It’s not that Brunson needs to score more points, necessarily. Brunson scored 32 in Game 3 and led the Knicks at it. He dropped 20 in Game 2 and 30 in Game 1. Overall, he’s averaging 27.3 points per game, the most in the series only behind Kung-Fu Wem’s 29 PPG. The totals are fine, the averages are alike.
The problem is how hard Brunson is working to get them, how many possessions are dying in the process, and how different the offense looks when the ball sticks to No. 11 for too long and for far subproductive and stagnant stretches.
“I liked some of the looks, but I also think we were pretty stagnant,” Brunson admitted after Game 3. “There’s definitely things that we can learn from. Especially with our approach when we start the game and with the way we start the half, I don’t think we did well and I don’t think I did well, either.”
Through three Finals games, Brunson has taken 81 shots to score 82 points. He’s hoisting 27 FGA per game to anybody else’s 20 at most. JB is 30-for-81 from the field, a meager 37.0% compared to his regular-season 46.7% and even 46% in the playoffs—games against SAS included.
Brunson has 15 assists against 13 turnovers—again, not disastrous by ordinary standards but surely down by Brunson’s own bar of nearly seven dimes a pop against barely a couple of turnovers.
Game 3 saw Brunson finish with 32 points, five rebounds, and five assists, but he also had five turnovers and took 25 shots in a 115-111 loss to the Spurs inside MSG, the first finals game in the Mecca since 1999. No other Knick attempted more than 13 (OG) shots, with Towns and Hart both taking 10, and nobody else reaching double-digit FGA.
“Offensively, we were as stagnant as I’ve seen us all year,” Brown said after the loss. “We just wanted to stand and watch one guy dribble a ton, and then when the ball got passed, there were no quick decisions by the guy receiving the basketball. You have to be smart, you have to do a good job taking care of the basketball, you have to move the ball and move bodies, and we’ve done that quite a bit but we didn’t do a good job of it tonight, which helped with the 13 turnovers… the turnover situation, the free throw situation, and our attention to detail about keeping them out of the paint and taking away the vertical threat, not good tonight.”
Coach Mike Brown did not name Brunson directly, obviously, but the “we watched one guy dribble a ton” note was more than enough.
The Knicks’ best version during this postseason run, as surprised as it had all of us, has not been Brunson playing savior each and every possession. Far from it. It has been Brunson as the closer with Towns as the frontcourt hub in a delightful 1A-1B two-man punch that left the NBA world in awe—yet still hating and not trusting the Knicks, for some reason they only now—and the likes of Anunoby, Hart and Mikal Bridges punishing opponents on both ends of the floor with everyone making simple decisions and embarrassing rivals.
That team won 13 straight playoff games. That team moved the ball and played the best Knicks basketball we’ve seen in a million years. That team made San Antonio chase, but there were signs of concern slowly but surely percolating of late, with New York escaping Texas unscathed but close to burning them.
San Antonio deserves credit because they are bullying Brunson like absolute brutes. They are making him work more than he’s done all postseason long. They have size, they have perfected MMA moves, and they are physically abusing JB and whoever is in front of them, with no official punishment. Kudos to them.
But the Knicks still lead the Finals 2-1. The Knicks still have home court advantage. The Knicks can still win three games before the Spurs get two, and we all know that’s a virtual clinching of the title.
It’s really two, but in all honesty, all New York needs is one more win. And if they want to get there easily and in front of their fans inside the Garden walls, there is nothing the Knicks need more right now than the Jalen Brunson we all have come to know and enjoy for the past four years.
Brunson built this whole Knicks era by being stubborn enough to prove Becky Hammon and their mother wrong. He just has to do it once more.
