I’m speechless. Wordless.
The Knicks closed Game 1 of the conference finals against Cleveland on a 44-11 run, turning a 21-point deficit with less than eight minutes left in the fourth quarter into a 115-104 overtime win, the biggest postseason comeback in franchise history. I’ve seen more than 200 Knick playoff games. I’ve never seen one more dramatic. The game chart literally looks like the map for a three-act drama.
Image credit: nba.com
About ten minutes in, we left the old world (the Cavs getting
ahead early) for the new (the Knicks leading most of the rest of the first half. That’s not really “new” in that the Knicks have been leading for weeks, but they haven’t played in over a week, so it’s their newest lead in a while).
Then the long, dark turn from the end of the second act through the third, as multiple forces conspire to pit our hero against impossible odds. The climax: the end of regulation/first few minutes of overtime, as it became clear the Cavs were toast. The lights weren’t too bright this time. They just got punched in the face. Over and over. They couldn’t stop the bleeding.
Very much relatedly, they couldn’t stop Jalen Brunson; even among the sparkling lights of his legendary playoff performances, tonight may go down as the crown jewel. When the Knicks were at their low point, he locked in on attacking James Harden, the Hasabeard and the Cavaliers had no answer for him, and by the time they knew what hit them the Knicks were dribbling out the last seconds of their overtime win.
This wasn’t the scoreboard porn we were spoiled by against Atlanta and Philadelphia, but as dominance goes, 44-11 over a de facto quarter takes a backseat to nobody. Cleveland brought a lot of the good energy they showed winning Sunday in Detroit; unfortunately for them, they also brought a ton of turnovers. The Knicks were ahead most of the first half, but for much of the game while players for both teams looked fatigued or rusty, Donovan Mitchell looked shot out of a cannon. Drilling from deep, deflections, dashing out in transition, diming: Spida was weaving his web everywhere.
There’s a bit of a Sinister Six energy to these Cavs. Mitchell, Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley are the three villains who come together to plot their revenge against a shared enemy. Max Strus (2023 Heat) and Thomas Bryant (last year’s Pacers) are former villains just down to help bring the pain. Harden looks like a comic book villain; there’s a cartoonish quality to his tattletale ref-baiting brand of ball.
The Cavs began to pull away after halftime, when the Knicks found themselves piling up the giveaways. The hope is make a run late in the third to set up some momentum for the fourth. Reader, they did not.
Could they come out for the final frame all fired up and foaming at the mouths, and run down the non-fake comeback? Thankfully there was no foaming. There was Brunson, lofting his artworks high off glass, draining floaters, finding others. There was Anunoby, in his first action in two weeks, grabbing every defensive rebound in sight. Mikal Bridges and Landry Shamet hitting 3 after game-tying 3 after game-clinching 3.
As the game ticked under the eight-minute mark and the Knicks trailed by 22, I did the math in my head: get it down to 12 with four minutes left. That gives you a realistic shot. By the four-minute mark, the Knicks had cut it to eight. If this were a boxing match, the Cavs would have spent the rest of the fight tying the Knicks up and falling into the ropes, begging the ref to help them run out the clock. There was never a response. Once the Knicks started swinging, the Cavs were a punching bag.
The Knicks did what they had to do, in a manner that will only deepen their self-confidence while challenging the Cavs to re-examine theirs. And since we want our main character to show some kind of growth along the way, here’s a welcome reversal from 2025 (and 2024, for different reasons): the Cavs, 48 hours after Game 7 in Detroit, used an eight-man rotation for an overtime game. Fresh off eight days off, the Knicks rolled nine-deep, nine-plus with Jose Alvarado’s short stint out of the bullpen. Something to keep an eye on.
Keep your eye on P&T Monday morning for Russell Richardson’s recap. Till then, I’m gonna sit in my recliner (the one I did not flinch in once Brunson started scoring — I know my role and my superstitious ass plays it well), rewind to the start of the fourth quarter, click “play” and let the magic linger. Long as it likes.
