Barbara Barker: As he has all season, Jalen Brunson steps up for Knicks in Game 1
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson motions after a basket against the Spurs during the second half of Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday in San Antonio. Credit: AP/Eric Gay
SAN ANTONIO
You knew in the opening minute that this was going to be different.
You knew the moment that Jalen Brunson and Victor Wembanyama, the two best players on the NBA’s two best teams, exchanged buckets that this NBA Finals was going to be tighter and tougher than anything the Knicks have experienced this season.
Playing the San Antonio Spurs is going to be nothing like the cakewalk the Knicks had through the Eastern Conference. Far from it. But the Knicks showed with their come-from-behind 105-95 victory in Game 1 Wednesday that they are not just happy to be playing in the NBA Finals, they are determined to win it.
As impossible as it sounds, the Knicks are three wins away from winning the franchise’s first title in 53 years. As ridiculous as it sounds, they have not lost a game since April 25, Game 4 of their first-round series against Atlanta. As historic as it sounds, the Knicks will enter Friday’s Game 2 on a 12-game winning streak.
The Knicks have put themselves in this position by showing the kind of resilience and resolve that they have shown all postseason, digging themselves out of a 14-point third quarter hole to take a 1-0 lead in the series.
As he has so many times before, Brunson put his team on his back late in the game scoring 13 of his game-high 30 points in the fourth quarter despite having gotten knocked around in the first half by a tough San Antonio defense.
“Jalen, he was the MVP in the second half,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “He was huge for us. He did what MVP candidates are supposed to do. He carried us home. We put the ball in his hands and he got it done for us down the stretch.”
Yet, it’s not just the performance of Brunson — as impressive as it was — that makes this win so encouraging. It’s the fact that the Knicks played inspired defense for a good part of all four quarters and were able to get big-time contributions from a number of players when they needed it most.
No one had a more complete game than Karl-Anthony Towns, the All-Star center who took 11 years to get to his first NBA Finals.
Towns answered the bell on both defense and offense, getting a double-double with 12 boards and 18 points. Early on he used his big body to try to slow 7-4 Victor Wembanyama and fight for rebounds. On offense, he was aggressive early driving to the hole in the kind of determined way that Knicks fans had been begging him to do earlier this season.
“He was amazing. The double-double was huge,” Brown said of Towns. “He came up with some timely buckets for us. He’s a problem. You put a small guy on him, he’s got a chance to offensive rebound. You put a big guy on him, he’s got a chance to pick-and-pop and go around guys. We have to just keep trying to move him around based on who is guarding him throughout the course of the ballgame, but he was huge for us with his double-double.”
Towns also helped hold Wembanyama to 26 points on 6-for-21 shooting. Though Wembanyama had his moments late in the game when he was able to get to the rim, it was not his best game. Still, the Spurs center whom many call the future of the game was sounding confident after the loss.
“I’m going to figure it out,” Wembanyama said. “I was bad tonight. It’s not more complicated than that . . . We’ve been down in a series before, never in the Finals, obviously, but I’m not kicking myself about anything really. I mean, I’m not worried the slightest.”
The Knicks, of course, wouldn’t expect anything less.
Brunson credited the mentality of the Knicks for the fact that they were able to come back from 14 points down. Yet, he also knows that they are playing a team with a similar mentality. The Spurs, after all, were down, 3-2, to the Oklahoma City in the Western Conference Finals and managed to take two must wins, including a Game 7 on the road.
“I don’t want to say calmness but I think we know what we have to do,” Brunson said. “I think we are a pretty together group. Be able to trust each other and still have each other’s back and know that we just have to keep chipping away, chipping away. It’s just a credit to the mentality that we have as a team.
“But we can’t just be satisfied with that. We have a long way to go and we have a lot of things to do to be better, but happy we came away with a win.”
Now, they just need three more.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
