Barbara Barker: Hawks coach Quin Snyder knows what Knicks' Jalen Brunson can do

One quarter of watching Jalen Brunson.

That’s all it took Saturday for Atlanta coach Quin Snyder to begin having the most uneasy deja vu, that kind of feeling that washes over you when you realize that you have seen this show before and you really didn’t like the ending.

Snyder had a front-row seat to Brunson’s breakout moment in the first round of the 2022 playoffs when the young point guard had a huge series to help the Dallas Mavericks eliminate Snyder’s Utah Jazz in six games.

Four years later, the two are meeting again in the playoffs. Brunson is an All-Star with the Knicks and Snyder is the coach of a red-hot Hawks team. The one thing that has remained a constant is that Brunson is the kind of player who is not afraid to seize the moment when the moment really matters.

Brunson helped the Knicks open the playoffs on a high note, scoring 19 of his 28 points in the first quarter as the Knicks defeated the Hawks, 113-102, at Madison Square Garden to take a 1-0 lead in their first-round playoff series.

The third-seeded Knicks entered the playoffs with the highest expectations the franchise has had in decades; management has declared that anything short of a trip to the NBA Finals will be considered a disappointment. When your owner issues a Finals-or-bust mandate, everyone is under pressure. But some are under more pressure than others.

Leading that list has to be Mike Brown. The Knicks fired coach Tom Thibodeau at the end of last season after he took them to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 25 years. Brown was hired to take the Knicks to the next level, an incredibly high expectation for a coach in his first season with a team, no matter how talented that team is.

Close behind Brown is Karl-Anthony Towns, who struggled for two-thirds of the season to find his way in Brown’s offense. Sometime after the All-Star break, the pick-and-roll began clicking for Towns and Brunson. Still, Towns remains a top candidate for a fall guy if the Knicks fall short this season.

Towns had a huge game Saturday with 25 points and eight rebounds. He stepped up big in the later stages of the game when the defense tightened on Brunson and the point guard missed some shots down the stretch.

If there is one person in the franchise whose job remains 100% safe, it is Brunson.

He was handed the keys before last season in a ceremony anointing him team captain after signing a contract extension that will keep him a Knick through the 2028-29 season.

Yet anyone who watched the way Brunson opened the playoffs Saturday would have thought he was playing for his basketball life.

Brunson set the tone by shooting 8-for-11 in the first quarter, hitting all three of his three-point attempts. His eight field goals were twice what the rest of the team totaled as the Knicks established a 30-24 lead.

Brunson made only one field goal in the remaining three quarters, but his early performance set the bar high for his teammates, making a strong early statement about the attitude that the Knicks need to bring to the postseason.

Snyder was not surprised to see him start off this way.

Saturday’s Game 1 occurred exactly four years after Brunson, playing without superstar teammate Luka Doncic, scored 41 points to lead Dallas to a win in Game 2 of its series with Utah.

That game is widely regarded as Brunson’s coming-out party, the type of performance that confirmed to the Knicks that he was the type of player worth building a team around.

“I think it did a lot,” Brunson said when asked to recall that game. “Every day I was working on my game. I was getting better, doing all the stuff. When an opportunity like that comes around, there was no need to get ready when you’re staying ready. It’s crazy that it’s been four years since then.”

With Doncic injured for three games in that series, Brunson thrived as the primary option, averaging 32 points in the three games. It’s been four years since that series, but Snyder can recall it like it was yesterday.

“Luka was out and I think that provided him an opportunity where there was a need because of how good of a player he is,” Snyder said. “I think also it speaks to his mindset and mental toughness to step into a situation like that in the playoffs and raise your level to the point where he did.

“It was in some ways foreshadowing. You could feel it. You knew when he was doing some of the things he did in that series that he was there. To do it on that stage and in that moment, there’s not many guys who can do that.”

And continue to do that on almost a nightly basis.

By Barbara Barker

barbara.barker@newsday.commeanbarb

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.