The more you watch the Knicks play in these playoffs, the more one word keeps coming to mind: balance. This is not the team that can only rely on Jalen Brunson, though they sure do love having him in crunch time. But it probably wouldn’t have gotten far enough for Brunson to take over in the fourth had it not been for the collective two-way effort from the New York support staff on Wednesday night. And now, here the Knicks are, three wins away from the franchise’s first championship since 1973, after a 105-95 win over the Spurs in Game 1 of the Finals.
It marks New York’s 12th straight playoff victory, dating back to their Game 4 win over the Hawks in the first round. They haven’t lost a game in almost six weeks. Over the 11-game win streak preceding the start of these Finals, New York had outscored its opponents by 262 points, or an average of 23.8 points per game. That’s the most dominant stretch of basketball in recorded playoff history.
But be honest, you were wondering how legitimate the streak was. You knew the Knicks were good, we all did, but were they that good? How much of that dominance could be attributed to Eastern Conference competition? Even Draymond Green was laughing off the idea that the Knicks had really accomplished anything of note by qualifying for the Finals.
“You’re supposed to get out of the East,” Green laughed on his own podcast. “It’s the f—ing East. Of course you’re supposed to get out of the East.”
That wasn’t true, by the way. The Knicks were +2200 to win the East before the playoffs started. No champion over the last 40 years, which is as far back as we can trace this sort of thing, has ever entered the postseason with longer championship odds. So, no, the Knicks weren’t supposed to win anything.
And then, even when they did win the East in historically dominant fashion, sweeping both the 76ers and Cavaliers after finishing off the Hawks with three straight wins by a combined 96 points, people were ready to dismiss the whole run with one Spurs victory in Game 1. See, I told you they couldn’t match up with the big boys!
Well, so much for that. The Knicks didn’t play their best in Game 1 and they still recovered from a 14-point third-quarter deficit to win by double digits. On the road. Against Victor Wembanyama, this supposed unstoppable force from another planet, who was actually made to look downright human by a Knicks defense that, if you haven’t been paying attention, is every bit the unit that registered a top-five rating over the last two-plus months of the season and has allowed just 102.9 points per 100 possessions in the playoffs.
Josh Hart helps Knicks steal Game 1 of NBA Finals with gutsy performance only he could produce
Sam Quinn
Adding this one win to their postseason ledger shouldn’t change the perception of how great this Knicks team is, but it kind of does. Admit it. One win over the Spurs proves more to a lot of people than those 11 consecutive wins that came before it. And now you can’t help but marvel at what the Knicks are doing, because the dominance has suddenly been validated.
Counting Wednesday night, the Knicks have now won 12 straight playoff games by an NBA record 272 points. That run includes seven straight double-digit road wins, another record for any single postseason run, and eight straight wins by at least 10 points altogether.
Even counting the two losses against Atlanta, their plus-281 point differential is also the most in history through the first 15 games of a postseason. Next are the 2017 Warriors at plus-242, the 1996 Bulls at plus-210 and the 1987 Lakers at plus-206. Those three teams went on to win the title.
Will the Knicks do the same? It’s certainly looking a lot better than it did before the series started, when the oddsmakers had them as a decided underdog, but it’s far from over. You’ll probably be surprised to learn that road teams that take Game 1 of the Finals only go on to win the series 42% of the time. It’s happened 19 times, and 11 times the team that lost the opener has come back to win.
So there’s still plenty of hope for Spurs fans. But if they didn’t quite realize what kind of opponent they were up against, they do now. It bears repeating that the Knicks didn’t even play their best game and still pulled off the biggest second-half comeback in a Finals game since 1970, and the second-biggest Game 1 comeback in the play-by-play era, which dates back to 1997.
The Knicks came into this game making 40% of their 3s, tops in the postseason, but only made 11 of 36 (31%) on Wednesday. Brunson missed 13 of his first 18 shots. The Spurs delivered what felt like a pretty big blow by finishing the first half with a quick 5-0 spurt to take a seven-point lead into halftime, and ultimately turned that into a 20-3 run extending into the third quarter.
But the Knicks just kept playing and defending, forcing the Spurs into a 2-for-19 showing from 3 in the second half en route to their lowest scoring output of the postseason. The Knicks kept winning the offensive boards that led to 22 second-chance points. They kept taking care of the ball with just one turnover in the second half. All of this kept them in the fight until the postseason’s No. 1 offense could get hot, which you knew would eventually happen.
Brunson will get the bulk of the headlines for scoring 13 of his 30 points on 5-of-9 shooting in the fourth quarter, and he should. The Knicks were the best fourth-quarter team in the league by a country mile this season, and he was the biggest reason why.
Over the last four playoffs, Brunson’s 143 clutch points are 59 more than the next-closest guy (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander). In these playoffs, he’s No. 1 in fourth-quarter scoring on positively absurd 59/61/93 shooting splits. To say the guy is clutch would be an understatement. It doesn’t even matter if he’s having a good game. When it’s time to win, he has a Michael Jordan gear.
On Wednesday, Brunson only made one of his first eight 3-pointers. But when it came time for the biggest shot of the game with the Knicks down one and under two minutes to play, you would’ve bet the house on this thing going in.
And this pump-fake, step-through rainbow over Devin Vassell that all but sealed the win was sick.
But it wasn’t just Brunson. Again, balance is the word of this game. The Knicks, with great purpose, have assembled a roster full of guys who can do a lot. They can all shoot, pass, dribble and defend. Even for all the criticism Brunson takes for his defense, in Game 1, the Spurs shot just 1 of 14 when he was the primary defender, per ESPN stats. Matchup data can be muddy, but that’s a wild stat.
It speaks to the lack of weaknesses on a supremely well-rounded team. Consider that throughout the season, the Knicks did not register in the top 10 in field goal attempts inside the restricted area, in the midrange, or from 3. That means they score from everywhere.
You’re going to have a very hard time defending a team that can beat you from anywhere with anyone. Look at the Game 1 box score and you’ll see Brunson with 30, Karl-Anthony Towns (who was so good on both ends in this game) with 18, OG Anunoby (who hit two massive 3s in the fourth quarter) with 17, Landry Shamet with 13, and Mikal Bridges, Miles McBride and Jose Alvarado combining for 21 more.
Meanwhile, the guy who scored the least was arguably the best player. We’re talking about Josh Hart, of course, who joined Larry Bird (1986) as the second player in history to record at least 15 rebounds, six assists and four steals in a Finals game. The man is 6-foot-5 and not only did he out-rebound the 7-foot-4 Wembanyama, but he is now the shortest listed player since Elgin Baylor in 1970 to record 15 rebounds in a Finals game.
Coming into this series, one of the biggest questions was whether Hart could make his 3s when Wemby sagged off him to serve as a roaming paint protector. Wemby didn’t end up spending that much time on him in Game 1, and Hart only made one of his five shots.
Didn’t matter. It speaks to all the parts of winning basketball that the guy who scored three points led the game with a plus-22 point differential in 27 minutes. Do the math, and you’ll realize the Knicks were outscored by 17 when Hart was on the bench. What a player this dude is. And what a team the Knicks are.
You might not have believed it after 11 straight wins. But you definitely do after the 12th.
