Brunson Bailout

New York escaped Chicago with their fifth straight win thanks to a point guard who doesn't know how to stay down.

Good morning! What a time to be a Knicks fan, amirite? This is getting pretty cool, with New York’s fifth straight win coming in dramatic fashion and dreams of the playoffs no longer sounding ridiculous. If you want to come along for the full ride and take advantage of our KFS holiday special, you know what to do:

Game Recap: Knicks 128, Bulls 120 (OT)

Poor Alex.

⌚️30 Seconds or Less: The questions about whether Jalen Brunson would play quickly turned into questions about whether Brunson should have even tried, as he suited up and started, but missed his first four shots and looked nothing like his regular self. Julius Randle, meanwhile, picked up right where he left off in recent games, with 15 first quarter points. Brunson bounced back and the Knicks controlled the game for most of the first half, but could never put the Bulls away, as Chicago’s big three showed their full repertoire inside the arc.

After a sloppy and sloggy third quarter from the road team, the final frame was neck and neck throughout. The Knicks took a few late 5-point leads, but the Bulls took advantage of some late-game stagnation from New York’s offense. In overtime, Jalen Brunson finished off his 180 degree turnaround and put the home team out of their misery with a step-back three that Alex Caruso will see in his nightmares (and on highlight reels) for years to come.

🙈Unfair Whistle? Part of the reason New York could never quite pull away last night was that DeMar DeRozan got to the line basically anytime he touched the ball, finishing 16-for-17 from the charity stripe. Several of the calls seemed questionable, and while Randle went to the line 15 times in his own right, it felt like the refs were far more predetermined to give DeRozan the benefit of the doubt anytime a defender came too close.

📈Standings check in: This is going to become a regular segment for as long as it isn’t painful to include it, and right now, it’s anything but.

After losses last night by Atlanta, Toronto, Washington, and, of course, Chicago, the separation between the haves and have nots in the East widened a bit. Meanwhile, Indiana beat Golden State for the second time this season, and it’s unclear as to whether they’ll fall out of this race.

📸 Play of the Game (Non-crunch time edition): It is such a pleasure to watch this team defend right now. Even in a game like last night, when Chicago’s offensive firepower got the better of them for stretches at a time (with some help from the refs), there was such a different feeling than we got earlier in the season. And while Deuce McBride and Quentin Grimes have gotten a lot of the credit for that turnaround, let’s not forget about the guy who has propped up New York’s shoddy perimeter defense for this entire season:

Go Go Gadget Arms!

This was one of four steals Immanuel Quickley had on the game. Steals can be the bi-product of defenders who gamble and leave their team in a bind when they bet wrong, but that’s almost never the case with IQ’s steals. If anything, they don’t even begin to tell the full story of his impact on that end of the floor. That he has maintained a 101.9 on-court defensive rating in 661 minutes of court time when they’re sporting a dreadful 118.1 rating when he sits is a testament to how significant that impact is.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ Mitchell Robinson: This star is more about who didn’t get it than who did.

Let’s start with Robinson, who was certainly deserving of the honor. He had six offensive rebounds, including two for put-back dunks down the stretch of the fourth, as well as a couple blocks, none bigger than on this outstanding overtime stand against Nikola Vucevic:

Vooch got Mitch a few times throughout this game, but even so, Robinson’s defense was night and day from that of Isaiah Hartenstein. They do not win this game without him.

And yet, his inclusion in this section means Julius Randle is out. Randle had the 13th 30, 10 & 5 stat line of his Knicks career, which ties him for first in franchise history with Patrick Ewing and Bob McAdoo, who also had 13 apiece. Through nearly three and a half seasons in New York, Julius has been far more McAdoo than Ewing though, and nights like yesterday show why. After an incredible start, Randle tailed off, and worse, reverted back to some of his worst late-game tendencies in the process.

It was eerily similar to a game he had almost exactly a year ago, also in Chicago, in which Randle put up 30, 12 & 6. He also had seven turnovers that night, one more than the six he had yesterday, and the Knicks lost, 119-115. Last night, Julius again did the heavy lifting, but also repeated the sort of costly mistakes that nearly cost his team the game. As a result, the honorable mention here will have to do.

⭐️ ⭐️ Quentin Grimes: Big Shot Q? We can probably do better than that, but we’ll need to come up with something if he has a few more crunch time performances like yesterday.

Grimes finished with 14 points, making 4-of-7 from downtown, including not one, not two but three massive shots down the stretch. The first broke a tie game with 4:18 left in the fourth, the second came with under a minute remaining and the Knicks clinging to a one-point lead, and the last was this dagger after Julius - bless his soul - decided to pass out of a triple team:

Shooter’s bounce!

Grimes was a team-high +14 in this game and it wasn’t an accident. Like Vooch and Mitch, DeMar got Grimes a few times, but the difference between Quentin and everyone else trying to defend Chicago’s midrange master was significant. He is the glue that holds this team together in so many ways, and if the shooting keeps coming around (at 34.9 percent from deep, he’s now a hair behind Obi Toppin for the team lead), he’s going to start being mentioned among the best 3 & D wings in the game.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Jalen Brunson: Speaking of fun statistical milestones, last night was the third time Jalen Brunson has had at least 30 points, seven assists and two or fewer turnovers as a Knick. That ties him with Melo for the second-most such stat lines in team history since turnovers were regularly recorded about four decades ago.

That still leaves him quite a bit behind the all-time leader, Stephon Marbury, who had 11 such games in blue and orange. But considering Marbury played 287 games as a Knick over five seasons, and Brunson is 28 games into his first season in the Big Apple, I think it’s a fair bet that Marbury’s record will eventually fall.

Of course, getting to that many games played is no guarantee, especially since we live in an era when star players sit out for purely precautionary reasons. In that sense, I guess it’s a good thing Jalen Brunson still hasn’t gotten the memo that he’s a star, or for that matter, that he’s not in danger of being cut if he isn’t able to play. After the injury suffered Sunday night against Sacramento, fears ranged from him being out over a week to more than a month. That’s how bad the injury looked in the moment, and when pictures emerged of him in a walking boot less than 48 hours before this game, well…no one expected him to even try giving it a go.

But Brunson has made a living on defying expectations for years now, so why should last night have been any different?

WALKING. BOOT.

Just stop it. You’re being ridiculous.

That’s probably what his teammates were thinking as he warmed up for this game, but goodness knows no one would have the audacity to question Brunson’s toughness, let alone suggest he should take it easy for a night. And that’s because he is the one who was promised - the one impossible not to root for, and who makes you believe the next shot is always going in.

Because walking boot or no walking boot, it probably is.

The Thin Line Between Love and Hate

Phil Jackson, the longtime pivotal Knick role player who later flopped as team president, once said that an NBA game could turn on a trifle. I wonder if the same goes for the mental wellbeing of a fan base.