Cinderella Men

The New York Fairy Tale reaches a new crescendo.

We keep checking to see whether it’s finally over.

Waiting for reality to set it.

Holding our guard up for the inevitable let down.

Praying today isn’t the day it all ends.

Praying, watching, and waiting…waiting for the dropped shoe that we know is coming.

It has to.

Doesn’t it?

How could it not?

How much can one team overcome?

How long can the odds get before they’re to much to withstand?

How long can you stay asleep in a perfect dream?

We finally found out the answer last night.

Or so we thought.

Facing an Indiana Pacers team that came into Wednesday night undeterred following their Game 1 defeat, the Knicks looked like a group whose clock had finally struck midnight.

When Jalen Brunson left the game with 3:32 remaining in the first quarter with what we soon found out was a sore right foot, confidence became worry, worry became fear, and fear become hopelessness, all in a matter of minutes

That it happened on an innocuous defensive possession - one that ended, ironically enough, in an Obi Toppin corner three - somehow made it worse.

Starting with that three, New York defended as if their spirit had been dry-vac’d from their body, giving up 58 points in under 16 minutes as Indiana’s offense spun them in more circles than Prince Charming on the dance floor.

All the while, Brunson was nowhere to be found.

No Randle? No problem. No Bogey? We’ll deal. No Mitch? They got this.

But no Brunson is no bueno, not if they wanted to fairy tale to continue for much longer. Even miracles do not perform themselves.

And then, just like that, a blue and orange warmup shirt appeared on the court, and the Garden began to believe again.

Would it be enough?

Could it?

We had no idea. Even with Brunson upright and walking, so much was still unknown.

For a player whose footwork is everything, how would he deal with playing on a blown tire? Without his ability to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight, he’s a butterfly without wings.

As Knicks not named Jalen Brunson scored the first 11 points of the quarter, it was fair to wonder if he was there merely as a decoy. Could they make that rope-a-dope last for another two quarters? Or would he need to show a little more to prove his meddle after seemingly going down for the count.

We didn’t have to wait long to find out the answer:

Brunson got knocked down on his first second half basket, because of course he did. No one in the NBA puts their body in harm’s way more than it’s smallest superstar, the one who may as well have two ugly stepsisters to inflict pain upon him whenever he barrels into the lane.

But as he does time and time again, he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and simply asked, “is that all you got?”

He’d score eight more in the third as New York regained the lead, and then another 14 in the fourth as they methodically shut the door on any hopes of an Indiana comeback. That gave him 35 fourth quarter points in the first two games of this series and 83 fourth quarter points in the playoffs - 20 more than the next closest player.

The clock struck midnight, but a pumpkin was nowhere to be found. The carriage was still a carriage, the horses were still horses, and Jalen Brunson was continuing to make Knick fans everywhere question their grasp on reality.

As Benjy Ritholtz said on the postgame last night, this was nothing short of a spiritual experience.

This fucking team.

In what ended up being a 20-point turnaround, a group that wrote the book on overcoming immeasurable odds penned a hit sequel in less than 24 minutes. In that time, they lost yet another key player when OG Anunoby - in the midst of the game of his playoff life, and one the Knicks absolutely needed just to hang around in the first half - suffered a hamstring injury late in the third quarter. We still haven’t learned its severity, and if their injury luck this year is any predictor, we might not see Anunoby back on the court for a while.

For any other team, that would have been the final blow. Just like losing Julius Randle for the season would be a final blow. Or losing Bojan Bogdanovic. Or Mitchell Robinson. Or being without Anunoby for most of two months in the regular season. Or having Isaiah Hartenstein deal with a bum Achilles. Or having Brunson go down for the final 15 first half minutes of a home playoff game.

Confronted with all that, not even a fairy Godmother would take on this charity case.

Thankfully, the Knicks don’t need a fairy Godmother.

They have Josh Hart.

If Brunson is the guy you fawn over, Josh Hart is the guy you buy a drink for. He is more New York than a halal cart, always open, always ready to serve, giving you what you crave just when you need it most.

I joked yesterday about how we’re starting to lose track of which game in these playoffs is truly “The Josh Hart Game,” when the reality is that Josh Hart has ascended above such trivialities. Sure, 19 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists sounds noteworthy…until you remember he’s averaging 18, 13 & 5 under these bright postseason lights.

If Brunson is lighting dynamite to conventional wisdom about NBA superstardom, Josh Hart is setting fire to our preconceived notion about role players, and whether a player can fill so many roles that it elevates him into a special class of stardom reserved for the most untraditional sort of players.

Not to be outdone, Donte DiVincenzo (29 points, 6-of-12 from deep) found his regular season form from behind the arc to give the Knicks the scoring punch they needed with a compromised Brunson, while Isaiah Hartenstein flirted with a triple double as the hub of New York’s second half offense. Both players were instrumental to the win, just as they have been to the Knicks’ identity for months.

And that - save for a few big fourth quarter plays from Precious Achiuwa - was all they had. Five starters, two of whom missed significant chunks of this game, playing for a team already down three rotation players, finding reserves of energy in the deepest recesses of their soul.

Nothing about this should be possible. Every ounce of it is inexplicable. Processing the hilarity of it all is a fool’s errand in real time, because the goal posts just continue to change.

Just when you think they have nothing left, they pop back up again, like the Terminator out of a blazing fireball or Michael Myers off the front lawn. They are inevitable, insurmountable, indestructible and undeniable.

They are our team.

What transpired after halftime last night is the stuff dreams are made of.

Except it isn’t a dream, or a fairy tale, or a movie, or any of the other silly analogies I’ve tried to come up with in this space to describe something we’ve never before seen in our lifetime.

54 years after Willis?

To the day?

Are you kidding me?

If this is a dream, I think I’d rather stay asleep.

We’ve been waiting for this team our entire lives, whether you’re eight or 80.

They have arrived, on the grandest stage, in the loudest fashion, and they refuse to be sent quietly into that good night.

A team for all time.

A performance for the ages.

A culture-driven comeback.

And of course, the Cinderella man at the center of it all.

Except his shoes aren’t made of glass.

They’re forged in iron.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”