One Away

The Knicks put forth a performance to remember and moved themselves one win away from the next round.

GOOD MORNING!!!!!!!

Trying very, very hard not to get ahead of myself this a.m. The stats on teams up 3-1 are good…very good, in fact. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Knicks need one more win to take this thing for good.

We’ll worry about getting that fourth win soon. For today, we appreciate another special effort from a very special basketball team.

Game Recap: Knicks 102, Cavs 93

⌚️60 Seconds or Less: You could tell early on that there would be no post-Game 3 letdown. New York picked up where they left off on Friday night and came out with a poise and purpose befitting of the stage they were on, again looking like the better team as the game got underway. Cleveland had notions of making a few first half pushes, but the Knicks came back with timely buckets each time. They took a nine-point advantage into halftime that felt like it should have been higher, but still, it was hard to complain too much.

The good times didn’t last, as the Cavs made their move at the start of the third. Stifled for most of the series, Cleveland scored 24 points in just over seven minutes - an avalanche of buckets in this matchup. Worse yet, they had the home team looking out of sorts. That is, until the combination of Jalen Brunson and RJ Barrett settled things down. Behind their scoring and a renewed defensive effort (just eight points allowed in the 10 minutes following the Cavs initial third quarter burst), New York regained command and closed out the win with big bucket after big bucket down the stretch. Knicks up 3-1. On the Cleveland for Game 5.

✍️ 6 Storylines ✍️

1. Julius Randle still searching (and maybe injured)

Randle has been pretty bad in this series ever since the first half of the first game, but his level of play reached a new low on Sunday. He shot 3-of-10 from the field and missed all four of his looks from deep, but that wasn’t nearly the worst part. On defense, Julius was nothing short of lethargic, with the bottom falling out in a third quarter full of missed rotations and a seeming lack of effort.

After the game, Randle’s teammates and coach predictably came to his defense, with Tom Thibodeau saying that his starting power forward was still bothered by the ankle injury that kept him out to end the regular season, and that “a lot of guys probably wouldn’t even be playing.” Thibs may have been trying to soften the blow after Julius sat for the entire fourth quarter in favor of Obi Toppin, who was excellent.

Randle left without speaking to reporters, but hopefully that’s much ado about nothing. We’ve been down this road with him before, and more importantly, we know that he knows the way back. It’s just a matter of him finding his way in time, before it’s too late.

2. The chess match continues

For the first time all series, Cleveland started out with Darius Garland on Jalen Brunson, and while Brunson took 22 shots to get his 29 points, it’s a stretch to say that Cleveland has figured anything out when it comes to slowing down the Knicks’ engine. Jalen continued to pick and choose between calling for screens and taking defenders one on one, mixing it up nicely between getting his own points and, when the Cavs hard-hedged with a temporary double off the screen, passing out so others could generate offense. Through four games, New York is scoring 113.6 points per 100 possessions when Brunson plays and 75.8 per 100 when he sits.

On the other end, the Cavs attacked Jalen in spots, but save for the one poor stretch early in the third quarter, the Knicks were on point in their rotations and only let Cleveland’s ancillary pieces get the opportunity to beat them. Yet again, their bet paid off.

3. Donovan Mitchell subdued

Thanks in no small part to New York’s game plan and the outstanding efforts of their perimeter defenders, Donovan Mitchell finished with just 11 points - tied for the third lowest total of his 43 career playoff games. Tried as he might, Mitchell couldn’t find a sliver of space to shoot behind the arc, missing all four of his 3-point attempts. He also shot just two free throws in 42 minutes of action.

With Cleveland generating a playoff low 101.3 points per 100 possessions, it’s safe to say that the Knicks’ “Anyone but Donny” defense is working.

4. Winning in the trenches

New York dominated the glass on Sunday, out-rebounding Cleveland 47-33 and beating them on the offensive glass 17-7. Allen and Mobley combined for 11 boards, or the same number as Mitchell Robinson had by himself.

Mitchell will get his flowers below, but Isaiah Hartenstein was nearly as good. The drop off from New York’s starting center has been minimal, and in a moment when momentum was up for grabs, I-Hart came through with maybe the defensive play of the game:

New York gave up virtually nothing at the rim all game long, thanks in large part to 48 minutes of exemplary play from their dynamic duo of big men.

5. No Grimes, no problem

The Knicks listed Quentin Grimes as questionable on Saturay before Thibs said his starting shooting guard would be a game time decision about an hour and 45 minutes before tipoff. That seems to have been a bit of gamesmanship, as Grimes never even came out to warm up and spent the game on the bench with a sling around his arm.

During the game, New York’s assorted beat reporters made sure to clarify that the sling was merely a precautionary measure. As such, you’d think he has a chance to play in Game 5 with two days off between now and then.

Hopefully Grimes can give it a go, but in his absence, there were no shortage of players willing to step in and fill his shoes. Josh Hart started in Grimes’ place and was outstanding on both ends, as we’ll discuss more below. Deuce McBride technically took Grimes’ rotation spot, and although he only played five minutes, was excellent in his limited time.

Finally, Immanuel Quickley continues to struggle on the offensive end (0-for-4 shooting, scoreless), but continues to be the glue that holds New York’s perimeter defense together. As Fred Katz pointed out after the game, the Knicks are holding Cleveland to 80.8 points per 100 possessions in the 89 minutes Quickley has been on the floor in this series. No other player averaging at least 15 minutes a night in this postseason has a defensive rating under 90.

6. Odds in New York’s favor?

According to the Land of Basketball, teams leading 3-1 in a best of seven series throughout NBA history are 258-13 for a winning percentage just over 95 percent.

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

Rather than try to put into words how daunting it was to select my Stars of the Game for this one, just take a look at Benjy Ritholtz’ report card following this win:

That’s a freaking honor roll right there.

I have two more days’ worth of newsletters to sing all of the appropriate praises, but there can only be three, so here comes my toughest call of the season…

⭐️ Mitchell Robinson: By the slimmest of hairs.

Josh Hart was on the court for 40 minutes, scoring 19 points, grabbing seven boards, swiping a couple of steals, and playing as good a defense on Donovan Mitchell as he has seen all season, holding the All-Star guard to just 11 points on 18 shots. Hart is shooting 60 percent in a series where the only other players making at least half of their field goals are the two starting centers. The Knicks are up 3-1, and there is a good argument that without Hart, that margin would be inverted.

And the man can’t even get a damn star. That’s how good the top three were yesterday. The top two did it more through their scoring and playmaking prowess, while Hart is an orb of energy with a uniform.

Mitchell Robinson? He’s nothing short of a force of nature - a category five hurricane, engulfing anything or anyone that dares to come in his path. As Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley are busy stacking canned goods in the storm shelter, Robinson is laying waste to the paint at both ends of the court.

Robinson finished this game with a double double, including seven offensive boards and a couple of blocks that don’t come close to approximating his defensive impact.

His offensive imprint on this game might have been even larger. When the Cavs were making their early third quarter push, New York went from having a six-point lead to a two-point deficit in a span of four minutes. The only Knick points during that time came on two Mitch put-backs after missed shots. Had he not been able to grab and convert those offensive boards, Cleveland’s lead might have grown to a more unmanageable size and we could be talking about a very different outcome.

⭐️ ⭐️ Jalen Brunson

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ RJ Barrett

Which is the correct choice: the alpha, or the omega?

To be clear, Brunson is the guy in this series that the Cavs are selling out to stop. They have no good answers for him one-on-one, let alone when the Knicks bring a screener into the action. His shot-making continues to hover between ridiculous and absurd, like a glitch in the Matrix. A man this small is not supposed to be able to routinely hit shots this hard. And yet he has, over…and over…and over again.

As a result of all that attention, it has been up to other Knicks to make the requisite plays to maintain and capitalize on the advantage. Over the last two games, there has been one option to emerge head, shoulders and torso above everyone else when it comes to being the best option.

But to paint Barrett as some casual beneficiary of Brunson’s greatness couldn’t be further from the truth.

Barrett ended up with 26 points on 18 shots, and that was with him missing all six of his looks from downtown. Brunson, meanwhile, ended up with 29 points along with six assists and six boards, becoming only the fifth Knick to hit all of those marks in the same game, joining Carmelo Anthony, Derek Harper, Patrick Ewing (2x) and Walt Clyde Frazier (7x).

Much more on the two headliners of this game below.

Turning the Corner

Coming off of Tuesday’s 107-90 beatdown at the hands of the Cavs, I made very little attempt to hide my dismay.

I’m 39 years old, less than a month away from the big 4-0. It’s right around the age where the jadedness that starts creeping in around one’s early 30’s really takes a foothold and sets up camp. When you factor in 30 years of Knicks fandom on top of that, it’s like pouring gasoline on the negativity and then having James Dolan play harmonica nearby, which is the rough equivalent of lighting several dozen matches.

In short, I thought the series was over, and not with the result I’d hoped for.

The Cavs not only had the best player, but the numbers said they were the better team. Darius Garland played like an All-Star in Game 2. Zero Knicks joined him in having even a mediocre outing, let alone a standout one. MSG hadn’t been a safe haven for the home team all year long. And now, on the biggest stage, I was supposed to believe they’d flip that switch? That sort of naivety had long since been beaten out of me. The cold, hard rock that had replaced the soul of my fandom knew better.

That is Knicks Fan PTSD for you. The more years you’ve been in, the deeper the roots go. And these roots ran deep.

The face of my disorder? It was none other then RJ Barrett. Believers told me I was being too harsh in my consistent dismissal of his promise. They told me he was built for these moments. Built for this city. Wouldn’t give up, or back down, or give in to the negativity. My negativity.

Poppycock, I thought. For me, Barrett remained the representation of what we didn’t have, couldn’t be, and never were. He was more booby prize than consolation. The first two games of this series only steadied by harsh glare.

This was my personal defeatist (and slightly deranged) backdrop for this weekend’s games against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Game 3, of course, gave me hope, but even that resounding victory could only do so much to cure three decades of learned helplessness. Just as the Knicks only needed to get one game in Cleveland, the Cavs could restore order with a lone victory in Gotham. And who was waiting with the cape and cowl on Sunday afternoon? None other than the man who every Monday morning talk show would be praising after he torched the Knicks to tie up the series. The one who got away. The one who would maintain the NBA’s hierarchy, where superstars rule the day, and where the Knicks were footnotes to someone else’s headline.

Deranged? You don’t know the half of it.

Even as I watched the first half unfold, when New York stemmed every tide and countered every Cleveland jab with two of their own, the pit in my stomach only grew larger. A nine-point halftime lead should have been double that, I thought, knowing full well that even in a rock fight, nine points is the modern NBA equivalent of a free throw in the late 90’s.

Sure enough, within four minutes, the game was tied. The storm had come and the Knicks suddenly looked like the team that was shook. It was only a matter of time now. A tie game would lead to a tie series and another entry in the heartbreak ledger.

And then, after the Cavs gained the lead a few times in the middle of the third, a funny thing happened: the Knicks - no LOL needed - decided to reroute their playoff destiny and rewrite the narrative themselves.

Let ‘em hear you, Jon Stewart!

In baseball, it is often said that momentum is only as good as the next day’s starting pitcher. In this massive moment, the Knicks had two aces up their sleeves, ready to pitch one-hitters. From the 4:56 mark of the third quarter to the 7:07 mark of the fourth, Jalen Brunson and RJ Barrett scored 19 of New York’s next 20 points, taking them from a two-point deficit to a seven-point lead.

Brunson, who is now averaging 24 points, five assists, four rebounds and two steals on pretty damn efficient (for this series, a least) 46 percent shooting, was no surprise as someone who came to the rescue.

But Barrett? Even after his big, newsletter-inspiring game from Friday, it was a lot to ask of him to do it twice in a row, especially after the Cavs had time to adjust to what was coming.

And sure enough, he didn’t match his performance from Game 3.

He exceeded it.

Over the last four years, RJ Barrett has played in 271 regular season games for this franchise. All of them, added up together, don’t have as much meaning as the last two.

To borrow another saying from baseball, there is a notion that you aren’t truly a Yankee until you earn your pinstripes. With the history of that organization, it’s nearly impossible to do so before the calendar flips to October.

The New York Knickerbockers do not have nearly the same history of success, but this fan base knows when a player has earned their stripes. There’s a reason someone like Larry Johnson, bad back and all, will never pay for another drink in this town for as long as he lives. Heck, Chris Copeland can probably run up a decent tab. That’s how low the bar has been since the 90’s.

That fallow period has only increased the yearning for greatness, while at the same time increasing the capacity for doubt. It is why this weekend contained perhaps the most important ~43 hours for the Knicks as a franchise since the day Patrick Ewing got traded.

This weekend, Jalen Brunson cemented himself in Knicks lore as the man - a dude capable of being the best player in a high stakes playoff series.

This weekend, RJ Barrett cast aside all the doubters (🙋‍♂️) once and for all, proving that he truly is built for this.

Similarly, this weekend saw Mitchell Robinson finally make good on all of his promise, putting together all of his prodigious abilities into a one-man wrecking crew that the Cavs simply have no answer for.

Speaking of one-man wrecking crews, this weekend was the best evidence yet that Josh Hart is the most important mid-season acquisition the franchise has made since Dave DeBusschere.

Most of all, this weekend was the moment that the Knicks - these relentless, incorrigible Knicks - turned the corner as a franchise that must be reckoned with, today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future.

Give them credit, for their belief in themselves has never wavered.

And now, finally, neither will mine.

Forget inevitable endings. This right here is only the beginning.

One more game to go.

🏀

That’s it for today! If you enjoy this newsletter and like the Mets, don’t forget to subscribe to JB’s Metropolitan, or his hockey newsletter, Isles Fix. See y’all soon! #BlackLivesMatter