Speechless

After last night's win for the ages, we're all at a loss for words.

Good morning friends. Somebody pinch me.

Game 49: Knicks 109, Pacers 105

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

In a New York minute…

What. A. Freaking. Game.

The new leader in the clubhouse for Game of the Year, if not Game of the Leon Rose Era, started off unassumingly, with the Knicks looking confused on defense and bricky on offense en route to a 36-26 deficit after one. From there though, the defense picked up and Jalen Brunson - decent player, perhaps you’ve heard of him - started to heat up before halftime. An 0-for-17 stretch from deep threatened to doom the Knicks, but they stayed close in the third until a barrage from Deuce McBride brought them within striking distance. From there, it was Brunson’s time, and despite the fact that he often had to overcome five Pacers and three refs, he put forth a performance for the ages in the face (literally) of ultimate adversity.

One Thing

May 17, 1995.

Not a particularly notable day in Knicks history, but it is one I will certainly never forget.

It came 10 days after my 12th birthday party - a party that was spoiled by Reggie Miller scoring eight points in 8.9 seconds to steal Game 1 of the 1995 East Semis - and saw New York enter Game 5 down 3-1 in the series.

Me being a pre-teen, I didn’t know anything about the odds of coming back from 3-1 down, to say nothing of the concept of “contenders” vs “pretenders,” the later of which certainly defined the ‘95 Knicks. All I knew was that the year prior, my first year really following the sport, New York had gone to Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Thus, they would surely make it back to the Finals again this year. That’s how sports worked, obviously.

Or maybe not.

Sitting there on that Wednesday night in my dad’s house, with the Knicks down by one and 5.9 seconds away from getting eliminated, for the first time in my brief existence as a fan, the concept of not making it to the finish line entered my brain. It was not a pleasant thought, but it is one I remember distinctly. It was the most empty feeling I could remember having up until that point, and one I couldn’t imagine being made even worse by (…I can barely type the words…) a loss to the f——-g Indiana Pacers, of all teams.

Thankfully, Patrick Ewing had other ideas.

Long time fans know what happened next. After a relatively comfortable win in Game 6, Ewing was unable to make it two game winners in one series when he missed the infamous finger roll at the end of Game 7. As a result, his Game 5 series-saving shot is largely lost to time.

But not to me it isn’t.

When that shot went down, for the first time in my life, I cried tears of joy. As I hugged my dad while we jumped up and down in unison together, I remember thinking, “this is the greatest feeling in the world.”

And you know what? It just might have been.

That is the power of sports. It can make us care about a group of strangers who we will never know and who will never know us like they were the most immediate members of our own family. A man might go through years in a relationship without ever opening up to his significant other, but if you catch him during the right moment during the right game, he’ll melt faster than an ice cube on an August afternoon.

Best of all, you never quite know when one of those moments if afoot.

Right up until it happens.

I don’t know Jalen Brunson personally, and the odds are that I never will. The closest I’ll come is probably talking to Fred Katz, who has covered the entirety of Brunson’s tenure in New York and has relayed stories to me about Jalen’s indelible impact on the locker room and the organizational culture as a whole.

And yet, nearly three decades removed from that Ewing shot against the same team that Brunson refused to lose to last night, when I saw Brunson holding back tears as Alan Hahn asked him about his first All-Star birth in front of 18,000 people chanting “MVP” in the background, I felt like a 12-year-old in my dad’s living room all over again.

You’d think that sort of thing would be extricated from you by life, both real and the fantastical existence that is fandom. Watch a team lose enough, and you start to get a little dead inside. Watch a team embarrass themselves as often and as shamefully as the Knicks did for the better part of 20 years, and you really become jaded. Every losing season is another wall that gets built up - walls that guard against hope and optimism. Walls that block out the stuff that got us to root for teams in the first place.

Well last night, Jalen Brunson blasted through the last remaining walls that many of us had left (with the face to prove it, no less).

That’s how special this player, and by extension this team, have become. They have made believers out of the most beaten down among us. He has made believers out of us all.

That includes the indefatigable Mike Breen, who called so many games in so many lost seasons, and gave us one of the defining sound bites of his Hall of Fame career after two of Brunson’s 11 fourth quarter points:

Born to play basketball, he was indeed. And last night, it felt like we were all born to watch him be a Knick.

Battered and bruised after the most egregious non-foul call you will ever see, looking like Rocky Balboa after 15 rounds with Apollo Creed, Brunson displayed the sort of will that defines superstardom far more than height or pedigree. Advanced metrics have come a long way, but this is still the sort of thing that you can only know when you see it. It is the sort of thing that can bring a grown man to tears long after this tortured love affair first began.

Last night, Jalen Brunson answered the bell in every way a professional athlete can. He inspired a team and a city as he continues to redefine conventional definitions of stardom.

And more importantly than any of that, like Pat did 28 years ago, he beat the f——-g Indiana Pacers.

Long live Jalen Brunson - our hero, our savior, and now, our All-Star.

The power of sports.

Unlike anything else in the world.

Play of the Day

So nice, we had to show it twice:

In the roller coaster ride that was the fourth quarter of this game, this was the final drop that you didn’t see coming.

Recall that before this, New York:

• fought back from eight down early in the fourth to tie the game at 91 with 6:45 remaining…

• went up by six after two more Jalen makes and an I-Hart putback as they held Indy without a point for more than five minutes, seemingly securing momentum and the game with under four to go, and then…

• watched as Jalen Smith of all people rattled off seven of Indy’s next nine points, including an easy dunk to put the Pacers up one after Brunson was literally smacked in the face and lost the ball.

And then came this make, probably with JB still seeing stars.

Speaking of which…

💫 Stars of the Game 💫

⭐️ Isaiah Hartenstein

⭐️ Deuce McBride

⭐️ Precious Achiuwa

Much like Jalen Brunson ultimately broke the Pacers, last night’s Super-chatters who urged for a deviation from the typical Stars format finally broke me.

For the first time this season, I have to split the final two spots into three. If I didn’t, one of the above warriors would be left out in the cold, and that simply wouldn’t be fair.

I often say that a player’s impact can’t be quantified by their numbers in a game, and this win certainly falls under that category. That being said, check out the stat lines for New York’s starting front court:

19 boards and a team-high six dimes for I-Hart. A career high six “stocks” for Achiuwa over 43 intense minutes. Both men gobbled up eight offensive rebounds apiece, leading the Knicks to their highest offensive rebounding total (24) in four and a half years. Their respective efforts on the defensive end in the second half in particular were the biggest reason why Indiana tied their fourth lowest point total of the season, and their relentlessness on the glass wore down the Pacers’ spirit more and more as the game went on.

As for Deuce, between the 3:50 mark of the third quarter and the 10:33 mark of the fourth, McBride was the only Knick to score a point. He ran off 11 straight in that five-plus minute stretch, keeping New York afloat and within striking distance as Jalen caught a breather. His last shot, a triple to cut Indy’s six point lead in half with 7:58 to go, was as big a moment as there was in this game.

And on top of all that, his defense in the first half helped change the tenor of this evening.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Jalen Brunson: What even is there left to say at this point?

How about this: In scoring 40 points, a number he has now reached five times this season, Brunson reminded us why he is unlike any perimeter player in the NBA.

Yes, the 3-pointer has become a vital part of his arsenal, but against Indy, he was unstoppable on a night when his outside shot wasn’t going in (his only make in six attempts was the game-tying shot with 6:45 left). His ability to have this impact on an “off” night is the result of unparalleled footwork and undeniable touch, a combination which has now moved him into 10th on the league scoring leaderboard.

Not bad for a second round pick who wasn’t worth the midlevel exception to the Dallas Mavericks.

Tip-Ins…

🏀 If someone tries to tell you that Indy only lost this game because Tyrese Haliburton was on a 22-minute limit and didn’t play in the fourth quarter, please give them the same courtesy that Andrew Nembhard gave Jalen Brunson. The Knicks were not only missing Mitchell Robinson and Julius Randle, but OG Anunoby and Quentin Grimes as well.

Both players are day to day moving forward. In their absence, Malachi Flynn got seven minutes off the bench in the first half and played well.

🏀 In addition to being shorthanded, New York also couldn’t hit the far side of a barn, making just 8-of-38 from long range. It was their first win in seven games this season shooting under 30 percent from deep. Josh Hart (0-for-6 overall, 0-for-3 from deep) an Donte DiVincenzo (8-for-26, 4-of-16 from deep) were particularly cold, but they each found ways to contribute to the victory.

🏀 After being outrebounded by Indiana 17-11 in the first quarter, the Knicks wound up winning the final rebound margin 60-44. They were unrelenting as this game progressed.

🏀 Obi Toppin only shot 4-of-10 and was picked on a bit down the stretch defensively, but on the whole he played well in his return.

Up Next…

The Lakers come to town on Saturday night. If you’re in the area, swing by to watch the game with me and the KFS crew:

Final Thought

Been watching this team for more than 30 years.

It’s never felt like this before.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”