RJ Barrett, Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart come up big as Knicks take 3-1 series lead on Cavaliers
The clock was ticking down to the final seconds of the third quarter, a 15-point Knicks lead had disappeared, and for the first time all game, they were trailing. And while the raucous noise filling Madison Square Garden made it feel like something other than a Sunday brunch, the Knicks seemed to be fading and the earlier tough talk about how they needed to play threatened to be just idle banter.
The message was simple as they came into this game: Play harder than the Cleveland Cavaliers. And so they did.
Jalen Brunson delivered a three-point field goal to give the Knicks a narrow lead entering the fourth quarter, and a makeshift lineup — with Julius Randle buried on the bench — then did just what they knew they needed to do. They outhustled the Cavs, physically manhandling them and taking the game over. And with Brunson leading the way, the Knicks took a 102-93 decision to build a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven first-round playoff series.
While sitting Randle may have seemed like a drastic measure, it would have been hard for coach Tom Thibodeau to break up the group on the floor. Brunson paired with RJ Barrett, Josh Hart, Obi Toppin and Isaiah Hartenstein to nearly lift the roof off the Garden. Chants of “De-fense!” echoed probably down Eighth Avenue as the team steadily pulled away and allowed the 19,812 in attendance to begin dreaming about just how far this group can go.
“I’ve been saying this since the end of the season, they’re a great team,” Brunson said of the Cavs. “They’ve shown it all year, they’re going to fight. They just came back with a vengeance at the start of the third quarter. Once they took the lead, we kind of looked around and said we have to calm ourselves and just get this under control, stick together.”
Brunson led the Knicks with 29 points, six rebounds and six assists. Barrett had 26 points and Hart, starting in place of Quentin Grimes, who was sidelined with a right shoulder contusion, added 19 points, seven rebounds and constantly harassing defense on Cleveland’s Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell finished with 11 points and shot 5-for-18, including two points on 1-for-9 shooting after halftime.
In a span of less than 48 hours, the Knicks came up with the effort to take control of the series and now can end it Wednesday night in Cleveland.
“It’s not over. Not even close to being over,” Brunson said. “We have to continue to keep focusing on one day at a time. There’s nothing to celebrate, there’s nothing to be truly happy about. Obviously, we won tonight. We’re one step closer, but we got to continue to have the same mindset and mentality that we have had the past couple of games.”
“We’ve got another game,” Hart said. “That’s a tough opponent, and we saw in Game 2, when we don’t bring it, how good they can be. We’re going into their home now, so they’re going to be ready. Obviously, the crowd’s going to be crazy. The atmosphere is going to be wild. But we just have to focus on getting better as a team, attention to detail and focus on the task at hand.”
It was Barrett who spoke Saturday of the game going to whoever played harder. He got the Knicks started, taking just 15 seconds to drive for a layup.
The Knicks built a 15-point lead in the second quarter and were up by nine at halftime, but the Cavs turned it around in the third quarter.
Before the quarter reached the midpoint, Cleveland took a 63-61 lead as it repeatedly attacked Randle on defense, leaving open shooters as Knicks defenders scrambled to help. The Knicks recovered to take a lead into the fourth quarter as Brunson hit a three-point field goal with 5.8 seconds left to make it 73-71. He started the fourth with a jumper to extend the lead, and from there, the Knicks just outhustled and outfought the Cavaliers.
“The fourth quarter was staying tough,” Barrett said. “Every time they threw a punch, we threw something back.”
Brunson and Hart, who won a national championship together in college at Villanova, seemed to summon the memories as they just knew where each would be and what the team would need.
With 4:45 remaining and the 24-second clock running down, Brunson was trapped near midcourt, with two defenders making the 6-1 point guard almost invisible as they crowded him. Then Brunson rose and fired a pass all the way across the court, finding Hart cutting to the rim for an emphatic dunk.
“I approach every single game, series, anything basketball-related, I approach the same,” Brunson said. “No matter what the role is. Roles can change. But your mentality stays the same. I try to keep that as constant as possible.”
“I wish I could tell you something different, but that’s JB,” Hart said. “If you know him, you know he has the same mentality every time he steps on the court, and that’s what makes him a great player. It doesn’t matter if he’s going to shoot two, three shots or he’s going to shoot 20 shots. He’s going to have that mentality. He’s going to make his teammates better. He’s going to control the game and do whatever it takes to win. His role might change, but his mentality never does.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
