Knicks' Jalen Brunson can't be contained in victory over Hawks
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson gestures in front of Atlanta Hawks center Clint Capela after scoring a three-point basket in the first half of an NBA basketball game at Madison Square Garden on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The greeting for Trae Young from the Madison Square Garden crowd arrived during pregame introductions. There was a loud chorus of boos to let him know they hadn’t forgotten his litany of slights and showmanship.
But Jalen Brunson had another target in mind. While he certainly would never admit it, in the flow of trying to lift the Knicks to a much-needed win, he was attacking Atlanta defensive stopper Dyson Daniels, who had begun to garner a reputation for frustrating Brunson.
In the final minutes, when he drew a sixth foul on Daniels and sent him to the bench, Brunson turned to his own bench and held up six fingers with a smile. It was as close as you might ever get to see him trash-talking. Brunson went to the line to finish off a 34-point effort as the Knicks took down Atlanta, 119-110.
The Knicks could pick their motivation, whether it was Brunson again proving there is no stopper who can contain him when he needs to score or the Knicks remembering Young simulating rolling dice on the court as he dribbled out the clock to earn a trip to Las Vegas last month. That loss knocked the Knicks out of the NBA Cup.
“I just said that was six fouls,” Brunson said. “That’s all. Just stating a fact. In all honesty, he’s a great defender. I’ve got a lot of respect for him. With trash talk or not, being competitive, that dude can hoop.”
For Brunson, the only motivation he would admit to was getting a win, one that the Knicks (28-16) needed after already losing twice to Atlanta (22-20) this season and struggling badly at home Friday in a loss to Minnesota.
“I think more importantly it was for us to get that win, regardless of who we were playing, just to have a win at home,” Brunson said. “With the stretch of games that we have at home, we’ve got to finish out this month strong. Regardless, it was a big win for us.”
In the two losses to the Hawks, Brunson had 21 and 14 points and shot 13-for-33. This time he got Daniels into early foul trouble and finished 12-for-18 from the floor.
“He’s always going to come through,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Sometimes you’re going to miss shots and they’re good shots and you miss. Just keep shooting. Take good shots. The game tells you what to do. So you’re open and you shoot. If you’re guarded well and there’s two players on you, hit the open man and then move without the ball.”
“Yeah I think he did a good job,” Josh Hart said. “I think we were able to get him a little bit more off the ball and not have him bring the ball up. Sometimes when he brings the ball up, it wastes about five, six seconds and then it takes a couple seconds to get into something. And we can’t play that way.
“So I think we were able to get him off the ball a little more, getting him moving a little bit more. And then he was able to make reads and we played our game.”
The Knicks also got a boost from Karl-Anthony Towns, who returned from two games on the sideline with a sprained right thumb. He contributed 13 points, nine rebounds and seven assists.
The Knicks attacked Young regularly on the defensive end as Mikal Bridges took advantage of the mismatch with 26 points and 12-for-17 shooting in 27:26. Young scored 27 points but had nine of the Hawks’ 24 turnovers.
With 3:08 to play, Young tried to put on one more show.
He began to dribble like a Harlem Globetrotter in an attempt to shake Towns, who was isolated on him in the corner, but Towns — who is about a foot taller — held his ground and maintained his defensive positioning. When Young tried to fake him into a foul, the ball slipped out of his hands and he wound up catching it himself. Young was called for a travel and then assessed a technical as he argued.
Atlanta took an 18-8 lead, but the Knicks cut their deficit to one by the end of the first quarter. The Knicks turned the game around in the third quarter by outscoring the Hawks 40-27, with the Villanova trio of Bridges (14), Brunson (12) and Hart (10) totaling 36.
“Especially in the second half, yeah, we did a lot of good things today and things that we can build on,” Brunson said. “But we have to build on them. We can’t say that we want to build on them and then take steps back. But I think even if obviously we lose but we’re still building the right habits, we can live with that. We’ve got to continue to create the right habits.”
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.
