Knicks allow winning basket with 1.8 seconds left, fall to Thunder
Jalen Brunson #11 of the Knicks misses a shot at the buzzer during the fourth quarter against Shai Gilgeous-Alexander #2 of the Oklahoma City Thunder at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, March 31, 2024. Credit: Jim McIsaac
With the clock ticking down, the Knicks turned to Jalen Brunson, who delivered a go-ahead driving layup to send the Madison Square Garden crowd into a frenzy.
After putting up the shot, he crashed to the floor, with Lu Dort clearly appearing to collide with and foul him.
But no call was made, and with 4.1 seconds left, it provided a sliver of time for Oklahoma City to turn to its superstar, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Stymied through much of the night, he connected this time, taking an inbounds pass and turning to hit a baseline jumper just over the outstretched fingers of Deuce McBride with 1.8 seconds left.
Brunson had one more chance, a tough turnaround jumper that fell short as time expired, and the Knicks lost to the Thunder, 113-112, on Sunday night.
There were plenty of their own flaws — missed shots, missed free throws, missed defensive assignments — that they could have pointed to, but the officiating again had the Knicks steaming afterward. They saw a second straight game slip out of their grasp while they count down the days left in the season and fight for playoff positioning.
“Write what you see,” coach Tom Thibodeau said. “Write what you see. Write what you see. That’s all I can say. Write what you see.”
As the teams left the court, Brunson went to midcourt and talked to the officials for a long time but got no satisfaction. “He said it wasn’t a foul,” said Brunson, who had 30 points and seven assists. “That’s really, to put it into long-story short, that’s what he said.”
The call may have been hard to stomach, but the Knicks still had a chance to make the final stop and protect the lead and could not get it done. Gilgeous-Alexander delivered the final blow even though McBride defended it about as well as he could.
Gilgeous-Alexander entered the game third in the NBA at 30.4 points per game but struggled through a 7-for-16, 19-point performance as McBride chased him all night long. But he managed to come through when it mattered, sending the Knicks to their second straight tough loss. Despite Brunson’s 61 points, they had lost to the Spurs in overtime on Friday.
For the Knicks (44-30), who are a half-game behind the third-place Cavaliers and a game ahead of the fifth-place Magic in the Eastern Conference standings, the losses seem amplified right now. As they jockey for playoff positioning, they are waiting for their starting front line to return, a task that seems to take a step backward for every step forward.
Mitchell Robinson was sidelined with a sprained left ankle Sunday after only two games back in the lineup following a 50-game absence. And the Knicks just don’t seem to know when Julius Randle and OG Anunoby will return.
“I’m looking at it like this is the team we’re going to have,” Josh Hart said. “I think that’s how we have to approach it, that those guys aren’t coming back, and obviously we’ll be pleasantly surprised if they come back.”
That meant another day of relying on Brunson to carry them on his shoulders. He did his part with 30 points, but the Knicks just couldn’t get enough help for him as Donte DiVincenzo struggled through a 4-for-18 night and the bench came up empty.
Even with Gilgeous-Alexander struggling to get on track, the Thunder turned an 85-73 deficit into a 102-95 lead, with much of the damage done by Josh Giddy. He had 16 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists, giving him a triple-double in all three of his Garden appearances.
Brunson tied the score at 95 with a tough bank shot and was furious when he didn’t draw a foul call on the play — a common thread for him lately as he has not been getting the calls he got earlier in the season.
Asked before the game if the Knicks had sent some of these clips of the recent trend to the league offices — including from Brunson’s 61-point effort against the Spurs, when he attempted 43 shots, scored 30 points in the paint and went to the line for only six free throws — Thibodeau said, “Yeah, we send clips, but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good.”
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.
