With full house at the Garden, Jalen Brunson and Knicks have chance to grab momentum
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson (11) dribbles up court in the first quarter during Game 3 of the Eastern Conference first round series against the Cleveland Cavaliers at Madison Square Garden on April 21, 2023. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
You can’t hear. You can’t think. And even the most sober and polite of Knicks fans can’t help but get swept up in the craziness when Madison Square Garden kicks into postseason mode.
There is nothing like being in a sold-out crowd at The World’s Greatest Arena in the playoffs, which is something a chunk of Knicks fans experienced for the first time Friday night when their team hosted the Cavaliers for Game 3 of their first-round Eastern Conference playoff series.
It had been 10 painful years since this happened, 10 painful years since the Knicks last played a playoff game in front of a capacity crowd of 19,812 in Manhattan.
Jalen Brunson, the reason the Knicks are back in the postseason, was a high school sophomore in suburban Chicago when the Knicks beat the Pacers on May 16, 2013, the last time there was a postseason basketball crowd of this size at Madison Square Garden. During the miserable interim, the Knicks had been to the playoffs once — a first-round series against Atlanta in 2021 when the Garden crowd was restricted to around 15,000 because of COVID.
“MSG is going to be rocking,” Brunson told reporters after practice Thursday. “I’m pretty sure it’s going to be hard to talk. The floors are going to be shaking. It will definitely be a cool atmosphere to play in.”
Cool and pressure filled, the way Brunson likes it.
No one will get bigger cheers from the home crowd than Brunson. Former Knicks and current ESPN/ABC analyst Jeff Van Gundy told me earlier this year that Brunson is “one of the greatest signings in Knicks history." That’s some pretty heady praise considering Van Gundy was on the Knicks' coaching staff when they signed John Starks, Anthony Mason and Allan Houston.
Brunson proved himself to be a big-time player in pressure situations last season when he scored 41 points for Dallas against Donovan Mitchell and Utah in Game 2 of their first-round playoff series. He did it again against Mitchell, now with the Cavaliers, in Game 1 of this series, scoring 27 points to lead the Knicks to a 101-97 win in Cleveland.
Now, with the series at 1-1, the pressure has never been greater on Brunson. The Cavaliers used a two-prong approach to contain Brunson in Game 2, throwing a kitchen sink defense on him while making him work hard on the other end of the floor by having him guard the versatile Caris LaVert.
Brunson has been the Knicks' floor leader all season long and it was clear heading into Game 3 that he was going to have to tweak his game if he didn’t want a repeat of his Game 2 performance when he shot 5-for-17 for 20 points and six assists.
If the Knicks are going to take charge of this series, Brunson must both find a way to score and beat the Cavaliers with the pass.
Brunson has to score because RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley and Quentin Grimes have been unreliable at best and Julius Randle needs to put together two strong playoff halves.
Barrett is shooting 24% for the series and scored just seven points in the Knicks' Game 1 victory, and 14 in the Cavaliers' Game 2 win. Quickley, who finished second to Celtics guard Malcom Brogdan in the Sixth Man of the Year balloting, was 0-for-5 with three turnovers in Game 1. Grimes has been inexplicably awful, totaling nine points and 1-for-6 shooting in the two games.
If just one of them could get rolling and knock down a few shots, it would take a lot of pressure off of Brunson, who is more than capable of getting his teammates the ball where they want it.
“We all have to make shots,” Barrett said at Friday’s shootaround. “When we’re making shots, we relieve pressure of off of him and relieve pressure off [Julius]. Just try to play team basketball and get a win.”
Make that three more wins. For the first time in a long time, Knicks fans had a legitimate reason to believe their team could get past the first round. And Brunson is a big reason why. He’s long embraced the spotlight, whether it be when he was winning national championships at Villanova or his coming up big in the playoffs last year in Dallas.
Said Brunson: “I think my mental is just in a great place … Just let the cards fall where they may. Just having fun in the moment.”
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
