Barbara Barker: As he has all season, Jalen Brunson steps up for Knicks in Game 1
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson motions after a basket against the Spurs during the second half of Game 1 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday in San Antonio. Credit: AP/Eric Gay
SAN ANTONIO — You knew in the opening minute that this was going to be different.
You knew the moment that Jalen Brunson and Victor Wembanyama, the two best players on the NBA’s two best teams, exchanged buckets that this NBA Finals was going to be tighter and tougher than anything the Knicks have experienced this season.
Suffice it to say, playing the San Antonio Spurs is not going to be anything like the cakewalk the Knicks had through the Eastern Conference. Far from it.
But the Knicks showed Wednesday that they didn’t just happen to be playing in the NBA Finals, they have set out to win it.
Brunson, as he has all season, came up with huge shots down the stretch as the Knicks took a 1-0 lead in the NBA Finals with a 105-95 victory over the San Antonio Spurs Wednesday night.
Brunson scored 19 of his 30 points in the second half.
The win extended the Knicks winning streak to 12 games and they have not lost since falling behind Atlanta, 2-1, in their first round series.
If they are going to win the franchise’s first championship since 1973, they are going to have to continue to use all their players.
As great as he was, they just can’t rely on Brunson, whom the Spurs defense went at hard all game. Brunson was sent to the locker room early after Harrison Barnes was pushed into his right knee. Brunson then injured his left ankle in the second quarter when Luke Kornet stepped on it while contesting a shot.
With Brunson constantly under attack, his teammates were going to have to step up big time in the second half — and they did that.
The biggest reason the Knicks entered this game having won 11 straight, including sweeps of Philadelphia and Cleveland in the last two rounds, is that they diversified their offense so they could take advantage of all of their weapons.
No one stepped up more than Karl-Anthony Towns, the All-Star center who took 11 years to get to his first NBA Finals. Towns answered the bell on both defense and offense. Early on he used his big body to try to slow 7-4 Spurs star Victor Wembanyama and fight for rebounds. On offense, he was aggressive early.
The game was the Knicks’ first since closing out their series with Cleveland on Memorial Day. In the meantime, San Antonio took seven games to beat defending champion Oklahoma City. The Spurs are a young team, though, and looked anything but exhausted.
The Knicks were able to hold Wembanyama to 26 points and 12 rebounds. It was a group effort there, including Mitchell Robinson who played despite having a broken bone in his hand.
For close to a full week, Robinsons injury has been shrouded in mystery with the Knicks releasing very little information about how it occurred, when it occurred or how severe it was.
The one thing we do know is that it happened when the Knicks were not on the court, sometime between when they completed their Memorial Day sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals and Thursday of last week when the Knicks held their first practice.
How in the world in the world did Robinson let this happen? Was he slamming the remote too hard as he watched Wembanyama dunk on Chet Holmgren in the Western Conference playoffs? Was he making a pinkie promise with someone that he was going to do his best to stop Wemby? Did he bang it against his nightstand while having nightmares about the 22-year-old future of basketball?
Now, it’s the Spurs who may be having nightmares as they look ahead to a tough, tough series.
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.
