MIAMI — It almost feels unfair to say this, because the Knicks would be nowhere near where they are right now — three wins from what would be a most unexpected trip to the conference finals — if he hadn’t signed up last July, and quietly begun sandblasting the entire feeling around the team. But truth is truth. And this is truth:
Jalen Brunson needs to deliver the Knicks Monday night.
It’s not that he has to carry the load all by himself. It will help if Julius Randle has the kind of game he had in Game 2, if RJ Barrett has the kind of game he had in the defining contests against the Cavaliers in the last round, if Mitchell Robinson and Isaiah Hartenstein can be summoned out of witness protection. Brunson will need help in Game 4.
But it will still be on him to deliver the kind of game he’s become renowned for, especially with money on the table.
The Knicks will need him to run the offense, spray the ball around, knock down jumpers and herky-jerky drives. They will need him to do as best he can on defense where the Heat have begun to target him as often as possible, getting the ball to Brunson’s man as much as they can because he’s not a proficient defender to begin with and whatever ankle miseries he’s dealing with have slowed him a step on that end.
Maybe it seems a big ask. But much the same way the Yankees’ baseball standards are so high that they routinely deliver apologies whenever a season ends without a championship, so too does Brunson demand that his shoulders should be burdened with as much blame as possible after losses, asking for it to stick to him like lint clinging to a dark Armani suit.
“It’s on me,” Brunson said after the Knicks lost Game 1 of this series.
“I have to play better, bottom line,” Brunson said after the Knicks lost Game 3 Saturday.
It doesn’t matter that while Brunson might not have brought his A-game either time, he wasn’t alone. The Knicks find themselves fighting oxygen against the Heat because they’ve yet to play any one game that resembled each of the four they turned in against Cleveland. They have shot the ball poorly, defended miserably, haven’t been able to have any say in the pace or tone of the games outside of the final six minutes of Game 2.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Knicks vs. Heat NBA playoff series
- Vaccaro: Knicks’ failure to help Brunson is why their season’s over
- Knicks battle but fall in season-ending Game 6 loss to Heat
- Knicks couldn’t survive two minutes without Brunson
- Brunson’s heroic night spoiled by late turnover
As with everything good that’s happened for the Knicks this year, that starts with Brunson, their engine and most valuable player. What’s in their favor is this: he knows it, and he relishes it. Just go back the last two playoff seasons and look at what Brunson has done after what could have been soul-crushing losses:
Last year after the Mavericks lost Game 1 at home to the Jazz, Brunson had 41 points and five assists, kick-starting the Mavs into what became a six-game win. A round later, down 2-0 to Phoenix he went for 28 and five in a Game 3 win that salvaged the season, and then for 24 on 11-for-19 shooting in Game 7, on the road.
This year? The Knicks were trounced in Game 2 by Cleveland — a game not unlike the beating they absorbed Saturday — and Brunson’s 21 points, six assists and plus-20 rating carried the day. And after the Heat beat the Knicks in Game 1, Brunson was especially devastating late, carrying the team with 30 points and one big-time shot after another.
And while he was seen limping at the end of Game 3, when that was brought to his attention he didn’t even wait for the last words of the question: “I’m all good. I’ll be ready for Game 4.”
He craves this stuff.
“You’ve got to give [the Heat] credit with how they’ve been consistent with guys they have, their culture, everything they do, you hear about that league-wide; give them a lot of credit,” Brunson said, acknowledging the professional way the Heat go about their business, even saluting them as a fellow professional himself who specializes in playing ball the right way.
And then it was back to his team: “We’ve got to bounce back in Game 4,” he said. “For me I have got to be better. And we’ll go from there.”
Precisely where they go will be defined in these 48 minutes Monday. Win and they can expect to find Madison Square Garden raw and rabid and ready Wednesday, hoping to drag the Knicks even closer to next round; lose and that Garden will sound as most New York sporting cathedrals sound in such moments: loud, but with more than a whiff of dread in the air. Because everyone will be aware of the long odds against the home team.
“I think we do a good job of responding,” Brunson said Saturday. “We have to respond again.”
If they can, if they do, it will be No. 11 with the loudest voice of all. It’ll have to be.