SAN ANTONIO — The Knicks can have a big scoring problem when Jalen Brunson is not on the court.
It was always expected, though often masked by big nights from Miles McBride or Donte DiVincenzo, given the longstanding absence of Julius Randle.
In Friday night’s 130-126 OT loss to the lottery-bound Spurs, the Knicks were outscored by 24 points in the less than 10 minutes Brunson was on the bench.
That’s the ballgame.
Gregg Popovich knew he had to stop one player.
“I thought we did a good job down the stretch hitting him and double-teaming him and making other people participate,” the Spurs coach said.
Brunson still finished with 61 points, but the Knicks were flummoxed offensively in overtime — managing just five points on 2-of-10 shooting — including 0-for-4 from beyond the arc.
“We got it out of his hands down the stretch, made it tough for him. The other guys missed shots,” Popovich said. “Tough to do that earlier in the game when everybody is fresh. But at the end, people can miss shots.”
One big miss was from McBride, who had a chance to win the game in regulation but clanked an open trey just before the buzzer. Brunson missed the other potential game-winner in OT.
Still, Tom Thibodeau seemed mostly concerned with his familiar complaint that Brunson isn’t getting a fair whistle.
The coach brought it up postgame again — mostly through generalities — but his argument wasn’t quite backed up by the referee’s two-minute report.
The officials acknowledged that Brunson should’ve been awarded an and-1 that was ignored with 1:03 remaining in OT.
The Knicks point guard hit the shot but a foul on San Antonio’s Tre Jones wasn’t whistled.
However, the report also found that Brunson got away with a travel on his potential game-winning 3-point shot with eight seconds left.
Two other incorrect calls — an out-of-bounds and a non-call on Mitchell Robinson — benefitted the Knicks. So if anything, the Spurs were disadvantaged by poor officiating in the last two minutes of overtime, at least according to the referee’s report.
That’s not going to stop the talk about Brunson’s foul shots. He’s emerged as a star with a high usage rate but takes only 6.1 free throws per game.
His number of attempts is basically in line with ball-dominant guards his size but the big discrepancy is in the ratio of drives to fouls. Brunson is second in the NBA in drives per game, behind only Sunday’s opponent, Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. However, Brunson was 15th in free-throw attempts on average.
Gilgeous-Alexander, for instance, averages 2.6 more free throws per game than Brunson. Part of that is natural — smaller guards get fewer foul shots. The Hawks’ Trae Young, who averaged 7.8 foul shots before getting injured, is the outlier.
The other part with Brunson, as scouts and evaluators have explained, is that he’s difficult to officiate as a foul hunter who often initiates the contact.
But the officiating wasn’t the Knicks’ big problem in San Antonio. It was that Brunson had no help.
Brunson vs. Victor Wembanyama was quite a historic performance.
Beyond the franchise records Brunson threatened by scoring 61 points (he’s now second on the single-game list behind Carmelo Anthony’s 62-point performance), Brunson and Wemby did something that’s only been accomplished once prior — and that was over 62 years ago.
According to ESPN Stats & Info, Friday night was the second time in NBA history one player had a 40-point, 20-rebound game (Wembanyama) and the other (Brunson) had a 60-point game.
The only other duo was Wilt Chamberlain (78 points, 43 rebounds) and Elgin Baylor (63 points) on Dec. 8, 1961.
