Jalen Brunson’s been here time and time again: game on the line with the ball in his hands.
This time, it was with an opportunity to put the Philadelphia 76ers away and punch the Knicks’ ticket to their second consecutive second-round playoff appearance with a victory in Game 5 at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday.
Brunson had the ball with less than 30 seconds to go in overtime, isolated against Philadelphia’s 6-foot-8 defensive stopper, Nicolas Batum with his Knicks down two.
He sized-up Batum from the right wing, hesitated, then side-stepped out behind the three-point line for a shot he’s made all season.
Only this time, the ball didn’t leave his hands in the direction of the basket.
This time, Batum’s lanky wingspan recovered in time for a hard contest on Brunson’s jump shot.
Instead of shooting the ball, Brunson changed course in mid-air — a cardinal basketball sin — and passed the ball in the direction of Isaiah Hartentstein.
Hartenstein, however, crashed the glass, expecting Brunson to hoist a go-ahead shot like he’s done all season.
The ball made it neither to the rim nor the center’s hands.
Instead, it bounced behind Hartenstein, past his outstretched arm, out of bounds into the 76ers possession.
“Just a tough way to lose a ball game,” said head coach Tom Thibodeau.
Brunson buried his head in his hands.
A player who had been so good in the clutch all season, who had put the weight of an entire Knicks franchise on his shoulders to power them to the East’s No. 2 seed, came up short.
Brunson finished with 40 points on 15-of-32 shooting from the field and 4-of-11 shooting from three-point range, but the performance fell on a series-shifting 112-106 loss to the 76ers in Game 5 on Tuesday.
The Knicks, who entered the night with a commanding 3-1 lead, now hold onto a 3-2 advantage with the series shifting back to Philadelphia for Game 6 on Thursday.
And as good as Brunson was, as good as he’s been all season — first-time NBA All-Star and likely first-time recipient of All-NBA honors, as well — his blunder capped a series of mistakes leading the Knicks to a costly loss at home on Tuesday.
“Not good judgment on my part,” he said after the game. “Careless turnover in overtime. … But hats off to them, because they played a full 53 minutes. So we just gotta come back.”
“I’m not gonna say [that play] was the end of the game,” added Brunson’s teammate, Josh Hart, “but I guess he thought he had enough space for the shot. And then Batum probably closed the gap a little quicker than he thought.”
Brunson’s turnover was only one mistake the Knicks made in crunch time. The first swung the pendulum all the way in Philadelphia’s favor.
The Knicks led, 96-90, with under 30 seconds left in regulation before Mitchell Robinson fouled 76ers’ All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey, who took the contact, made the three, then converted the free throw for a four-point play.
The 76ers then intentionally fouled Hart, who stepped to the line with an opportunity to make it a four-point game, but missed his first of the two free throws to keep the game within three.
And on the ensuing possession, instead of intentionally fouling to send a Sixers player to the line for two free throws in a three-point game, the Knicks let Maxey fire away from 35 feet out.
The shot ripped through the net and pierced through the hearts of those watching from the stands at The Garden.
Maxey finished with a game-high 46 points on 17-of-30 shooting from the field to go with nine assists and seven made threes on the night.
“It’s frustrating, obviously, the way it happened, but we can’t hang our heads,” Brunson said after the game. “We gotta come back stronger, be ready to go and just learn from what we did.”
And now, for the Knicks, confetti will have to wait.
So will the party outside Madison Square Garden in the event the Knicks punch their ticket to the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs.
The last time the Knicks ended a playoff series on their own home floor, a different Brunson wore the orange and blue.
Brunson’s father, Rick, played point guard on the 1998-99 Knicks team that won the Eastern Conference and took a trip to the NBA Finals. That Knicks team closed two playoff series at The Garden in the 1999 playoffs.
The 2024 Knicks couldn’t follow suit — at least not in Game 5 — but if they can’t handle business on the road, once again in hostile territory, they’ll have another crack at it in Game 7 on Saturday.
The 76ers will have confidence. They have won two of the last three games of this series and just secured their first road victory of the matchup.
The Knicks are ready for the challenge, as they always are, though they made things infinitely more difficult failing to close out at home
“We’re gonna have confidence regardless,” said Brunson. “We know that they’re a tough team in that environment. Gotta go in there just ready to play, do what we do and just be ready for a battle.”
