A lot has happened to the Knicks as we’ve had the kind of rising they’ve had and we’ve had in New York City over the past week-and-a-half, something out of the 1990s, the last time the Knicks felt like the biggest game in town. But more than anything, what has happened and keeps happening, in real time, is that Jalen Brunson officially became the King of New York. Finally we had a Knick to do somebody else what Michael Jordan used to do to them.
Brunson dropped another 40-plus game on the 76ers in Philly on Thursday night, finishing off what really had felt like the kind of whole 40-point series that Bernard King had against the Pistons in a 5-game series 40 years ago. And Brunson, the son of an old Knick and a child of Villanova the way his buddies Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo are, totally did a Michael thing by scoring 39 or more points in four consecutive playoff games. Bernard did that. Michael did that. So did Jerry West. So Brunson did walk with kings.
This is the kind of rising we are getting from the Rangers right now, and the way we got a sports rising back in ’17 when we thought the Yankees were going back to the World Series, even if all the Knicks have done at the moment, loud as the moment has become, is make it back to the second round for the third time since 2000.
It doesn’t prevent anybody in town from appreciating what we just saw from Knicks-76ers, one of the best playoff series of any round you will ever see, one that brought back all the old noise and all the memories of Larry Johnson’s 4-point play — even if somebody else, Mr. Maxey, did that to the Knicks this time — and Reggie Miller and a time in the ’90s with the Knicks when we didn’t know how good we had it. In the end, the story and series ended with a bunch of kids who played their college ball in Philly taking down a Philly team by combining to put 80 points on them in Game 6.
The story doesn’t happen without Brunson, who has made himself into the greatest free agent signing in the history of the Knicks and one of the greatest in New York sports history; who is as much the MVP of the league as Nikola Jokic or anybody else; who isn’t just the King of New York right now but as big a star as there is anywhere in professional basketball.
And when it was all on the line in Philly on Thursday, when the Knicks were staring at a Game 7 on Saturday night in the Garden and long after they’d blown that huge first-quarter lead, it was Brunson who made a three and then another three and would end up scoring 14 points from 95-95 to the end of the game, capping all that off by assisting on the Hart 3-pointer from the top of the key, one Hart seemed almost reluctant to shoot at first — maybe because he wasn’t Brunson — that knocked the 76ers all the way into next season.
“I just like the way we kept fighting,” Brunson said when it was over. “I think that’s what we’ve been talking about all year, just make sure we keep fighting no matter what the situation is, we have to stick together and we’re going to fight.”
He had finished his night with 41 points and 12 assists and once again was a swishing-dishing Knick guard the way Clyde Frazier had been. He had finished the series with 167 points over the last four games of it, and doing it did look exactly the way Bernard had looked against the Isiah Thomas and the Pistons in the spring of ’84, another time when the Knicks so badly wanted to play themselves into a series against the Boston Celtics. And Brunson had scored more than 35 points and had more than 10 assists three times against the Sixers, something only Oscar Robertson had ever done in the playoffs.
He had help, you know he did. From the start of this series, Hart showed he was ready to play all day and all night, and rebound like a king himself. Hart started this first-round series with 15 rebounds and finished it with 14. And on a night when the Knicks knew they needed points from someone other than No. 11, DiVincenzo showed up with 23 points that felt like a lot more than that.
The Knicks made us watch them over these six games the way the Knicks of the ’90s used to make us watch when it was them against Michael, when it was them against Reggie and the Pacers, when it was them against Pat Riley and the Heat after Riley left New York for the Heat. That all happened in ’95, Patrick Ewing missing a finger roll in the last seconds of Game 7, the ending to a series that had begun with Reggie Miller scoring eight points in the last 8.9 seconds.
It all came back over the past week or so, the way the Knicks keep coming back, making a first-round series feel — and sound — like more. It wasn’t just the Villanova guys and the way they’ve made the Knick colors look like Villanova-blue-and-orange. It was OG Anunoby and Isaiah Hartenstein, too, all having moments on Thursday night, as the Knicks once and for all were setting up Game 1 against the Pacers on Monday night, Pacers’ colors being back in the Garden at this time of year just one more blast from the past.
None of this happens without Brunson, so much more than the Mavericks thought they had and so much more than the Knicks knew they were getting. No Knick was ever better at this time of year. Now all he’s got to do is do it again.
