The Knicks haven’t made it out of the second round yet, haven’t knocked out the champs even though the champs were ready to go even before Jayson Tatum is the one who went down. But there is a path now, even though the path will likely include the running-hot Pacers who knocked the Knicks out of this round a year ago. It means there is a path for the Knicks, if they keep winning this way, to write one of the great stories any New York sports team has ever written.
And just for now, in the moment, still a ways from the NBA Finals, one more win against the Celtics will make this feel like that first Super Bowl when the Giants knocked off the 18-0 Patriots, when New York upset Boston that time. It will feel like a basketball Super Bowl XLII.
The Knicks set themselves up to do it on Monday night, the kind of Madison Square Garden night for which Knicks fans have been waiting for since the last time their team last fought for the title, over 25 years ago, against another NBA dynasty, the Spurs.
This is the kind of night everybody was waiting for, this kind of high-stakes game, and one not just against anybody, but against the Boston Celtics. This is a Knicks team for which everybody has waited, one that for seven, close postseason wins so far keeps out-grinding the other team, first the Pistons and now the Celtics.
And more than anything, Jalen Brunson is the player and star for whom Knicks fans have waited for since Patrick Ewing became one of the great Knicks of all time.
As great and gallant as Patrick was, though, back when he never had the kind of talent around him that Brunson has, no one ever thought the Knicks had the best player in the whole sport at this time of year. But that is what they have right now in Brunson. Not Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is going to be MVP and not Nikola Jokic, who has been MVP. Not even the kid from the Timberwolves, Anthony Edwards.
Brunson, smaller than the others, is the best player right now. We keep comparing the kind of scoring he is doing to what Bernard King did back when he was a great Knick. But the truth of the matter is that what Brunson is really doing in these playoffs is play the kind of big ball that Michael Jordan once did at this time of year.
Of course Michael won six titles, and did these things all the way through six NBA Finals. Brunson isn’t him. It doesn’t change that he keeps giving you Michael games. Again: Not even out of this round yet. Still five wins away from Brunson and the Knicks finally making it back to the Finals. And we sure were reminded how fragile these seasons and moment are when Tatum’s leg crumpled underneath him trying to beat OG Anunoby to that loose ball.
Still: The Knicks over these 10 games, outplayed for so much of all 10 of those games, have already made themselves this kind of tremendous New York story and this kind of surprise, especially after the way the Celtics got them four times during the regular season. But if they do get one more win off the Celtics, they will have gotten themselves to within four more after that and then four more after that from being legendary.
There have been other Garden nights since the Knicks won their last title in 1973. There was the day when they beat another terrific Pacers team, May of 1994, in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, putting themselves back in the Finals for the first time in 21 years, Patrick standing on the scorer’s table when it was over, looking as if the Garden could barely contain him.
And there was the night five years later, once more against the Pacers again, when Larry Johnson made his 4-point play, and the Garden made a sound in that moment that I wasn’t even sure the Garden could make. Before long, the Knicks were back in the NBA Finals.
Now here these Knicks are, on the threshold of winning a series that has seen them twice come from 20 points down to win in Boston and came from 14 down on Monday night. Brunson, of course, always a picture of grace, win or lose, made sure to remind everybody after Game 4 that there was still work to be done against the Celtics.
“I was actually telling everyone to get off the court. I was like, it’s nothing to celebrate,” Brunson said.
There wasn’t. And yet there is. The Knicks were not supposed to come back and win those two games in Boston the way they did against the champs. Brunson wasn’t supposed to come right back put up Clyde numbers — 39 and 12 — after the way the Celtics rolled the Knicks on Saturday afternoon. Mikal Bridges was not supposed to carry his team the way he has in the moments when Brunson has been given a much-needed rest. But Bridges has done exactly that, the start of fourth quarters in Games 2 and 4. And by the way? After the way the Knicks looked Saturday, no one expected them to come right back on Monday and have four starters with 20 points or more.
They all did something to help the Knicks win Game 4. Brunson did the most, especially with those 18 third-quarter points. This time they rose up again at home, carrying the place even more than the place tried to carry them, once again being the kind of underdog team, full of heart and scrap, that the city has always loved the most.
Lot of ball left to be played. Lot more of the story to be written. But there’s suddenly this path, one looking wide as Seventh Ave. on Monday night. More than big enough for all the dreamers.
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