This wasn’t the wire-to-wire joyride, the opening-tap-to-final-buzzer jamboree they’d enjoyed two nights earlier. It looked like it might go that way for a while. For a while the Knicks were just clobbering the Cavaliers, bullying them, knocking them all around Madison Square Garden to the sublime delight of 19,812 of their friends.
Jalen Brunson made a step-back 26-footer midway through the second quarter to push the Knicks’ lead to 15, and the Cavs called timeout, and Timothee Chalamet and Daniel Jones and the rest of an overstuffed Celebrity Row and everyone else in the house were on their feet. It was all so shockingly easy.
And then, not shockingly, it was gone. The Cavs punched back. Across the first part of the third quarter Darius Garland took over the game and for the first time we heard nerves at the Garden, the kind of quiet pall that sneaks in whenever one of The Other Guys starts to ruin the script, Garland making like Michael/Reggie/Trae, all the ghosts of trespassers past.
A funny thing happened then.
The Knicks showed they had a chin.
“Every time they threw a punch,” RJ Barrett said, “we threw some back.”
Specifically, Barrett and Brunson did, joined by a merry band of wingmen who delivered the Knicks to the doorstep of the Eastern Conference semifinals with a decisive 102-93 win over Cleveland, seizing a 3-1 lead in this best-of-seven series, meaning they’ll have three shots to oust the Cavs, starting Wednesday night at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.
“They came back with a vengeance,” Brunson said, “and we were able to answer them.”
Brunson finished with a game-high 29 points and added six assists and sank what might’ve been the biggest basket of the season so far, a 26-foot 3 with 6.0 seconds left in the third quarter that turned a one-point Cavs advantage to a 73-71 Knicks margin heading into the fourth, and the Cavs never sniffed the lead again.
Barrett? He followed up a terrific game on Friday with another keeper on Sunday, scoring 26 points, most of them the hard way going through, over and around the Cavs’ big men. One advantage Cleveland was supposed to have was the two-headed Jarrett Allen-Evan Mobley tandem, but the combination of Barrett and the Knicks’ pivot platoon of Mitch Robinson and Isaiah Hartenstein (13 points, 19 rebounds, four blocks between them) have neutralized them so far.
It’s also helpful that Cavs star Donovan Mitchell scuffled through a brutal game, missing 13 of his 18 shots, scoring only 11 points, never flashing any of his past playoff explosiveness.
“We were searching,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “We knew this game would be a challenge because of the quick turnaround and the [1 p.m.] start today.
“We know there’ll be shifts in games and we have to get through that. We responded, got hit hard came back.”
Credit Thibodeau, too: He is never shy about going with hot hands and benching regulars — with two notable exceptions. If Brunson is breathing, he’s playing. And Julius Randle — “our horse,” Thibodeau called him — is always in there at the end of close games. Always.
But Sunday, Randle came out of the game at the end of the third quarter and he never went back in. He’d had a rough go — only seven points, only two rebounds, only 3-for-10 shooting — and didn’t look right all game. For three years, Thibodeau has always put Randle back. He didn’t this time.
“That group got going,” Thibodeau said, “and we rode that out.”
Randle, to his credit, was an engaged presence on the bench and seemed to understand that the quick turnaround probably dented him, though he didn’t share his thoughts on the matter after the game before ducking out. Still, his teammates appreciated the support.
“All he wants to do is win,” Brunson said. “We all have his back.”
Up and down the lineup, they all did, they all took that stand together, they all refused to allow the Cavaliers to do what so many teams have done this year at the Garden, erase big leads and own the game during its most important minutes. That wasn’t going to happen as long as Barrett had a say, or Obi Toppin (eight huge rebounds) or the Knicksanova Twins, Brunson and Josh Hart (19 points, seven rebounds, two assists, two steals).
“We have to keep focusing on one day at a time,” Brunson said, asked if he could allow himself to daydream, even ever so briefly, about the possibility of another round after this one, one win away from getting there. “Nothing to celebrate except a win tonight that gets us one step closer.”
We’d already seen the Knicks win with their hearts before in this series, and their grit. This one was different. This one they won with their jaws. Cast in iron.