Jalen Brunson made his own shot, just as an NBA Player of the Year should.
It’s a right reserved for the elite of the elite, the cream of the crop who have carte blanche to override the play call set by the coaching staff. Mike Brown’s assistant coach Chris Gent drew up a play on the Knicks’ final offensive possession, facing a two-point deficit with just seconds on the clock in Thursday’s game against the Indiana Pacers. The Browns blew a timeout, and Gent drew up a second play.
Bronson decided to call his own number.
“As Jalen was walking down the floor, he turned to me and said, ‘You got this win,’” Brown recalled after the game. “I will strive to achieve it.” “You do it,” I said. This is who you are. You do you.” And he went out and in. That’s what the real best players do and I’m glad I’m part of his team.
The rest is history. Brunson missed 11 of his first 19 shots and turned the ball over three times in New York’s first game outside of the NBA Cup, a game in which Karl-Anthony Towns, Mitchell Robinson and Josh Hart joined Myles McBride and Landry Shamet on the injury report. He went on to hit a 12-foot turnaround to put the Knicks within one, then sealed the deal with a side step triple to lift the Knicks to a 114-113 win over the Pacers on Thursday.
“Our best player,” Brown said. “MVP, Jalen Brunson.”
However, Brunson is unlikely to win Player of the Year for the second straight season, as the Knicks find themselves in fewer situations to start the season.
That could change as the timeline tightens entering the new calendar year. But as of Friday afternoon, no Knicks player ranked in the top 50 in total clutch points scored this season, with Detroit’s Cade Cunningham and Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander tied with 91 points each. Last season, Brunson ranked second in total clutch points scored (156), one behind league-leading Anthony Edwards of Minnesota and four behind Trae Young of Atlanta, and led the league with 5.6 clutch points scored per game over 28 games with a five-point lead in the final five minutes of regulation or overtime.
This season, Brunson has appeared in eight such games, but he averaged just 1.4 points on 27.3% shooting and 33% shooting from three-point range in those minutes. The Knicks are 4-4 in primetime this season versus their 18-12 record last year.
“It’s a tough league, and it’s tough to score in,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “And it’s difficult to score in the league at peak times. It’s like the red zone in football.”
Mo moment
Brown said he was going to send rookie Mohamed Diawara to the G-League to get some minutes on the court, but with a shortened roster, he instead opted to start the No. 51 pick from France against the Pacers on Thursday.
“I decided I was going to do it yesterday as soon as I knew the guys were going to come out, I was going to start him. For a young man, he has a really good feel, he’s going to be a good player in this league,” the Knicks coach said. “He’s so young right now. He just needs minutes, which is difficult because we have had a lot of injuries. I want to send him to the Premier League but we don’t have enough bodies here. “Anytime I can get him on the floor, I’ll try to do it because he has a chance to be really good in this league.”
Diawara finished with five points, three rebounds, an assist and a steal in 19 minutes at Indiana and showed off his defensive versatility as a 6-foot-9 wing with a 7-foot-4 wingspan and a 9-foot-2 reach.
“You’re talking about a guy who hasn’t played a lot all season. He was very impressive for a guy,” Brown said. “We’ve put him in a lot of different bodies. He’s had a tough time with it [Pacers All-Star Pascal] Siakam, which is understandable, but he was able to guard most players on the floor, made great plays, and you could feel his length there defensively and his ability to track down loose balls and get out in transition. All the little things we look for people to do he does at a high level and they usually don’t show up on the stat sheet but you can see them with your own eyes.