Jalen Brunson and the Knicks are about to have themselves a moment, starting on Tuesday night at the Garden, what will feel like the biggest game of the regular season, against the Celtics.
The Celtics will be the second round of the playoffs for the Knicks if the Knicks make it that far, if they make it through a first-round matchup against the Pistons, whom they play in Detroit on Thursday night, or against the Bucks.
Then, after all that, what would be enough of a basketball week right there, the Knicks get one more shot at the Cavaliers. So this is very much a table stakes week for the home team, when they can at least begin to show they are as good as they thought they could be when the season started. That means good enough to get past the second round of the playoffs. Leon Rose made a big bet on the Knicks by trading for Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges. Across a cool, end-of-season moment like this, the Knicks can give their fans some idea about how much they’re willing to bet on their team. And the player at whom they’ll be looking hardest is their best player, and someone who has become a great Knick since arriving here from Dallas, and that is Brunson. This is still his team. And, in so many ways, his moment. Because of the time he has missed with that ankle injury, it is as if his season is starting now.
Towns has been swell when healthy, laying down Patrick Ewing numbers in points and rebounds. In Brunson’s absence, OG Anunoby has been Towns’ wing man – or maybe Towns has been OG’s – and become a defensive guy reminding everybody of what kind of scorer he can be when he gets the ball. And there is Mikal Bridges, on whom Rose laid down a bet of five No. 1 picks, whose own game comes into focus, then fades, then comes back into focus. In with all of them is the team’s glue guy, Josh Hart, at least when Hart has gotten over hurt feelings about not getting to another triple double.
But the leader of this team is Brunson. He is the one who has heard the “MVP” chants, the first any Knick has really heard since Amar’e Stoudemire when Stoudemire first got to town. Brunson is the big shot at the end of the game. He is the one with the ball. Now, starting against the Celtics, we will see how everything looks and how everything looks now that he is back, and the offense – even when the offense is on its way to Towns – once again runs through him, the way it has since he got here and began playing point guard better than any Knick since Clyde.
The other day Tom Thibodeau was basically asked if someone like Anunoby will once again be asked to go stand in the corner now that Brunson is back on the floor. As you might imagine, the coach of the Knicks didn’t exactly embrace this particular visual.
“That notion is a bunch of garbage,” Thibodeau said. “(Anunoby) is all over the floor. That’s how he’s scoring. That’s the way everyone’s scoring. So if you have a drive pass-pass, who is supposed to be in the corner? It’s drive-and-kick and if you’re cutting and you’re moving without the ball, which is what you’re supposed to do, right, if you push the ball up your first responsibility is to create pace.”
Thibodeau continued to back hard, as if to say, nothing to see here, move along, the way he always does with any hint of second-guessing. But we will all see how the Knicks’ offense once again looks with Brunson back, starting with the Celtics. The Knicks at least get one more shot against them at home, before the Cavaliers make their last regular-season trip to the Garden. All Knicks fans know what the first three against the Celtics and first three against the Cavs have looked like this season, the Knicks having lost all of those games by an average of 20 points per.
These two games, with that road game against the Pistons sandwiched in, aren’t playoff games, even though they are likely to feel and sound that way at the Garden, which will be at full throat asking its teams to forget about being 0-6 against Boston and Cleveland and finally beat both of them; look, for at least two nights, like the team Rose thought he was assembling. Again: Rose wanted to build a team that could stand in there with the Celtics in May, not knowing that the Cavs were going to pass the Knicks this season as if Thibodeau’s team was standing still.
“I think the sky’s the limit,” Anunoby said on Sunday. “We’re a really talented team. We’re tough, we’re hard-nosed, and we’re getting ready for the playoffs.”
The Knicks get ready for the playoffs against the two best teams in their conference and against what could be the first round unless the Bucks pass the Pistons one more time. They are as whole as they are going to be the rest of the way. Mitchell Robinson and Miles McBride were both back on the court against the bust-out Suns on Sunday night. So, too, was Brunson, easing his way back into the flow of the game across 34 minutes, with 15 points and six assists.
Here was one of the comments Brunson made after his return:
“Mentally … just making sure I can trust myself in the things that I do.”
What Knick fans trust that he’ll do, after missing more time than he has at any point in his career, is be their star. Instead of being worn down by the long season, Brunson gets to start fresh. We’re about to see, in a moment, if his team is about to do the same thing.