It’s been pretty blatant.
The Spurs, after Jalen Brunson’s huge fourth quarter carried the Knicks to their Game 1 victory, have made a clear effort the past two games to be as physical with Brunson as possible and rough him up. It seemed to cross the line a few times, though no flagrants were given.
Most notably, Victor Wembanyama shoved Brunson to the ground by the back of his head as Brunson was trying to set a screen on him in the first quarter of the Knicks’ 115-111 Game 3 loss to the Spurs on Monday night at Madison Square Garden. Brunson got up and jawed at Wembanyama while the play was still ongoing, but not even a common foul was called.
Other times in the first half, Stephon Castle and Carter Bryant lined Brunson up and trucked him while pretending to go for rebounds. Those were both called common fouls, but neither was upgraded to a flagrant.
At the end of Game 2, De’Aaron Fox pushed Brunson, got in his face and sparked a brief scrum.
“I think that’s not basketball,” Jose Alvarado said Tuesday of Wemby’s shove. “That’s something that they gotta look at. But he got away with one. That’ll be the last one.”
While Alvarado’s sentiment is nice, it’s not exactly a shock that the feisty and brash backup from Brooklyn was ready to talk tough.
It would not be wise for the hardly 6-foot Alvarado to try to fight the 7-foot-4 Wemby.
And the Knicks don’t need to start fighting. What would be more impactful is if they help Brunson fight through all that physicality.
second half of the Knicks’ Game 3 loss to the Spurs. Jason Szenes for the New York Post
Brunson has shot just 37.0 percent from the field and 31.8 percent from deep along with 13 turnovers across the three games of the Finals. The Spurs have succeeded — where every other team this postseason has failed — in preventing Brunson from being at his best.
The Spurs are picking up Brunson the full length of the court, causing the Knicks to get into their sets much slower than they’d want. They are holding, pulling and bumping Brunson off the ball to make it harder for him to get open. When he has the ball in his hands, they are getting right up into him and daring the refs to make a call.
It all led to the Knicks offense growing stagnant Monday — a problem that had disappeared since Games 2 and 3 of the first round against the Hawks.
“We just wanted to stand and watch one guy dribble a ton,” Brown said after the game. “And then when the ball got passed, there were no quick decisions by the guy receiving the basketball.”
Brunson’s usage rate was at 38.4 percent Monday, up from his mark of 31.3 percent for the entire postseason. Across the three games of the series, he’s taken 44 shots after touching the ball for six or more seconds — the next closest in the Finals is Fox at 13 shots.
On Monday, it felt like Brunson was trying to force his way through all that physicality rather than allowing his looks to come more organically. It’s hard to remember the last time he had as much of a reaction as he did to Wemby’s shove.
What only made it worse was a lack of help from his teammates — Karl-Anthony Towns and Mikal Bridges, after their terrific first two games of the series, were nonfactors. They shied away in crunch time, and the Knicks offense as a whole was content to watch Brunson try to play hero ball.
The Spurs were able to double and blitz Brunson without others making them pay for it, like they did the first two games.
The slow decisions and lack of movement by Brunson’s teammates allowed his defenders to recover after pressuring him. And their screens have not been effective at taking Brunson’s defenders out of the play.
“There’s a way for us to do things we have to do, the things that we’ve done throughout these playoffs,” Brunson said. “They’re just game plan discipline. I don’t think the discipline we had in those situations was good enough. We just got to be disciplined in those moments.”
The 13-game winning streak showed just how dynamic the offense can be when there is an emphasis on ball movement, spacing and quick decisions.
The Knicks got away from that Monday.
“We have to play to what our concepts or play to what our strengths are,” Brown said. “It’s been pace, it’s been space, it’s been getting the ball reversed, it’s been touching the paint, and more importantly it’s been making quick decisions. There were a lot of times where the decisions weren’t made quick last night. One guy caught, held, held, held, held, held. Now the defense settles in. Now you’re in trouble.”
Trouble for the first time in 45 days.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
