Jalen Brunson can continue to build on his reputation as a big-time player if he finds a way to carry the New York Knicks into the second round of the playoffs.
Led by Brunson, the Knicks hold a 3-2 lead over the Atlanta Hawks in their best-of-seven, first-round Eastern Conference series and will try to clinch the series on Thursday in Atlanta.
Brunson scored 39 points with eight assists and a game-high plus-23 rating in Tuesday’s 126-97 romp over the Hawks in New York. The veteran is averaging 28.2 points and 5.8 assists in five playoff games. He’s scored 26-plus points in four of the five contests and continues to provide matchup problems for Atlanta.
“We’ll keep putting different guys on him, changing matchups, trying to do anything we can to make it hard on him,” Atlanta coach Quin Snyder said. “I have tremendous respect for him as a player and a leader, and his ability to create for himself and then create for his teammates. It’s not easy.”
Little has worked.
“We’re just trying to move him around as much as we can so they can’t catch a rhythm with him,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said.
It all worked for the Knicks on Tuesday. Karl-Anthony Towns had 16 points and 14 rebounds, and OG Anunoby added 17 points and 10 rebounds.
“OG and KAT were monsters,” Brown said. “They were phenomenal.”
The Knicks know, though, how elusive that fourth win in a playoff series can be.
“We just understand what the situation is. The toughest game to win is the one that ends someone’s season,” Towns said. “We’ve got to be super disciplined. We have to execute at the highest level that we have in this series. We have to be ready for a really tough game.”
The Knicks produced a tough-guy effort on Tuesday. They were able to make the game more physical, the style New York prefers against the more finesse game Atlanta desires.
“We’ve just got to play through it. We can’t let their physicality take us out of what we want to do,” Atlanta center Onyeka Okongwu said. ” … We’re not really playing like ourselves. We’re not running. We’re not moving the ball. We’re not spacing. The things that we did to get us to this point of the year, we’re not doing well enough. So we have to do that on Thursday.”
Atlanta failed to have a player reach 20 points in Game 5, with Jalen Johnson scoring 18 and Dyson Daniels adding 17. CJ McCollum, the hero of Atlanta’s Game 2 win in New York, was 3-of-10 shooting with six points.
The Hawks flew the white flag of surrender when they cleared the bench trailing by 24 with 4:09 remaining.
The physicality has really seemed to bother Johnson. He is averaging 19.2 points, 7.6 rebounds and 5.0 assists in the playoffs, compared to 22.5 points, 10.3 rebounds and 7.9 assists during the regular season.
“They did what they were supposed to do, protecting home court,” Snyder said. “Their defense never really let us establish consistently how we need to play to beat them. We have to be more committed to imposing our will on the offensive end. Really moving and passing, you can feel possessions where that occurs, and that’s when we’re efficient or have success.”
