When Madison Square Garden is rocking, and the seats are rumbling, and the chants are booming, and your skull is vibrating, it’s easy to momentarily lose your grasp on time and reality and wonder, for a moment, if 54 years of basketball history have suddenly converged due to some sort of rift in the space-time continuum.
Look, courtside, it’s Reggie Miller! And there’s Spike Lee, taunting him yet again! And oh wow, there’s John Starks on the baseline, next to Stephon Marbury! And over there, Bernard King! And Latrell Sprewell! And Clyde Frazier! And is that [rubs eyes] Willis Reed, limping back to save the day yet again?
It might sound like the fever dream of a delirious New Yorker who’s ingested too many $6 slices and $15 beers, but that was, more or less, the scene Wednesday night at the Garden as the Knicks fought off another round of injuries and another furious charge by the Indiana Pacers to take a 130-121 victory and a 2-0 lead in their second-round playoff series.
To be clear, yes, that was Reggie Miller (calling the game for TNT), and that was Spike Lee (who arrived with two framed tabloids invoking the 1990s rivalry), and all those former Knicks were indeed scattered around the court, infusing the evening with a thick layer of nostalgia—continuing a recently adopted Garden tradition that has included playoff cameos by Bill Bradley, Carmelo Anthony, Patrick Ewing, and Larry Johnson.
But no, there was no temporal rift at 33rd Street and 7th Avenue. And no, that was not actually Willis Reed limping back onto the court to save the day again. Just Jalen Brunson, the Knicks’ unflappable, indefatigable, indestructible 6-foot-2 guard, defying the odds and the pain once more to lead the Knicks to victory, despite missing the entire second quarter with an unspecified foot injury.
Brunson scored 29 points—24 in the second half on that troublesome foot—adding another riveting chapter to his rapidly expanding legend.
“He’s a warrior,” his teammate Donte DiVincenzo said, and even he seemed almost in awe, despite having seen Brunson repeat this pattern all season. “There was no doubt in our minds [during the first half] that he’ll be back. All season long, no matter what is thrown at him, no injury bug or whatever, he always bounces back.”
“Bouncing back” would be an apt slogan for the Knicks’ 2023-24 season, if the “bouncing” part didn’t sound so risky, given all the sprains and strains and dislocations they’ve sustained—and are still enduring.
They lost Julius Randle, their All-NBA forward, months ago. They lost Bojan Bogdanovic, their primary backup, a few weeks ago. They lost center Mitchell Robinson a few days ago. None will be returning this season. On Wednesday they lost Brunson for a period, and after he returned they lost OG Anunoby, to a hamstring injury that looked potentially serious. Before going down, Anunoby had put up a career-playoff-high 28 points, helping the Knicks survive Brunson’s absence. Meanwhile, Josh Hart played all 48 minutes for the second straight game, bringing his postseason average to a staggering 46.8 minutes over eight games. Coach Tom Thibodeau’s rotation is down to seven players—and that’s not counting a potential absence from Anunoby.
The Knicks are rapidly running out of spare parts, and yet they somehow stand just two wins away from their first Eastern Conference finals appearance since 2000, when Ewing, Sprewell, and Johnson were still playing, Thibodeau was a Knicks assistant, and Rick Brunson (Jalen’s dad) was a reserve guard. That group, of course, fell in the conference finals to Miller’s Pacers—the third straight spring those teams would clash in the playoffs.
Most of the current Knicks have no ties to that rivalry, but it didn’t stop Hart from approaching Miller and playfully telling him that fans were chanting, “Fuck you!” at him during the fourth quarter. Just like old times.
To call this current Knicks team injury-riddled would be an understatement. To call them resilient would seem utterly insufficient. To call them tough or determined or scrappy now borders on cliché, but those adjectives are all as unavoidable as they are accurate. It all starts with Brunson, the second-round pick, who became the surprising $104 million free agent, who became the even more surprising All-Star, and who on Wednesday finished fifth in the MVP balloting.
“We know that’s his makeup,” Thibodeau said, “but that’s also the makeup of our team. … The mental toughness piece is so important. The ability to get through things, to be at your best when your best is needed, even when you may not be feeling your best. That’s who he is. And a great leader.”
With so many Knicks alumni in the crowd and so much nostalgia in the air, the historical references became irresistible. Sure enough, Wednesday was the 54th anniversary of Reed’s legendary Game 7 appearance in the 1970 Finals, when he hobbled out to the Garden floor, despite a torn muscle in his right thigh, igniting the crowd and inspiring his teammates. The Knicks beat the Lakers to win the title that day, and Willis Reed was instantly enshrined as the patron saint of athletes pushing through injury.
But it’s rare that a player having his “Willis Reed moment” actually does so just yards away from the tunnel where Willis Reed himself once famously emerged. (The tunnel itself is gone, buried under the seating the Garden installed as part of a $1 billion renovation completed in 2013.) Even the current Knicks, all of whom were born in the 1990s or later, couldn’t resist the comparisons.
“Aight, Willis,” Hart said to Brunson in the postgame locker room (per SNY’s Ian Begley). Of course, Reed’s moment inspired a championship. Brunson’s, a mere Game 2 victory in the second round. Then again, Reed just hit a pair of jump shots and let Frazier do the rest. Brunson, as he has all season, carried the Knicks every minute he was on the court.
Typical of Brunson—who is both unfailingly modest and guarded—he would not describe the injury (“Just felt a little discomfort”), or offer any real insight into what happened, what he thought in the moment, or how he managed to return for the third quarter. The results said everything. So did the response from the Garden crowd.
The mere sight of Brunson taking the court, with about five minutes left of halftime, triggered a mighty roar, followed by “MVP” chants and “Jaaa-len Brunnn-son” chants.
“This place has been nothing but special for me, so I appreciate everything they do,” said Brunson, whose father, Rick, is now an assistant coach. He called the chants “really cool to hear,” adding, “but I just knew I had to get my mind in the right place to figure out how I was going to attack the second half.”
The Pacers showed their own brand of resilience, with star guard Tyrese Haliburton erupting for 34 points and nine assists after a shockingly quiet Game 1 performance. Five other Pacers scored in double figures. They led by as many as 12 points in the third quarter. None of it was enough.
The Knicks keep losing bodies. But at the Garden, the bench runs several decades deep.
