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06/03 23:54 CDT Captain Clutch: Jalen Brunson comes up with late-game heroics,
Knicks top Spurs in Game 1 of finals
Captain Clutch: Jalen Brunson comes up with late-game heroics, Knicks top Spurs
in Game 1 of finals
By TIM REYNOLDS
AP Basketball Writer
SAN ANTONIO (AP) --- Jalen Brunson gave the New York Knicks a huge scare in the
first quarter, limping off and leaving the floor to deal with what appeared to
be some sort of knee and ankle issues.
He wasn't gone for long.
And by the fourth quarter, all that was forgotten.
Brunson won the NBA's clutch player award in 2025, and in case anyone forgot
why, he provided a series of reminders in a scintillating final 7 1/2 minutes
that helped the Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 105-95 in Game 1 of the NBA
Finals on Wednesday night.
He scored 30 points in the game, 13 in that final stretch --- outscoring the
Spurs by himself in those game-deciding minutes.
"He's a tremendous player that's skilled, picks his spots, knows his angles,
shoots contested shots without being sped up," Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said.
"He's a phenomenal player. We just got to keep making him work. Again, he had a
phenomenal game. He got going."
The numbers from that final burst, which started with 7:37 left and the game
tied at 86:
--- Brunson shot 5 for 9, while the Spurs shot 2 for 11.
--- Brunson outscored the Spurs 13-9 by himself, the Knicks outscored them 19-9
as a team.
--- He went on a personal 8-0 run to give New York a 94-86 lead, and when the
Spurs answered with a 9-0 run for a 95-94 edge, Brunson delivered a corner
3-pointer that put the Knicks on top for good.
--- The Spurs never scored again.
"I think we know what we have to do," Brunson said. "I think we are a pretty
together group. Be able to trust each other and still have each other's back
and know that we just have to keep chipping away, chipping away. It's just a
credit to the mentality that we have as a team."
The Knicks have won 12 straight games, just the third team to do that in a
single postseason. The other two --- San Antonio in 1999 (in a finals against
New York) and Golden State in 2017 --- became NBA champions.
If the Knicks are going to get there, they likely need Brunson at his best. And
when he came back from that locker room --- well, it wasn't quite a Willis Reed
moment for New York, but made Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns feel better
about things right away.
"When we all saw him limp off, we were worried not only because he's Jalen
Brunson but more because he's our brother and we are a family in our locker
room," Towns said. "But when we were on the court and I saw him walking back
out to the bench, it was a relief feeling just to know he's safe."
And while many of those games have been glittery blowouts during this New York
win streak, there's been some gritty comebacks as well. Wednesday's game was
the third in these playoffs where the Knicks erased a double-digit deficit to
win. They were down by 22 in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals against
Cleveland, down 12 in Game 3 of the East semis against Philadelphia, and down
14 to the Spurs.
"It's a position we obviously don't want to be in but it's always a next-play
mentality," Brunson said. "We have to control the things that we can control
and our team is going to go on runs. Things are going to happen and somehow we
bounce back. We continue to find a way and just kind of keep chipping away. We
knew one play was not going to bring us all the way back but we just kept
chipping away."
___
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba
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