How in the world did the New York Knicks do it again? After scoring a measly 13 points in the first quarter and falling behind by 20 in the third, they put together a 21-4 run in the fourth to steal their second straight road victory against the defending-champion Boston Celtics on Wednesday.
What is this sorcery? If Tom Thibodeau is casting spells on the Celtics from the sideline, doing it twice in a row seems a little greedy.
“Can’t really explain it,” Knicks star Jalen Brunson told reporters after the 91-90 win in Game 2, “but we just gotta give each other confidence when we go through stretches like that and then just keep fighting, keep believing.”
New York’s Josh Hart said that the team is “very comfortable” at the end of close games because “we got Captain Clutch.” He was referring to Brunson, the Clutch Player of the Year, who was sitting next to him at the podium and immediately shook his head at his teammate.
Brunson had a few characteristically clutch moments down the stretch: a one-legged fadeaway over Jrue Holiday from midrange, a right-handed layup over Al Horford in transition, the game-winning free throws. If there is one fourth-quarter play that illustrates how the Knicks went up 2-0, though, it’s one that Mikal Bridges made several minutes before all of that.
Coming out of a timeout about halfway through the final frame, Bridges ran a pick-and-roll with Mitchell Robinson that yielded no advantage. He got off the ball, then got it back from Brunson and went into another pick-and-roll with Robinson with six seconds on the shot clock. He started his drive before Robinson had a chance to actually set a screen, so Holiday, one of the league’s best defenders, had no trouble staying with him. It looked like the possession was going nowhere, but Bridges hit Holiday with a hesitation, turned the corner downhill and, making use of his 7-foot-1 wingspan, lofted a left-handed reverse layup over the outstretched arms of Luke Kornet. It went off the glass and in.
That bucket cut the lead to 10 points. It did not win New York the game any more than Jayson Tatum missing a practice shot in the corner with about four minutes left or Boston’s poor spacing on the final possession did. It certainly won’t be as memorable as Bridges coming up with a steal on that final possession (for the second straight game). But because he just stuck with it for the entire shot clock, the play was a microcosm of the comeback, and the whole we-will-find-a-way-somehow thing the Knicks have going on during these playoffs. (In their first-round series against the Detroit Pistons, they went on a 21-0 run in the fourth quarter to win the opener, erased an 11-point fourth-quarter deficit to win Game 4 and trailed by seven points with two-and-a-half minutes left in the clincher.)
At the end of the third quarter, Bridges had logged 31 minutes without scoring a point. He’d missed all eight shots that he’d taken: a few layups, a few from midrange, a heave and an open catch-and-shoot 3. New York started the fourth with Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns on the bench, though, so the team needed him to be aggressive. About a minute in, Bridges put up a middy over Payton Pritchard and finally saw the ball go through the net.
Shortly after that, Bridges pushed the ball after a made basket, did a Nash dribble on the baseline and found himself open for a short jumper. He cashed that, and a few minutes later, cashed a pull-up 2 over Holiday. There were a couple of transition 3s, too, but these ones, the ones Bridges created, are exactly the type that, late in a playoff game, a guy who had missed his first eight shots won’t necessarily look for.
Bridges told reporters that his teammates helped him stay positive, as did Thibodeau drawing up a play for him early in the fourth. “I feel like I’m pretty mentally strong, but it was wearing on me a little bit, just missing shots,” he said. “It’s really just missing shots is affecting us. I’m trying to win the game, and me missing is not going to help us.” When the buzzer sounded, Bridges had 14 points on 6-for-18 shooting, seven rebounds, five assists and three steals in 43 minutes. Neither he nor Brunson had an awesome shooting night, but the inefficiency is irrelevant now.
Towns called Bridges one of the NBA’s most clutch defenders in the NBA. It is “only right,” Towns told reporters, that Bridges showed his worth “when the lights are the brightest.” To Brunson, this is a Bridges thing that dates back to practicing and preparing for games at Villanova: “He just has the ability to block out the noise.” But it is also a Knicks thing.
“No matter what happens, we’re going to be together as a team,” Brunson said. “And we’re going to have each other’s back regardless. It doesn’t matter what a single person or us collectively are going through.”
