SAN ANTONIO — It doesn’t seem sporting that the New York Knicks have eight or nine starters, while the Spurs only have five. But there you go.
New York’s journey to the brink of an NBA championship — the championship that has evaded the franchise for 53 years — has been built, for the last month-plus, on this premise. There is no noticeable drop-off when Jalen Brunson has an off night, Karl-Anthony Towns gets in foul trouble or assorted Atlanta Hawks, Philadelphia 76ers, Cleveland Cavaliers or Spurs get on a roll. Nothing has fazed the Knicks for six weeks now, including Friday night.
The Knicks faced a desperate San Antonio team that knew it had to get out of town with a split to have a realistic shot at the title, before the series shifts to what will be a … let’s say volcanic Madison Square Garden for Game 3 Monday night.
And the best supporting cast this side of “Euphoria” kept shining.
There was Mikal Bridges, knocking down three 3s in the second quarter, as New York erased a 12-point deficit to take a 56-52 halftime lead. There was OG Anunoby, the poster child for elite 3-and-D play, coming up with a steal, an assist and a dunk, as New York stretched its lead to 14 points in the fourth, bulling his way to the rim when finesse, as it never does during the finals, wouldn’t do. There was Landry Shamet, picked up off waivers a year ago, continuing to scorch nets, including two more 3s in the fourth quarter.
And, after the Knicks quickly blew that fourth-quarter lead in five fast minutes, Mitchell Robinson played textbook defense against Victor Wembanyama on San Antonio’s final two possessions, forcing misses on both jumpers — including the last one — to preserve a 105-104 win and give New York a 2-0 series lead.
“So I know we needed stops and I had picked up a few fouls on him,” Robinson said afterward. “Like I think, what, three, like early on. So in my mind, I was just like, defend without fouling. So that was kind of like how it went. Just great contest, and just kind of how it went.”
As New York hasn’t lost a playoff game in 43 days, dating back to Game 3 of its first-round series with the Hawks, it’s hard to see the Knicks not closing this out now and exorcising the demons that have plagued the franchise for decades, especially given what their non-superstars are doing.
Check that. They are superstars. They are dominating in their roles — moving the ball, making timely shots, getting stops through steals and blocks and boxing out. They have owned all the important minutes in this series so far.
“It’s not over until some team has four wins,” Anunoby said. “So just never being satisfied, and playing to the end.”
Being ready and staying ready is one of the great, often unappreciated skills in this league. New York’s vets have it in abundance.
“It’s kind of, I guess, a requirement in this league,” Shamet said. “I think everybody in this locker room has probably been through some version of that. That’s a luxury we have. We have a lot of guys, like I’ve been saying this all week, who are more than capable of stepping into a number of situations that we’ll be presented with. That’s a luxury for us.”
Through two games, Brunson is just 19 of 56 (.339) from the field. He was 7 of 25 on Friday. Yes, he made the game-winning free throw in the final seconds, but the Spurs’ young, fierce guards and wings — Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper and Julian Champagnie — are making him work for everything, and he is quite inefficient in doing so. Even De’Aaron Fox is providing passable defensive resistance. Of course, Wembanyama’s insane wingspan and ability to patrol the paint from about anywhere limit every team’s paint efficiency.
But Brunson’s struggles haven’t kept the Knicks from persevering.
“Somebody is always there,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said.
“Mitch defensively at the end of the ballgame. Mikal during a stretch of the ballgame was huge for us on both ends of the floor. You’re not stopping a guy like De’Aaron Fox. You’ve just got to try to make him work. We put Mikal on Fox in the second half a little bit and made him work.
“But what he did for us offensively when we were struggling and then when we took Jalen out was huge. He made big play after big play after big play. Landry hit a couple of big shots. Deuce (McBride) came off the bench late and hit a big 3 for us. OG was huge on his drives. Again, a lot of contributions from a lot of guys, and that’s why you like having a team because it could be anybody’s night on any given night. Our guys don’t care. They sacrifice for one another, and we found a way to get a win.”
When Michael Jordan used to talk about his “supporting cast,” or Shaquille O’Neal talks about “the others” on “Inside the NBA,” it was always from the perspective of the superstar, who needed his “lesser” teammates to help him out. It had a whiff of condescension. Jordan was notoriously hard on teammates he thought didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to play meaningful minutes in the postseason. The Knicks have five or six of them, and they roll them out game after game to roll over the opposition.
Robinson, playing through a broken fifth metacarpal on his right hand, survived another round of “Hack-A-Mitch” in the first half, with the Spurs putting the notoriously poor free-throw shooter on the line deliberately. He only made 1 of 4 foul shots, but was on the floor with the game on the line.
“I feel like that last play was a culmination of the game, just downloading information as the game went on and Wemby throughout the game, (and) on the last possession I think it’s the best defense he’s played on him all day,” Towns said of Robinson. “There was no better time for him to do that. But Mitch is a hell of a defensive player, and you expect him to make the best effort defensively. And it just speaks to his resiliency, too, going out here, playing with the injury and coming up with the biggest play of the game.”
The Spurs could find a way to get off the deck Monday night. They won Game 7 in Oklahoma City, knocking out the defending champions in the Western Conference finals. Wembanyama can summon incredible feats, even as he continues to struggle to find room in the paint to operate. As Anunoby said, it’s the first to four, not two or three.
But these Knicks, no matter who takes the floor at any given moment, seem to have that alchemy that makes them impregnable in the most important minutes, unwilling to yield, intentional in finding what works on a given night, and relentless in going to that time and time again. Whatever Brown’s lineup combination winds up being, it works.
It’s what championship teams do. And who now can think of this team — 43 days since its last loss — as anything other than an impending, inevitable champion?