I usually save quoting the recap headline till the end. But seeing LintoFields’ “Carmelo stat line for Jalen” — in blue! — after the Knicks dropped game two of their series with Detroit 100-92, evening it at 1-1, gets to the heart of what’s been weird to me about this series since it started two days ago, and if I’m being honest something that’s been going on for weeks if not months. For most of this century, it’s the Knicks as a team or an organization I’ve struggled to understand. Now it’s some of the fans. Right after Brunson injured himself in L.A., I wrote that I hoped he would make it back for the playoffs, and that if he did I hoped the unfair slander Julius Randle endured after returning early from his injured ankle two years wouldn’t repeat with Brunson. And with the Knicks not even trailing in the first round of the playoffs, here we are, slander afoot.
The Knicks lost game two last night. That sucks. I know. Especially because unless you’re old enough to remember the world before 9/11, you’re used to them winning game twos. They won both last year; four of their last five, going back to 2013. Game two wins are always uplifting: if they come at home, you leave for the road on a high note; if they’re away, you give the home crowd a bump heading into game three.
This loss may be less concerning than the fact that the same Pistons who went 3-1 against the Knicks during the regular season, with Cade Cunningham the biggest reason why, have led most of this series with Cunningham the biggest reason why, and would be up 2-0 if not for New York’s 21-0 fourth-quarter run Saturday.
And yet despite Jalen Brunson wearing a red cape and S on his chest ever since signing here, playing just his sixth game in seven weeks after a late-season ankle sprain and somehow averaging 36 points a game on 44% shooting over two games that have seen Detroit throw everyone but Aidan Hutchinson at him . . . we gotta deal with someone bringing up the C-word. Sigh.
Brunson isn’t responsible for the coaching staff apparently never having anticipated the Pistons guarding Karl-Anthony Towns with someone besides Jalen Duren. If the All-NBA scoring machine you traded two of your top players for six months ago has only taken 25 shots combined the first two games while Brunson’s taken 27 in each, that’s a systemic failing. That’s philosophical. Someone somewhere missed something when Brunson’s taking twice as many shots as Towns, whose primary defender is Tobias Harris. Saturday night KAT played arguably the best playoff game of his career. Last night he had as many shots as Harris. That ain’t right.
Brunson isn’t responsible for more than one elegant-seeming coach turning back into a pumpkin. OG Anunoby reverted from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde — again — making only four baskets (no 3s) while having no luck slowing down Cunningham (no one else did, either, though no one else is being paid $212 million to slow down the Cunninghams of the world). Two nights after pouring in a decisive 14 points, Cam Payne played four whole minutes and didn’t get a shot off. In 15 minutes over two games, Landry Shamet hasn’t taken a single 3-pointer. After nine Knicks played double-digit minutes in Game One, it was back to seven in this one. Before you blame Tom Thibodeau, make sure you’ve cracked that chicken/egg riddle, because a night the Knicks’ bench gets outscored 35-8 by the opponents’ is a tough time to argue they deserved more run.
Brunson — I mean, what do you freaking want from him? He’s had an incomparably better statistical start to this series than his opening rounds against Cleveland or Philadelphia. Cunningham has been the real deal, as expected (27 points per on 45% shooting), but it’s not like he’s outpacing what Tyrese Maxey did last year the first two games in New York (34 on 54%). The Captain’s head coach is notoriously, tortoise-torturously slow to make adjustments. The Knicks lost, so it’s easy to reduce their late-game offense to Mike Woodson’s Messiah Melo sets, i.e. “Here’s the rock. Save us, king.” But if Mikal Bridges hits one or both of his wide-open late looks from deep, and the Knicks pull out another comeback, the word “Carmelo” is a thousand miles away.
I’m also struck at the negativity around the Knicks right now — not the disappointment. They went more than three quarters trailing, tied things up with 75 seconds left and then gave up the last six points of the game. They could be up 2-0, with all the pressure in the world on the Pistons to take a must-win Game Three. Now it’s the Knicks walking into the lion’s den reeking of blood and honey. Honey, it’s the playoffs. That’s what it’s about. What did you think the other team was? A prop? I understand wanting to be up 2-0. But 1-1 is hardly a hardship.
The point of participating in the postseason, especially once you’ve made a few in a row, is identifying and pursuing what it will take to get all the way through it. It was simpler two years ago, when the Heat upset the Bucks and it seemed the Knicks had a simplified path to the conference finals. It was simpler last season, too, when the obstacle was at first the Pacers and then a once-in-a-1000-year injury crisis. Less was expected, so less could let us down; back then, falling equaled learning. Losing to the Celtics next round? Or God forbid the Pistons this round? I fear those falls will feel like failing. Even though these Knicks still have so much to learn.
Whether they advance or they’re upset, the Knicks need whatever’s next. They haven’t been the clear favorites in a playoff series in 12 or 24 years, depending on your point of view. The players need to experience the heaviness of being the heavy. The coaches do. Even the fans. For all their history as a franchise and all the collected playoff experiences of so many of their current players, these Knicks, as a collective, are still gaining experience as one. Whatever happens the next four, 10, 14 games, they will learn something they don’t know about themselves yet. We will too.
Jalen Brunson has already won more playoff series as a Knick than Carmelo. We don’t have to get into comparing one player who takes less money to stay here and maximize his team’s flexibility and one who took the most money he possibly could, forcing the team to trade half its roster for the privilege. We really don’t. I never imagined when I signed up for last night’s recap that Carmelo freaking Anthony would feature in it. Maybe I should have.
The Knicks entered this season and this series with higher hopes than they have in a good long while. There doesn’t seem to be a ton of confidence in them justifying those hopes, at least to some. Raising hopes only to stumble and fall nowhere near the finish line is the epitaph of the Melo Knicks. I’d wager before these playoffs and this period in Knick history are finished, this team will have failed better.