BOSTON — The best team in the NBA threw all it could at Jalen Brunson. By the end, it was as if the Boston Celtics didn’t attempt enough.
The Celtics’ top-flight defenders couldn’t slow the New York Knicks point guard. They scrolled through defensive coverages, some as creative as Brunson has faced this season. None hampered him as intended.
These days, not much does.
Brunson and the Knicks eviscerated Boston on Thursday. The Celtics’ cosmetic final period prettied up the result, a 118-109 win for New York, which led by as many as 31 points in the second half — thanks, in part, to another sparkler from Brunson, who fell one point short of his third consecutive 40-point performance.
“The way he plays, the things he can do, it’s definitely special,” OG Anunoby said. “He’s one of the best in the league. He’s playing like an MVP; (he) should win MVP.”
KNICKS WIN!!! pic.twitter.com/GnFOqdbt2Z
— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) April 12, 2024
It’s high praise from a supportive teammate, but for now ignore the award conversation. Forget about where Brunson should place on an MVP ballot or whether he should make first- or second-team All-NBA. Don’t mind the 39 points on 15-of-23 shooting and 6-of-11 3-point accuracy against the Celtics, all of which came before he rested the entire fourth quarter.
Heck, don’t even acknowledge the tear Brunson is on, averaging 38.5 points over his past eight games, and it’s not like he’s just chucking during this time. He’s hitting 51 percent of his field goal attempts and 41 percent of his 3s over the streak.
But the trivia stops here. Send the two previous paragraphs into one eye and out the other. The numbers, at least at the moment, do not tell the full story.
Instead, focus on one word that Anunoby used: “special.”
The greatest mark of a “special” player isn’t his statistics over a two-week heater. It’s the way elite competition approaches that player and how he responds. And in that sense, Brunson is reaching a stratosphere to which few rise.
The Celtics had only their pride to play for Thursday. At times, it appeared they were lacking it. A group that locked up the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed long ago didn’t bring second efforts every possession. Too often, it failed to close out on shooters. Its energy did not match the Knicks’.
But strategically, behind an adaptable coach in Joe Mazzulla, the Celtics showed up — even if Brunson made it seem like they did not.
Brunson influenced every step Boston made. Yet, it couldn’t find a way to scoot in his way.
The Celtics began the night with Jrue Holiday, maybe the best defensive guard of his generation, manning a center, Isaiah Hartenstein, just in the hopes it would muck up the pick-and-rolls Brunson and Hartenstein weaponize. Conventionally, defenses send two defenders at Brunson when he dribbles around a screen. The goal is obvious: Get the ball out of his hands. But the Celtics, loaded with physical perimeter defenders, wanted to switch the action.
To begin the night, Brunson ran pick-and-rolls. Holiday would switch from Hartenstein to Brunson, which meant the Knicks’ top scorer going up against one of the world’s most uncharitable stoppers.
Yet, Brunson figured it out.
The Celtics cycled through defenders and coverages.
At different moments, Holiday, Derrick White and Jaylen Brown guarded Brunson. They began the game switching on his pick-and-rolls. They played a drop with their center, Kristaps Porziņģis, sagging Porziņģis back behind the 3-point arc in an effort to take away the rim. During a second-quarter run, Brunson continued to call over Porziņģis’ man, Josh Hart, for pick-and-rolls, waiting for Porziņģis to drop back and slicing up Boston with floaters and midrange jumpers.
In other moments, the Celtics pestered him from end line to end line. Come the start of the second half, they trapped him, sending both defenders in the action his way on pick-and-rolls.
Brunson responded in character, getting rid of the ball quickly, allowing a teammate to attack a vulnerable defense in a four-on-three and darting somewhere else, wishing to open himself up again. On top of all the highlights, he’s become one of the league’s most active cutters over the past 2 1/2 months.
Whatever the Celtics tested, Brunson figured it out, and it didn’t take him long.
“I just try to have instinct,” Brunson said. “I try to work on a lot of different scenarios to make it instinct when it’s in a game. I just know that when things happen, I could trust my teammates and they have a lot of trust in me. … The ball went in tonight. That’s a factor why it looked so good.”
But the ball tends to go in after it leaves Brunson’s fingertips. The league has noticed. Not many players, even among All-Stars, inspire this variety of coverages in a game that doesn’t even matter for the defense.
Brunson best get used to this, not that he seemed all too bothered Thursday. Boston did not tip off with playoff intensity, but the night was still a taste of postseason life.
Come next week, whoever the Knicks play in the first round will deploy whatever strategy it can to mess with Brunson. Then that team will adjust its strategy in the middle of Game 1. Then Brunson will adjust to the adjustment. Then the team will adjust to Brunson’s adjustment of the adjustment. Then Brunson will adjust to that. And so on and so forth.
Of course, Brunson just experienced a night of those same mini battles with the Celtics.
“It’s a credit to him and his teammates because they all have to be connected,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “I think when you’re a primary player like that, everyone has to understand and you have to be working at his pace, too, because the double-teams are coming fast, and if one guy is not in the right spot, you can’t take advantage of it.”
The Knicks (48-32) are third in the Eastern Conference but could still finish anywhere from second to sixth. The East is so jumbled that even with only two games remaining, they could still play any of five teams in Round 1. If the bracket breaks in a friendly way, they could win multiple playoff series.
Wherever they go will be on the back of Brunson — and not because he’s the league’s fourth-leading scorer, not because he’s dropped 35-plus points in five consecutive games, not because he is their No. 1 source of offense, not even because for a second season in a row his production has crescendoed over the second half.
In an age of offense, lots of players can score. But only a handful can bend a defense the way Brunson did against the Celtics, who reeled off a catalog of strategies Thursday and still couldn’t find one that worked.
(Photo of Jalen Brunson trying to avoid Jaylen Brown: Bob DeChiara / USA Today)
