For Knicks fans, there’s no greater feeling than seeing their favorite basketball team defend the Garden the way Willis and Clyde did in the biggest Game 7 54 years ago.
That was Seventh Heaven. It’s on 7th Avenue.
This Seventh Heaven was supposed to be the kind of fire and roar many former Knicks may have heard in Indiana.
This Seventh Heaven was supposed to be New York, where a battered and exhausted team would endure until tomorrow.
This Seventh Heaven was supposed to end with a Celtics victory! Joy and celebration filled the streets as the team refused to give up.
No, 7th heaven.
Hell instead.
And of course, the Pacers ended up at 130, the Knicks at 109, and Jalen Brunson was ejected in the fourth quarter with an apparent injury after hitting the knee of fastball Tyrese Haliburton and breaking his left hand.
A broken left hand, a broken dream.
“I didn’t play well enough to move the team forward,” he often said.
And when Brunson, who has grown to become New York’s biggest star, was asked why he suggested it wasn’t a successful year, he replied: Did it get close? ”
Not close enough.
The Garden crowd chanted “MVP” and begged him to find a way, but he failed to do so multiple times throughout the season. They chanted his name at the end of the game. It was an intense romance all season long, and for good reason.
“They were nothing short of amazing,” Brunson said. “It’s just great for me, for this team, for my family. I’m really thankful for them and everything. On the nights we needed energy, they provided it. I can’t really explain what they mean to me, but they deserve more than what we were able to accomplish in this playoffs.”
He finished with 17 points on 6-of-17 shooting from the field (including 1-of-3 from 3-point range) and nine assists.
“I think there are pros and cons to my game,” Brunson said. “At some points during the playoffs, I personally played well. The downside was that I didn’t play well enough to help the team move forward. You could also say that I got injured in Game 7. You could say we didn’t play well in Game 7…We were leading 2-0 and 3-2, so it’s hard to think about things individually when you can’t help the team.”
The Pacers were a looser, smarter, tougher, healthier team.
The news that Josh Hart (abdominal strain) and OG Anunoby (hamstring) would be playing didn’t faze the Pacers or encourage the Knicks. Anunoby (5 points) played just five minutes and was responsible for the defensive end. Brave Heart (10 points, eight rebounds, five assists in 37 minutes) did everything he could.
The Knicks needed MVP Brunson, but they needed him to have an eternal day like Clyde Frazier had in Championship Game 7 against the Lakers.
On an afternoon when Donte Divicenzo (39 points, nine 3-pointers) and Alec Burks (26 points in 27 minutes) electrified the Garden crowd and gave hope to the Knicks, the best version of Brunson could be on the way. could have won. Eastern Conference Finals.
The Pacers promised to take the ball out of Brunson’s hands and cut off the head of the Knicks’ snake.
His errant pass turnover led to a layup by Haliburton, making it 82 points for the Pacers and 70 for the Knicks, shortly after the Knicks had cut a 22-point deficit at the half to 73-67.
At that point, the garden was in an uproar.
The monster of Madison Square Garden has awakened.
But only temporarily.
A five-second inbounds violation and a stolen inbounds pass did little to help the cause in the third quarter.
Brunson made a 3-point play with Andrew Nembhard with 53.7 seconds left in the first half, and the team was chanting “MVP,” but Pascal Siakam denied him a driving layup just before intermission. The Pacers hit 22 of their first 27 shots, most of them too easy, going 9-of-10 from downtown Indianapolis. They shot 76.3 percent from the field in the first half, the best mark by a team in the first half of the NBA playoffs.
The Garden chanted “Dee Fence” early and often, but the Knicks weren’t listening.
24 minutes left in the season. 15 points difference. There’s still time for MVP Brunson.
he never showed up.
He briefly left the court with 4:06 left in the third quarter.
“Honestly, I thought I was just interfering,” Brunson said. “I looked down and realized something was wrong.”
And the basketball gods made it impossible for him to do that.
“When he got out the third time, I knew something was wrong,” Tom Thibodeau said.
Someone asked Brunson what it was like for him to be a helpless spectator, unable to try to stop the season from ending.
“It was terrible,” he said, then said it again.
At worst, he was next man down.
“As a group, we had a Next Man Up mentality and really took that to heart,” Brunson said.
It was Brunson’s cold-blooded design for overcoming and winning that cushioned the debilitating effects of next-man-up after next-man up.
Please wait until next year. Also.
“I think the most important thing I have to do is continue to strive for perfection,” Brunson said. “My mindset is I need to get better every day because I know I’ll never get there. I don’t care what I’ve done as a player, it doesn’t mean anything. We have to be better.”
This was supposed to be a garden party.
Garden toilet instead.
