Jalen Brunson does not possess the physical talents of many other NBA players. Not a leaper, certainly not the tallest and not the quickest. But he is the best prepared and the hardest worker. It’s his footwork – so practiced for every move and he seems to add to his repertoire every off season.
SU did feel he was taking too many shots over the first 3 games of the series with the Spurs and that perhaps San Antonio was perfectly happy with that. But Brunson figured something out the last 2 games and carried the Knicks to the championship. Especially in game 5 where KAT had 2 points and the bench produced almost nothing. 45 points is Jordan-like and the Knicks needed every one of them. You wonder if the Spurs regretted not sending 2 defenders at him for the entire 4th quarter to make him give up the ball? Brunson is truly the finisher and the closer.
SU had a few observations on this series:
- Wemby is a generational player and the NBA will build around him going forward. Unique talent, international, only 22. He is what the doctor ordered. However, he is a bit of a dirty player. Some of that is having defenders lean on him constantly and getting frustrated. But he also likes to flail his arms and elbows and the League needs to control that.
- You can say that the officials let the players play in game 5 and swallowed their whistle in large part. SU would say they missed so many calls and allowed things to get too physical. Even the announcers were commenting on that. For the NBA, you want the free flow of movement and the high scoring. SU does too. But you need to maintain that level of consistency in the playoffs. There was a play in the last minute where Brunson was hounded moving sideways at half court. Harper fouled him 2-3 times and there was no call. Almost had a back court violation. Harper in particular as well as Castle are excellent defenders but their actions crossed the line and were fouls. Refs allowed that all series. The NBA needs to clean that up for next season.
- Wemby got away with throwing Brunson to the ground in game 3 and then stepping into his landing area in game 5. Both were non-calls. If there had been a game 6, he should have been suspended and that play reviewed to upgrade it to a flagrant. SU was curious if they would have had the backbone to do that.
- The Spurs are young and super talented. It’s easy to say that they will win it all next year – maybe they will. But no guarantees and they need to figure out who is the “man” at the end of games. They led in the 4th quarter every game. They were great in the 1st quarter but really fell short late.
Just a great playoff run for the Knicks who are a true team. No doubt off season free agency will weaken this roster but hopefully any new additions will buy into what they are doing there. Mike Brown deserves tremendous credit. He was not close to their first choice as coach but the Knicks brass lucked into getting him. He used the regular season to figure out who could excel in the playoffs and got the players to check their egos at the door. In the today’s NBA, well, no one is doing that.
Sports Update Intergalactic 
well said!!
It was amazing to see that in every game, the Spurs completely shut down Brunson for a quarter or two, only to have him bounce back. And this most pronounced in game 5. In the first quarter Brunson could not get anything going. And in the fourth quarter he could not be stopped. My sense after game 4 was that we saw the Spurs using ferocious defense from the start and it was very effective. The announcers talked (especially in Q1 of Game 5) about how much energy Brunson and the Knicks were expending just to move the ball up the floor. What they never mentioned is how much energy the Spurts were expending to keep the defense at this level. My sense, in all of the games is that after a quarter or two of this, they were simply exhausted…physically and mentally. The coaching staff needs to notice this and switch up the game plan. They are not a deep enough team to leave their starters with no gas in the tank to finish games.
1 It is amazing to see what Wemby can do. He has a combination of skills we’re not used to seeing in that kind of body. It’s amazing. Still, he did not really make a case for himself as the guy the league should be marketing itself around. The dirty play is not appealing. And it’s not like he’s dirty in Detroit Pistons Bad Boys kind of way. He’s dirt in an awkward, flailing kind of way. It’s not the kind of thing that looks good on highlight reels and the internet already full of reels of his dirty play just in this years playoffs where he looks dirty and . More importantly, he didn’t really perform in any big moments of this series.
2. The officiating was terrible for all 5 games. This has always been an NBA problem. And to some degree it’s a basketball problem. But these refs need to do better. And you would think it would get better with replay but of course, not everything is reviewable and they even got some calls as a result of the review process. Games 4 and 5 had fouls against Wemby overruled on replay as fouls against Towns for hooking. These were both terrible calls and impacted both games significantly as both put Towns in early foul trouble. It was clear on both replays that Wemby was reaching for the ball and trying to disrupt Towns. His hand was not stuck there because Towns was hooking him. His hand was there because it’s exactly where Wemby wanted it to be. Both of these were clear and the rule needs to be cleaned up. It it’s not evident that the defender is working to remove his arm then hooking should not be called.
3. If they don’t have the backbone to apply a suspension to Wemby for 4 flagrant fouls in the playoffs then they should just get rid of the rule. I also think they should get rid of the landing zone foul as a flagrant foul. Yes, I know it’s dangerous and I’m fine if they want to call it a foul. It’s just that it seems very different from the other types of flagrant fouls and seems to occur incidentally far more often than it occurs intentionally.
4. The Spurs are young and very talented. They will likely get better. And some of what we saw late in the games could have been the result of youth and inexperience. They had multiple guys on the floor who could/should still be in college. They will gain experience and could perform better in the future. But the league also has guys with reputations for not being the ones you want holding the ball in big spots. What we saw this series could have been inexperience, but it could also be the start of reputations for not making the big plays.