After furious Game 1 rally, Jalen Brunson and Knicks show this isn’t 2025 — this New York team hits different

“To be honest, when I shot it and then I looked up, I was like, ‘Oh, s***, we’re tied up,’” Shamet told reporters after the game. “I didn’t realize at the time that that one would have tied it up, which is kind where you want to be. When you’re flowing, you don’t want to be thinking about things.”

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At that point, with the Knicks in the midst of erasing a 22-point deficit and the Garden faithful in the throes of something akin to a full-scale collective out-of-body experience, nobody was thinking about much of anything. Except, maybe: Is this really happening here AGAIN?

“I’ve got to give my group credit,” Knicks head coach Mike Brown said late Tuesday night. “I don’t know if I’ve seen that in a playoff game. I don’t know if I’ve been a part of it. Maybe I have.”

Whether he has or hasn’t, his group certainly has. And this time, they landed on the sunny side of that specific insanity.

Three-hundred and sixty-four days after the Pacers left Madison Square Garden shell-shocked and stole home-court advantage away from favored New York with a blinding barrage of late-game buckets, the Knicks experienced an exorcism. A historically hellacious comeback, a turnaround for the ages, a redemption in real time.

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And maybe, in the midst of a postseason run that had felt like a fever dream for the past few weeks and seemed poised to turn into a recurring nightmare for most of Tuesday, a renewed reason to believe.

In news that will surprise precisely nobody, Brunson — not exactly the sentimental type, even after scoring or assisting on 27 of the Knicks’ final 44 points, all but turning a horrendous defeat into a stirring victory by sheer force of will — wasn’t particularly interested in entertaining the cosmic significance of New York’s reversal of fortune.

“Nothing,” Brunson said. “Just moving on.”

Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, however — generally a slightly more garrulous and loquacious sort, even after a frustrating night that saw him log more shot attempts (14) than points (13) and more turnovers (seven) than assists (five) — was at least willing to entertain the notion of some growth, if not necessarily total absolution.

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“I mean, it’s always great when you can win in the playoffs,” Towns said. “Obviously, it’s always special when you could get a win, especially at the start of a series, and, you know, against a great team, to find a way to win as a unit … we just got to play better. But, an expensive lesson learned.”

The Cavs, too, learned an expensive lesson in Game 1: If you don’t finish the job when you have the chance, you can wind up living a waking nightmare, one gifted pick-and-roll switch and rattled-out jumper at a time.

“I said it in the locker room: We lost. We f*****g blew it,” said Cavs star Donovan Mitchell, who had 29 points on 12-for-18 shooting midway through the fourth quarter, but went scoreless the rest of the way, missing all five shots he took. “All right. Respond for Game 2. Simple as that.”

The prescription for Thursday might be simple. Letting go of Tuesday, though, likely won’t be.

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For most of Game 1, the Cavaliers were the more physical, aggressive, poised and tougher team. Less than 48 hours removed from finishing off the Pistons in Detroit, Cleveland struggled out of the gate, shooting just 6-for-22 from the field in the opening frame en route to 16 first-quarter points and an early deficit. From there, though, the Cavs imposed their will on the hosts, seemingly intent on achieving an exorcism of their own — getting rid of the hoary old ghosts of 2023, when Mitchell’s first Cavs team squared off against Brunson’s first Knicks squad, and New York broadly bullied Cleveland in a 4-1 drubbing best remembered for Jarrett Allen becoming a meme.

Cleveland’s defensive game plan totally short-circuited a New York offense that had averaged a scorching 137.4 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions over its previous seven playoff games. Putting former Defensive Player of the Year Evan Mobley — and later, wings like Dean Wade, and even Harden — on Towns helped neutralize the high-post playmaking that has sent the Knicks attack soaring into the stratosphere since Game 3 of Round 1 against Atlanta. Cross-matching Allen onto Josh Hart and having the center sag off Hart allowed the Cavs to pack the paint, clutter driving lanes and sit on kick-out passes to the corners. Daring Hart to take wide-open jumpers paid off in spades: Hart went 1-for-5 from 3-point range, New York scored a ghastly 68.8 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor, and the Knicks lost Hart’s 31 minutes by 23 points.

On the other end, Allen was a bulldog on the interior, grabbing a handful of offensive rebounds to extend possessions and forcing New York’s scrambling defenders to foul him. And with Knicks head coach Mike Brown curiously intent on sending two defenders at Harden in the pick-and-roll, Cleveland repeatedly carved up New York’s preferred coverages, leveraging that loaded-up aggression against the Knicks by reversing the ball to the weak side of the floor, generating both clean driving lanes off the catch and a ton of good 3-point looks for shooters like Wade and Sam Merrill.

Back in 2023, the Cavs entered their postseason matchup with the Knicks as the more tentative, more finesse-based team, and the Knicks stole their lunch money. Coming off their Game 7 bullying of Detroit, though, it was the Cavs who flexed their muscle, outscoring the Knicks 77-48 between the end of the first quarter and a Harden free throw with 7:52 to go in regulation — a complete stomping that, at points, left MSG sounding more like a library than the World’s Most Famous Arena.

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And then — much like it did on Christmas Day, when the Knicks came back from down 17 early in the fourth to stun the Cavs — it all flipped. (Again: It might not repeat, but it can rhyme.)

His 3-point touch offline all night, Brunson decided to get mean, repeatedly calling Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby up to screen for him with one outcome in mind: Bring me Harden, like you brought me Joel Embiid last round, and let me charbroil him, just like I did his old buddy.

“You know, sometimes you’ve got to do what the game dictates,” Brown said after the win. “They were trying to do the same thing with Jalen, and we said, ‘OK, we feel like we can play that game.’ We try not to play that game much, but we feel like we have a guy that we can play that game with in Jalen. And so, just like we have to try to figure out different ways to guard Harden and Mitchell, they gotta figure out different ways to guard Jalen. But there’s no secret: We were attacking Harden.”