NEW YORK — Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart stood at the scorer’s table, watching the Detroit Pistons extend their lead in the closing minutes of Game 5 and waiting to check in, waiting for the chance to try to turn the tide.
And they just kept waiting.
Neither Brunson nor Hart were on the floor when Cade Cunningham dribbled across the timeline, took a high screen from center Jalen Duren and drove to his left. The Pistons’ All-Star point guard kept Miles McBride on his hip, attacked Karl-Anthony Towns in the paint and lofted in a runner over the Knicks’ big man, giving visiting Detroit a six-point lead over the Knicks with 1:57 remaining in the fourth quarter.
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Brunson and Hart had checked out of the game a minute earlier, with New York trailing by two. Brunson appeared to re-injure the balky right ankle that’s been bothering him throughout this best-of-seven series while guarding Cunningham with just under four minutes to go. A few possessions later, Hart took a nasty fall after sliding over to contest a Cunningham drive, colliding with the Pistons star in mid-air and landing hard on his left arm and lower back.
After Duren had cleaned up Cunningham’s miss with a put-back dunk to make it 97-95, Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau called timeout, checking Brunson and Hart out of the game. Hart walked gingerly past the Knicks’ bench and back toward the locker room. Brunson remained at the end of the bench during the timeout, crouching and at one point slamming a chair cushion in evident frustration.
Thibodeau put McBride and veteran backup point guard Cameron Payne in the game alongside Towns, Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby. The Knicks proceeded to miss four straight shots as the clock ticked down, with their two best initiators of offense — and with Brunson, the newly minted Clutch Player of the Year — standing at the scorer’s table, waiting to check in.
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Some coaches might have instructed their players to commit a foul to force a stoppage in play, creating an opportunity to make a substitution. New York had already been whistled for five fouls in the fourth quarter, though, meaning that any personal foul committed would send Detroit to the free-throw line — and while the Pistons had their fair share of issues there, going 26-of-36 from the stripe for the game, every point conceded likely loomed large in Thibodeau’s mind after watching his offense sputter and strain for four straight quarters.
Asked after the game about choosing not to foul, Thibodeau said, “Just coach’s decision.”
The Knicks had one timeout remaining and could have called it once they gained possession to stop play and give Brunson and Hart a chance to check back in. But Thibodeau elected not to use it.
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“Just where we were with our timeouts,” he said. “Coach’s decision.”
A number of factors go into that decision-making process, Thibodeau explained.
The Knicks were missing Jalen Brunson during a crucial stretch of Game 5 in New York. (AP Photo/Adam Hunger)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
“You’re looking at time, score, the penalty, timeouts — all of the above,” he said. “What’s happening in the game? Do you feel like the next possession, you know, will put it away? There’s a lot that goes into it.”
That calculus led Thibodeau to stand pat: to let the players he had on the floor try to defend the Cunningham-Duren pick-and-roll that had been carving up the Knicks for large chunks of the second half and try to figure out how to generate good looks against a Pistons defense that has held New York to league-worst rates of offensive efficiency three times in the last four games.
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“Well, yeah, we had some guys that were out,” Thibodeau said. “That’s, you know, the challenge. We didn’t know when they were coming back, if they were coming back. So that’s part of it. You got different combinations out there.”
From the time Brunson and Hart checked out to the time Thibodeau called that final timeout after an Ausar Thompson layup with 27.4 seconds remaining, the combination New York had out there got outscored 6-2, allowing Detroit to build a six-point lead. The Knicks would make the Pistons sweat, thanks to 3-pointers by Bridges and Anunoby … but that margin held up, allowing Cunningham and Co. to come away with a season-saving, series-extending victory and force a Game 6 in Detroit on Thursday.
“It’s tough,” said Brunson of sitting at the scorer’s table and being unable to get back into the game. “But I have the utmost faith, regardless of the result, in my teammates. Whoever’s out there — trust, faith, belief, all that. I’ll always have that for my teammates.”
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The concern, after seeing Brunson and Hart need to come off the floor during the most critical stretch of the game, is what shape they’ll be in when the series resumes at Little Caesars Arena. Brunson, as is his wont, insisted that his ankle is fine. Asked which wrist was hurting him after the fall, Hart said, “My whole body is bothering me.”
With just one day between games at this stage of the opening round of the 2025 NBA playoffs, Brunson, Hart, Thibodeau and the rest of the Knicks will need to get as right as they can be between now and tipoff Thursday to try to put the bitter taste of Game 5 behind them and put themselves in position to close out the Pistons on their home court.
“The challenge is to reset,” Thibodeau said. “Every game’s different. Take a look at the film, see what we can do better, and be ready to go for next game.”
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