With about three minutes remaining in the third quarter of a closely contested Game 4 against the Detroit Pistons, Knicks guard Jalen Brunson went to the locker room after suffering an apparent injury, with Knicks fans everywhere holding their breath.
Brunson and Dennis Schroder got tangled up after Schroder stripped the ball away, and Brunson went to the floor awkwardly, holding his lower right leg. Brunson crawled over towards the scoring table and attempted to stand up and put weight on his right leg, but was unable.
During the third-quarter break, though, Brunson came back out to the bench. As he somehow checked back into the game, the Knicks were down 10 points as Cade Cunningham hit a pair of free throws.
“I know if he can walk, he’s going to go out there and play and compete,” Josh Hart said after the game.
And compete is exactly what Brunson did. After returning to the floor, potential ankle injury be damned, Brunson took over, scoring 15 points in the fourth quarter alone to help the Knicks fight back to win Game 4, 94-93 — giving the Knicks a commanding 3-1 lead as the series comes back to New York on Tuesday.
“He’s got a great belief, and it comes from his preparation,” head coach Tom Thibodeau said afterwards. “… The beauty of his game is if you watch him every night you see how special it is, but if you’re in the gym, all the things that you see in the game, those are the exact things that he works on.
“Before practice, after practice, comes back at night. So when he gets into the game, his mind, his body is already trained for it, and he does it at a game-like speed so he doesn’t have to adjust, and that’s what makes him special.”
Brunson finished the game with 32 points and 11 assists, hitting four of his seven three-point attempts, including a step-back three that tied the game at 84-84 with four minutes to go.
Speaking after the game, Brunson said he was just happy to get the win, giving teammates and coaches credit for having his back while saying he never doubted his ability to get back into the game.
“Moments like that you’ve got to take a breath, you’ve got to relax and think about what’s going on,” said the point guard. “I realized that I just needed to re-adjust and make sure I was mentally ready to go back into the game, because I was going back into the game. There really wasn’t a doubt, regardless of if I was stumbling or not.”
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