I Will Tell of All Your Deeds

If I had to guess, right now is likely the absolute peak of this New York Knicks season[1]. Surely the odds favor that. Until some team bad enough to do it comes along, the Boston Celtics are the league standard for excellence and efficiency.

This still figures to be a slightly more disorderly slaughter, but a slaughter nevertheless. Nevermind all that: with Patrick Ewing in attendance and everything to prove, Jalen Brunson and his merry band of shithousers stepped right up and snatched one off the register in front of the Celtics’ eyes.

Following early foul trouble from both of Josh Hart and Karl-Anthony Towns, it seemed like the Knicks’ best foot forward in Game 1 would leave them sockless at best. Boston knew to lure Towns into foul situations early in order to negate him, but New York’s coach Tom Thibodeau balanced his and Hart’s precariousness with trust bordering on stubbornness.

For much of the second quarter and into the third, it felt like the Celtics were gnawing at a rope ripe to rip off a pole, post-haste. Surely, one of Jayson Tatum or Jaylen Brown was about to hit a dagger, late enough in the game and early. It was a close game, and then it horseshoed around to again be a close game, an instant playoff classic in a sea of them this year.

When Derrick White slipped out to hit a three and put Boston up twenty with a little under six minutes left in the third quarter, it felt like starters would soon cede their time in order to acquaint the national TV populace with a few second round picks of recent vintage.

Instantly, OG Anunoby snapped a three back. A Bridges steal later, and Anunoby was in position to nail another three. Suddenly, the lead is fourteen. Suddenly: many young men who look older than their age on Long Island ask themselves, likely with a “Bro” preface but in earnest nevertheless, “Is OG Anunoby the greatest basketball player of all time?”

Evidence suggests but can neither confirm nor deny, Kevin in West Islip! (Continuing to treat time as linear)

Look: Jalen Brunson has gotten away with some absolute nonsense in seeking foul calls these playoffs. He’s not yet a foul merchant because you still think about him hitting those shots – you know the ones, like the series-winning three against Detroit in the first round – but the Knicks’ captain is working on his villainy, The difference between Brunson and, say, Dillon Brooks is that Jalen has all of the ambition, creativity and guile, as well as the skill to Pull It Off.

Following Anunoby’s waterfalls, Brunson leaned in, kept leaning in, was perhaps, to some, at times, all the way on the ground leaning in toward a foul (allegedly), hit a three and directed offense in between. OG went back to the line to hit two of three toward the end of the third. Boston led 84-73 at that point – to anyone who’d seen, oh, any of the Knicks’ four losses to the Celtics in the regular season, this seemed a mountaintop in photokeratitis.

Now’s the time to bring up Deuce McBride. In almost anonymously hitting a few tough shots in non-Brunson, sometimes non-KAT minutes, McBride filled the void to stay afloat. Following a Jaylen Brown miss, McBride hit a three to draw the Knicks within six early in the fourth. That felt like a tide shift. Thibodeau famously does not stretch bench minutes any farther than he has to, but Deuce has earned Thibs’ trust.

It’s not ideal that the head coach trusts another offensively-minded small guard to be able to get the trains to Penn Station on time when Brunson’s on the bench, but if it works, and if you’ve got the optimistic spirit of one Miles McBride, Knicks fans will be quick to embrace it.

Following that three, Towns slipped in a layup, and then Anunoby nailed another from distance to get the Knicks within one, 84-83. Hart goaded Al Horford into a shooting foul, going one for two, and then – ha! Anunoby, again, this time stealing the ball from Tatum and running it back for a game-tying dunk.

This particular back-and-forth, and what ensued, had me on the floor, almost watching the game upside down. Game recaps will get you there; I can’t, except to relay what I was thinking down the stretch of regulation: “There is absolutely no way the Knicks were going to do this. Is this their version of Iverson in Game 1 of the 2001 Finals?”

Brunson draws Horford out to the three-point line and hits: 94-94. The Knicks had gone on a 31-11 run only to leave Jrue Holiday wide open enough under the basket that he could’ve established an LLC in Delaware and returned to get the layup off cleanly.

Leading 100-98 with under a minute to go, New York never felt more alive. At 100-100, after Jalen missed an open floater on a pretty good look, it felt over for the city; mere hours after Lena Dunham’s “Why I Left NYC” essay went live, impossibly, we in the boroughs were all greeting death yet again.

Going into overtime, both teams were out of gas. This is when Reggie Miller starts to concern-troll on TNT broadcasts because he continues to take great pleasure in watching Knicks fans writhe.

Scoring first in overtime sets the tone, and New York was able to do that via a Bridges steal-to Josh Hart dribble-to OG Anunoby for a dunk. A Bridges three helps them go up 108-102; the Celtics get within three for a final possession.

Jaylen Brown, the hot hand after that shot, had the ball with under five seconds remaining. Towns fouled him in what the referees deemed was an on-the-floor, non-shooting foul, right before Brown went into a shooting motion. I’m not a referee.

Having endured enough passive wrath from bored sects of Knicks fandom, Mikal Bridges ripped the ensuing inbounds pass away from – who else – Jaylen Brown, preserving the Knicks’ 108-105 win.

The Boston Celtics are the defending champions, full of varying degrees of killer. They’re long; they’re intuitive; they’re well-coached; they’re the standard for an NBA team. I hesitate to think of a better two-player combination in the past half-decade, post-Steph and Klay’s peak, than Tatum and Brown. They’re still very likely going to win this series, and they’re not very likely to miss 45 three-pointers in a single game again, if only because that’s the NBA playoff record.

Ha! But the Knicks lost all of the regular season games to the Celtics, and then they beat Boston in Boston. Given the spirit of this edition of New York Knicks basketball, this feels right. Whatever else this series has in store isn’t any of my business, at least not yet. It gave us this game: this fundamental misery, this explosive joy.

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[1] If I had to guess further, this is probably the absolute peak of my basketball season as a fan with personal ties, which I can’t usually identify in real time. Every team remaining is good to watch, and the Finals could be a generationally-shifting affair, depends on who ends up there. That said: the Knicks, and then the team Russell Westbrook is on right now, winning these games like this?? How my heart hasn’t shot out of my chest and requested an EOB, I’ll never know.