In The Costume Of A Monk

In stark contrast to my circumstances during Game 2, I was hyper-aware, too much even, during Game 3. Standing in a midtown east bar with ex-college roommates and friend of the program Shannon, most of us decked out in blue and orange, I couldn’t avoid it had I tried: the standard slow Knicks start; the comeback and halftime lead (!); and, finally, Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle grinding San Antonio to its first NBA Finals game win since 2014, 115-111, cutting the Knicks lead to 2-1 in the series.

As his scoring has increased in each game, so has Wemby’s interior presence. Despite Karl-Anthony Towns’ stout defense carrying into Game 3, Victor was above the rim and closer to it more often than he had been all series. He had three blocks and generally seemed calmer than he had in either of the games back in San Antonio, though his uncharacteristically vengeful shove on Jalen Brunson, and subsequent mocking of him, might not all the way fit into the Shaolin lifestyle.

While Wemby drifted inward, on the other end, New York’s outside shooting was lost. Fresh off consecutive 13-point games to open the series, Landry Shamet went only 1-8 from the field, a lone three with two minutes left in the third to cut the San Antonio lead to 86-84. Towns (11 points) and Mikal Bridges (2 on 1-5 shooting, though, oddly enough, with a team-high +11) failed to hit even one three each, as did Jose Alvarado and Deuce McBride.

OG Anunoby and Josh Hart were bright spots on offense for the Knicks, but in leading the team in scoring with 32 points on 11-25 from the field, Jalen Brunson had what Defector’s Patrick Redford accurately described as “a somehow bad 32-point night.” The Spurs forced him to dribble, to beat them by himself, cutting off the rich passing lanes that the Knicks exploited over the first two games.

It was arguably Towns’ least effective game of the postseason, or at least of the Finals, and after becoming the fulcrum of New York’s offense out of the elbows, he had only one assist. Wembanyama harassed him into foul trouble, meanwhile opening wide driving lanes for Castle, Julian Champagnie and Dylan Harper.

Given all of the fervor surrounding Madison Square Garden’s inhabitants during Game 3 and the related disruption of the country’s busiest transit hub, angry Knicks fans following a loss, while inexcusable in instances of violence against Spurs fans (and/or among themselves), were a predictable byproduct.

Perhaps, too, was the loss itself: it seems as laughable to have expected the Knicks to sweep the Spurs as it was to have expected New York to go on a 13-game winning streak in the first place, in retrospect. Tonight, we will see how the Knicks respond to a loss for the first time in a month and a half.