SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
The best fans, best city, best arena that responds to the way their team plays, hard, smart and together.
And that’s the way the soaring 5th-seeded New York Knicks knocked the 4th-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers out of the opening round of the National Basketball Association playoffs, with the final shellacking coming in Wednesday night‘s 106-95 Cavs exit at home in game five.
Correct, it took the blue and orange four of five games to continue on in the postseason for only the second time in 23 years. This one had remembrance and relationship for leading scorer and the super pick-up for head coach Tom Thibodeau’s club in cagey, stocky guard Jalen Brunson.
Behind him and the reemergence of forward RJ Barrett to the scoring column, even an ankle sprain that forced starting center Julius Randle to the sidelines late in the first half didn’t slow the visiting team down.
It won the opener at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse, overpowered the Cavs twice at noisy Madison Square Garden, and then returned to Cleveland to finish the job.
Again it was Brunson proving what a great addition he has made, scoring the team-high 23 points and Barrett added 21. Randle tossed in 13 points before he sat the rest of the contest down, and as usual, point guard Immanuel Quickley came off the bench to contribute 19 before a disappointed Cavs sell-out of 19,432.
“They just beat us in every way possible,” said first-year Cleveland forward Donovan Mitchell, “rebounding especially, to go with team balance and hustle, they just outplayed us, and I just didn’t deliver.”
Mitchell did have the game-high 28 points, but it was far from enough.
Brunson had plenty. Reaching to the past, under his T-shirt was a photo of former Knicks All-Star John Starks on the front screaming while hanging from the rim. Relationship? Well, Brunson made mention of his father Rick playing point guard for the Knicks from 1999-2001.
“I thought about that today,” he said, “it’s a really cool experience knowing that my dad played here.”
Next stop for New York is home Sunday in game one at the Meca of venues, the Garden on seventh avenue. They got home court advantage after the 8th-seeded, visiting Miami Heat ousted the stunned top-seeded Eastern Conference’s Milwaukee Bucks also in five games, with Wednesday night‘s comeback 128-126 thriller the clincher.
Miami became the sixth eighth seed to topple a No. 1, the last time it happened was in 2012 when the Philadelphia 76ers eliminated the startled Chicago Bulls. For these Heat, Jimmy Butler has been the main scoring threat, settling in with 42 points after tallying 48 the previous game, so this is another red-hot team.
But the full house Garden will rock deeper into the spring.
Said Thibodeau: “It’s the tradition of the Knicks, not only what it means to the city and the league, and now we have to keep it going.”
As for the fading Bucks, superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 38 points and took down 20 rebounds, though he converted only 10 of 23 free throws. They trailed 128-126 and had the ball in the closing seconds, but the clock ran out before Grayson Allen could take a shot as he drove to the basket.
