CLEVELAND — The Knicks emerged from a terrifying moment with a gutsy victory.
With Jalen Brunson suffering a game-ending knee injury in the first minute, the Knicks rode a triple-double and master effort from Josh Hart, escaping Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse with a 107-98 win Sunday that was not without a big injury concern.
Brunson collapsed on the court and was initially called “questionable to return” with a sore left knee, an update that changed to “will not return” by the third quarter.
The team provided no further details by the final buzzer and Brunson never re-emerged to the team bench.
The surging Cavaliers were playing without Donovan Mitchell, who missed his second straight game with a sore knee.
They were also without injured Caris LeVert for the nationally televised contest.
So the star power was absent on both sides, and Hart took over.
He not only stuffed the box score with 19 rebounds, 10 assists and 13 points in 46 minutes, he was responsible for the two game-winning plays — a contested 3-pointer with 1:36 remaining to give the Knicks a six-point lead, then a steal on the ensuing Cavaliers possession.
It was Hart’s third triple-double of the season, all coming since Jan. 30.
Cavs coach JB Bickerstaff said before tipoff that he was making it a priority to limit Hart.
It didn’t work.
“He’s the heart and spirit to that team, so what our focus is is trying to keep him out of the game and not let him make the hustle plays and outwork us and get the Knicks going,” Bickerstaff said. “You’ve got to keep him off the boards because he does a great job of crashing and his team feeds off of that. Defensively, when he rebounds and pushes he gets them into transition his team feeds off that. Defensively when he guards the ball he gets a charge, a steal, a deflection that brings energy and his team feeds off of that. We’re going to try our best to eliminate those type of plays because we’re not going to allow him to outwork us.”
The win kept the Knicks (36-25) in the East’s fourth spot.
Miles McBride replaced Brunson and played the final 47-plus minutes, finishing with 16 points — including the dagger trey with 33 seconds remaining.
Donte DiVincenzo led all scorers with 28 points in 39 minutes.
It was the first meeting against the Cavaliers since Nov. 1, and circumstances have changed. Cleveland entered Sunday second in the East, riding a top-level defense to its hot streak.
The Knicks, besieged by injuries, have struggled lately but still got up for Cleveland, the same place they dominated last year’s playoffs. The Cavaliers were punked in that first-round series and carried a chip on their shoulders heading into the season, specifically against the Knicks.
On Sunday, Bickerstaff acknowledged he revamped his offense based on the drubbing administered by New York.
“The job they did against us defensively, how we were kind of — they did a great job of taking away what our strengths were, because of the way they shrunk the floor and because we were pretty predictable,” Bickerstaff said. “We were really good at it, but you knew where our attacks were coming from so it did open our eyes a little bit in the way where we needed to diversify like and be more difficult to guard, come at you from different points of attack.
“So you try to learn from everything and we took it as a learning lesson.”
Credit: Source link
