It’s not a fair thing to ask under any circumstances. For one thing, it’s pretty obvious that there’s still something wrong with Jalen Brunson’s foot. For another, there isn’t a soul alive who’ll be under the pinwheel roof at Madison Square Garden who’ll be unaware of the Indiana Pacers’ game plan for stealing Game 7 Sunday, which goes something like this: 5A.
Triple-team Brunson. Such would be the case anyway, because this is who Brunson is now, as we reach the second half of May. He is the decider.
He is the decoder. Basketball is a wonderful game because it can be, at the same time, both remarkably complex and painfully simple. And here’s the simple part: It is Brunson, more than any other player on either side, who can determine the outcome of Game 7 .
We have seen, plenty, what he has in him when the Knicks need it most. That’s the version we see more often. If that’s the version who takes the court at the Garden just past 3:30, there’s an awfully good chance the Knicks will be playing a basketball game in Boston on Tuesday night, despite it all.
But we have also seen, as this series has progressed, that through sheer repetition and familiarity, the Pacers have occasionally unlocked the secret of how to slow Brunson: by focusing all of their energies — and all of their basketball players — on Brunson. By bleeding half the shot clock dry by the time the Knicks offense can set up. By making Brunson work so hard to create difficult shots that he .
