Brunson Takes Blame For Game 1 Loss
By Andrew Rosario
The excitement and euphoria the New York Knicks and their fans felt after taking out the Cleveland Cavaliers in 5 games was short lived. The Knicks felt confident when they established home court advantage against the #8 seed Miami Heat who were coming off a huge upset over the #1 seed Milwaukee Bucks. Both teams had to deal with injuries to major players. Bucks Giannis Antetokounmpo center missed games 3 and 4 with a lower back injury. Heat’s sharp shooting guard Tyler Herro broke his wrist in game 1 and forward Victor Oladipo blew out his knee in game 2. Still, they had veteran guard Jimmy Butler who put the team on his shoulder scoring 56 points in game 4 and came up with a big bucket in the series winning the game in overtime. The Knicks were without their All-Star forward Julius Randle who rolled his left ankle for the second time a couple of weeks and was in street clothes when the series kicked off last Sunday afternoon.
In the Heat 108-101 victory, it came down to which team made shots and which team didn’t. The Knicks rode the energy of the home team crowd taking a first quarter 32-21 lead. It was all downhill from there as Miami won the last three quarters. Butler scored 25 and overcame a turned ankle as he limped in the last minutes of the game. Point guard Gabe Vincent contributed 20 points. Coming off the bench, point guard Kevin Lowry was big chipping in 20. Miami shot 42% from the floor going to the free throw line 29 times making 23. For the Knicks, although they connected on 47% of their field goals, they were atrocious from downtown. They attempted 34, 3-point shots making only 7 for 21%.
RJ Barrett led all scorers with 26 points, 1-5 from downtown. Guard Jalen Brunson led the Knicks scored 25 points but was 0-7 from 3-point land. Forward Obi Toppin, starting in place of Randle, scored 18 points but missed 7 of 11 3-point attempts at times taking ill-advised shots. The Knicks failed to take advantage of the Heat as they outrebounded them 48 to 39, 12 offensive rebounds as well.
Said head coach Tom Thibodeau afterwards of the Knicks struggling to connect on 3-pointers, “the game tells you what to do,” he began. “If you’re open you gotta let it go. They’re going to collapse and we gotta make the right reads and that’s it.”
A dejected Brunson took responsibility for missing all of his 7, 3-point attempts. “Today, l was horrific. It’s very uncharacteristic by me and this one’s on me. I gotta do better and we’ll go from there.”
The Miami Heat came to Madison Square Garden with a depleted roster and did something every road team wants to do. Leave with a split. They did just that. The Knicks do not want to go to Miami down 2-0. Getting Randle back will be a big boost for New York.
