Jalen Brunson Just Showed Why He Is One of the GREATEST Knicks Of All-Time

Jalen Brunson, on Monday night at Madison Square Garden, delivered the kind of fourth quarter that defines a Knicks career. Down 22 with 7:50 left in the game, with everything the Knicks had built around Karl-Anthony Towns as a point center suddenly looking like the wrong answer, Brunson took the entire offense back and ran 44-11.

Rich called it the moment that secured Brunson's place in Knicks history.

"Hero ball returned, and as Mike Breen called him, the Brunson Burner got turned on," Rich said. "He put on a cape and is exactly why he's one of the greatest Knicks of all time."

The math behind the run is the part that elevates it from a great quarter to a generational performance. Brunson hit five field goals in a row at one point. The shots were not clean catch-and-shoot looks. They were a runner down the left side off the wrong foot. A bank shot down the right that caught the top corner of the backboard. A floater. A pull-up. A step-back 26-footer with James Harden draped on him.

The room found a comparison.

"It's hard to play defense with both arms around your throat," Chris said, defending Harden for one of the more difficult covers in basketball.

The Cavs, in fairness, helped. They shot 29.4% from the field as a team in the fourth quarter. They missed seven of seven in overtime. The Knicks did not just outplay them. The Cavs cooperated.

Rich, who has spent most of the postseason warning the room against premature celebrations, held the line on Game 1.

"I'm not going to say the series is over," he said. "The Cavs were down 0-2 to a 60-win Detroit team. The Knicks aren't, in my estimation, as well as they're playing, that good to just wrap it up after one game."

What he was willing to say was that Brunson now belongs in the building's pantheon, with the photos on the wall, regardless of how the series ends.