Jalen Brunson the game-changer the Knicks need as they aim to end playoff

There was that moment, on a night out of the past at Madison Square Garden, at this big, loud basketball time in the city when the Knicks are finally trying to do something at this time of year, when Jalen Brunson did a Clyde thing. Which figured, just because of the occasion.

It was in the second quarter, and it ended the 10-2 run when the Knicks were turning the game, and the night, their way for good. It was Brunson, the guy the Knicks needed even more than they knew, against Donovan Mitchell, the guy they had tried so hard and so mightily to get before they got Brunson.

And Brunson stole the ball.

The most complete point guard the Knicks have had since Walt (Clyde) Frazier picked him pickpocket clean. Donovan was trying to make a move to his left and Brunson flashed out, and now the ball was in his hands and going the other way, the play ending with Brunson actually making a silky dunk to make the game 36-27 for the Knicks.

Brunson had started slowly on Friday night the way his team had started slowly against the Cavs, making only one of his first six shots. But it’s where you finish on big-game nights like this, at the Garden or anywhere else, in the kind of game that can start to turn a series like this your way. So Brunson would finish with 21 points and six assists. The numbers didn’t tell the whole story, the way they so often didn’t with Clyde, when he was the one with the ball and the night in his hands in the old days.

“Don’t expect too many more dunks,” Brunson said in his postgame interview.

“Layups,” another old Villanova guy, Josh Hart, said sitting next to Brunson.

Right before that Brunson had been asked about the atmosphere for a game that had the ridiculously late television starting time of 8:40, but ended absolutely the way basketball New York wanted it to.

“Being in this environment … there is no replica,” Brunson said. “Nothing comes close to it. Just happy to be a part of it.”

Not as happy as Knicks fans are with him. The Knicks are on the verge of actually doing something again in the playoffs, starting with getting to the second round for the first time since they played the Pacers in the Eastern Conference semis in 2013, and there are a lot of people who have brought them to this moment, 2-1 up on the Cavs, getting by the Cavs and maybe giving themselves even bigger ideas than that if Giannis doesn’t get healthy. Tom Thibodeau has never done a better job in his life than he is doing this season, not in Chicago and not two years ago when the Knicks shocked maybe even themselves by going 41-31 in the COVID year for the NBA, getting them to play defense especially when not many teams are these days.

Julius Randle continues, in the words of Buck Showalter about players who show up every damn day, to post up, even when he is less than 100% physically. Role players like Hart and Immanuel Quickley and…