Jalen Brunson, Knicks using costly turnover vs. Heat as motivation in playoffs
Published in Basketball
NEW YORK — The only time Josh Hart spoke about it was to poke fun at Jalen Brunson.
After all, Brunson’s 2023 playoff run ended in similar fashion to the brutal ending to Hart’s Villanova career.
With a turnover.
Hart and Brunson were teammates on the 2017 Wildcats team bumped from the NCAA Tournament’s second round by the Wisconsin Badgers.
And when the Badgers denied Brunson on a crunch-time inbounds play, Donte DiVincenzo passed the ball to Hart, who drove to the rim before Wisconsin’s Vitto Brown stole the ball, forcing DiVincenzo to foul for a pair of game-sealing free throws.
Fast forward to last year’s second-round playoff series against the Miami Heat, and Brunson and Hart are teammates once again.
It’s Game 6, the Knicks are down two with less than 25 seconds left in the fourth quarter, and Brunson has the ball in his hands.
Jimmy Butler is guarding him.
You know what happens next: the nightmare ending to last season’s unexpected Cinderella playoff run.
Brunson drives baseline into a double team, Julius Randle cuts from the opposite wing, Brunson passes to a cutting Randle, and the Heat deflect the pass and recover the loose ball.
...continued
©2024 New York Daily News. Visit at nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Comments