By the tip, there was exhaustion in every single place you checked out Madison Square Garden — on the basketball floor, on the benches, within the stands, each courtside and all the way in which up within the nosebleeds. When one final 30-foot heave from Miami’s Duncan Robinson clanged away harmlessly, the ultimate buzzer sounded almost like a sigh of relief, a spokesman for everybody.
Knicks players began pulling their jerseys out of their shorts, and began the slow walk back to the locker room. Throughout the gym, fans exhaled for what felt just like the first time in a half hour. For much of the night, it had felt as if this was going to be considered one of those games fans dragged with them to their cars, or to Penn Station, perhaps all over a restless, sleepless night.
As an alternative, hoarse and pleased and weary and satisfied, they may savor this 111-105 Knicks victory, they may gladly accept a 1-1 series heading to Miami for Games 3 and 4 (especially given the very real alternative), secure within the knowledge that regardless of what happens in South Florida, there will probably be more basketball on the Garden this spring, no less than yet another game.
But now they’re all allowed to hope for more. Because more remains to be possible.
Barely. But still possible.
“It was a hard-fought game,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “I believed within the second half we competed rather well. We had a whole lot of guys step up and play rather well.”
“It was a team win,” Julius Randle said, “that’s needless to say.”
The Heat were pests all night, even without Jimmy Butler, who was correctly rested since Miami already got what it got here for within the opener Sunday, and since he now may have three more days to rest his balky ankle back to health. The Heat led for many of the first 42 minutes of Game 2, and had reduced the Garden to a deathly dust bin of despair.
But then Jalen Brunson, nursing his own sore ankle, did what he has done so again and again before this season: He carried the Knicks through a spate of sweaty moments within the third and the fourth quarters. Later, he was joined by his Villanova twin, Josh Hart, and Knicksanova delivered all of them to the finish line.
“Jalen was unbelievable,” Thibodeau said, “and Josh was everywhere in the floor.”
Brunson scuffled early. He looked a step and a half slow, was missing his usual swagger, could never get loose, could never catch fire. The Knicks were lucky that RJ Barrett had an enormous first half (19 of his 24 points) and that Julius Randle, back from his own ankle miseries, was terrific all game long (25 points, 12 rebounds, eight assists).
Still the Heat kept coming. They grabbed the lead early, built it up, protected it, padded it to 93-87 with seven minutes left. The Garden was disconsolate. The Knicks looked gassed. The season looked spent.
But then Brunson knocked down a 3-pointer at the identical time Isaiah Hartenstein was getting barreled over by Bam Adebayo. Hartenstein made the free throw to slice the result in two. The Garden perked up again. And it appeared to fuel Brunson and his wingman, Hart. Starting with that 3, Brunson and Hart combined to attain 20 of the Knicks’ final 24 points. Brunson finished with 30, shooting 6-for-10 from 3 and making nine of his final 13 shots. Hart was remarkable: 14 points, 11 rebounds, nine assists and a plus-16.
And the Garden was transformed, yet another night, Villanova’s Finneran Pavilion bleeding into Penn Plaza’s soul.
“Game 1 didn’t end how we wanted it to,” Hart said. “I’m not pleased that we got the split but we’ll take this win. We responded today, we competed at a high level and got the win.”
Said Brunson: “We made a few more plays at the tip of the sport than they did. But I still need to be higher.”
Many of the Knicks’ heavy lifting awaits them still. The indisputable fact that they were life-and-death with a Butler-free Heat team felt like a win for Miami, which gets the following two games at Kaseya Center. If the Knicks can sometimes hope to search out a number of friendly snowbirds within the Miami crowd in January and March, they’ll be outnumbered Saturday and Monday, bank on that.
Butler will almost surely be back. And the Heat’s buffet table of 3-point splashers aren’t going anywhere. The Knicks may have to be an awful lot higher Saturday than they were Tuesday. There’s no disputing that.
But that’s for Saturday.
For now? There was yet another grit-and-gasp special on the Garden, yet another night when the Knicks pushed you to the brink of your wits before leaving you in a sapped heap, whether you were standing within the Garden or sprawled in your La-Z-Boy. They toyed with termination Tuesday, and lived to inform the story. No apologies for hanging on, even when it was for dear life.
