Jalen Brunson Takes Blame For Knicks’ Boston Beatdown

New York Knicks captain Jalen Brunson went down with the ship on Tuesday night.

The Knicks, of course, are still fully afloat considering that there are (at least) 81 games left to chart on the map. But Brunson’s maiden voyage with the C was anything but smooth sailing, as the Knicks dropped a 132-109 decision to the defending champion Boston Celtics at TD Garden to open the 2024-25 NBA campaign.

New York (0-1) has thus hit an iceberg of sorts far earlier than anticipated. While Brunson (22 points on 9-of-14 shooting) did what he could to maintain order on the Knicks’ supposedly sinking liner, he shouldered blame for the defeat in the aftermath.

“Personally, I’ve got to be better,” the somber captain said in video from SNY. “It starts with my approach and everything and I’ve just got to be better. We can dissect everything, whaever, but I mean, they made a lot of threes, I think they made more than what we took. But we have to be better on both sides of the ball, I have to be better.”

Boston (1-0) tied an NBA single-game record with 29 successful three-point tries whereas the Knicks put up only 30 total. The triples rendered the Knicks’ otherwise effective shooting night (55.1 percent) moot though Brunson also lost four turnovers in the futile comeback effort.

The most hopeful Knicks season in recent Manhattan memory thus opens on a dreary note and spoiled several debuts, such as Brunson’s captaincy as well as those of Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns. One could easily pass the Knicks’ struggles off as a lack of lineup familiarity against a tight-knit Boston group fresh off a long-gestating title run.

But Brunson has never been one to embrace excuses, even before the metaphorical C was slapped onto his tank top.

“That’s an easy way out, but we still got our (butt) kicked,” Brunson said (h/t SNY). “We just got to come out, see what we can do better. But, I mean, they’ve been together for a fairly long time while we’re a new team but that’s no excuse.”

The waters won’t calm for Captain Brunson: the Knicks hold their annual home opener against the Indiana Pacers on Friday night (7:30 p.m. ET, MSG/ESPN) before welcoming in the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday.

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