Knicks’ Postseason Failure Still Haunts Jalen Brunson

The New York Knicks will play game one on Tuesday night but Jalen Brunson is still haunted by Game 3.

Ahead of the Knicks’ Tuesday tip-off in Boston (7:30 p.m. ET, TNT), Brunson reflected on the bittersweet aura of the prior season: New York won 50 games and the second seed on the Eastern Conference playoff bracket but was summarily dismissed by the sixth-ranked Indiana Pacers in the second round.

Brunson is particularly peeved by Game 3 of the seven-contest set: the Knicks carried a 2-0 lead after thrilling victories at Madison Square Garden before Indiana took a 111-106 decision thanks to Andrew Nembhard’s go-ahead triple in the final minute. The Knicks had entered the final frame with a five-point lead and boosted that advantage to as much as nine.

“Game 3 in Indiana, I think, was a missed opportunity on our part,” Brunson said in video from SNY. “Then in the following Game 4, we didn’t show up, so how we closed out that series was not ideal, them winning four of the last five.”

Indiana won Game 4 in one-sided fashion, protecting homecourt with a 121-89 triumph that was never close beyond the tip-off. The Knicks returned the favor in Game 5 but lost the final two games by a combined 34 points, including a 130-109 finisher in Game 7 at The Garden.

New York dealt with a lengthy injury report, which added Brunson toward the end of the final hour. Brunson himself, however, has been reluctant to lean on that as an excuse and continued to look in the mirror for the guilty party/parties.

“That’s something that I’ve thought about,” Brunson said. “Whenever you don’t win, you think about what you did to lose.”

At full strength, the Knicks played well enough toward the end of last season for observers to wonder if they could stage a realistic challenge for the eventual champion Celtics, who swept the Pacers in the conference final round before downing Dallas in five games. Brunson briefly bought into that notion, calling the showdown with the champs a “great test” in further video from SNY.

Make sure you bookmark All Knicks for the latest news, exclusive interviews, film breakdowns and so much more!