The NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs have been as entertaining as anyone could have hoped for — and even more unexpected. The road team has won all three games. The Spurs had double-digit leads at home and blew both, allowing the Knicks to take a 2-0 series lead. The Knicks had won 13 in a row, only to return to Madison Square Garden for their first Finals game since 1999 and, despite being up seven at the half, suffer their first defeat in 46 days in Game 3 on Monday night.
It’s been a wild start to the Finals, with the Knicks leading 2-1 heading into Game 4 on Wednesday. Strange, too. Here are five other oddities from the series thus far.
Jalen Brunson’s miscues
Brunson had his best outing of the Finals in Game 3, and the Knicks still lost. That’s not saying much about his performance, though. Everything is relative. Aside from the fourth quarter of Game 1, Brunson hasn’t played up to his usual standards. He went for 32 points on Monday night in front of the home crowd, but he needed 25 shots to do it. And while he had five assists in the 115-111 loss, he also had five turnovers.
That last part has been an uncharacteristic struggle for Brunson. During the regular season, he averaged 6.8 assists against just 2.4 turnovers. But in the three games against San Antonio, he has the same number of total assists as turnovers: 13. Not surprisingly, that’s the worst assist-to-turnover ratio for him this postseason. He was at 2.47 in the first round against the Atlanta Hawks, 3.43 in the second round against the Philadelphia 76ers and 3.1 in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Part of that is owed to the Spurs being uniquely suited to guard and frustrate Brunson. San Antonio has a host of large, physical, athletic guards and wings to throw at him. If you were going to design a group meant to slow him down, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than Stephon Castle, Devin Vassell, Julian Champagnie, Dylan Harper and (to a lesser extent, which we will get to in a moment) Keldon Johnson.
But while the Spurs deserve credit for their defense, Brunson hasn’t been nearly as good as we’re used to him being. After Game 3, Karl-Anthony Towns was asked about the officiating, but rather than blame the refs, he matter-of-factly stated that the turnovers were actually what doomed the Knicks. Towns wasn’t wrong. They all have to be better with the ball, especially Brunson.
Karl-Anthony Towns’ fourth-quarter struggles
There was a case to be made that Towns was the series MVP through the first two games. He got the better of Victor Wembanyama in Game 1 and followed that up with another big performance in Game 2. He wasn’t nearly as effective on Monday night, but he still put up 11 points, eight rebounds, three steals and two blocks. What he didn’t do, yet again, was score in the fourth quarter.
While Towns has been terrific for much of the series, the final frame has not been kind to him so far. Towns took just 10 shots in Game 3. Four of those came in the fourth quarter. He didn’t make any of them. That’s been an unfortunate trend for Towns. He has somehow yet to score in the fourth quarter.
In Game 1, he was 7 for 15 from the floor overall, but he missed his lone field goal attempt in the fourth. In Game 2, he shot 8 of 12 from the floor but once again took and missed one lonely shot in the last quarter.
Towns has been excellent this postseason, but his fourth-quarter issues can’t continue if the Knicks want to prevent the Spurs from tying the series.
Keldon Johnson, the not-so-super sub
Back to Johnson. He played all 82 regular-season games and shot 51.9% from the field, 36.3% from 3 and 79.4% from the foul line, all of which were above his career averages. He also played solid defense and gave coach Mitch Johnson a reliable two-way option off the bench. For his efforts, he was voted the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year, beating out Jaime Jaquez Jr. of the Miami Heat and Tim Hardaway Jr. of the Denver Nuggets.
But for as good as Johnson was during the regular season, he’s been equally bad against the Knicks. Through the first three games, he’s averaging 4.3 points, 2.0 rebounds, 0.7 assists, and a turnover in 13.6 minutes with 38.5/25/33.3 shooting splits.
Those are ugly numbers for anyone, let alone the Sixth Man of the Year. Johnson was bad enough in Game 3 that Mitch Johnson opted to go with his three guards for long stretches. De’Aaron Fox, Castle and Harper played 19 possessions together and were minus-17. And yet the Spurs coach preferred that to playing Johnson extended minutes. Not great for Keldon or the Spurs.
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John Gonzalez
Victor Wembanyama’s shot selection
This is going to scan like pretty high-level analysis, but stick with me here. Wembanyama is extremely tall. That checks out, considering he’s 7-foot-4. But too often on offense, he will settle for what the opposing defense gives him. With the Knicks — as with pretty much every team Wembanyama faces — they prefer him to catch the ball as far away from the basket as possible. And if it’s a choice between him getting to the rim or firing away from deep, that’s really no choice at all for the opposition.
In Game 1, Wembanyama obliged New York’s preferences. He shot 6 for 21 from the floor and 2 of 9 from 3-point range. The Spurs lost. In Game 2, he made 11 of his 21 shots but just two of his six 3-pointers. The Spurs lost that one, too. But in Game 3, Wembanyama took just four 3-pointers. He made half, and shot 61.1 percent from the floor overall en route to a monster line: 32 points, eight rebounds, six assists, three blocks and two steals. The Spurs finally won and notified the Knicks not to go planning that parade just yet.
It’s almost as if there’s a direct correlation between Wembanyama’s shot diet and the Spurs’ chances of victory.
What happened to the zen Wemby?
Wembanyama can sometimes come off as a bit pious. He famously took a tacit shot at the Oklahoma City Thunder back in December, implying that OKC foul-baits and works the refs. As opposed to the Spurs, who he lauded as practicing “pure and ethical basketball.”
Reasonable people might differ on where that kind of thing falls on the spectrum between confident and arrogant, but that’s just sort of who Wembanyama is. Usually, he’s the guy who hangs out with real monks during the offseason or brings a book to the All-Star Game and then asks Nikola Jokić why he didn’t bring one, too. He’s the guy who plays chess in the park when he’s in New York or sits on a bench to draw before Game 3.
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Sam Quinn
That’s who he usually is. In Game 3 on Monday night, he was different. While guarding Brunson, he gave the much smaller guard a forearm to the back of the head, shoving him to the ground. How he wasn’t called for a foul — flagrant or otherwise — was hard to fathom.
For his part, Brunson played it cool after the game, brushing off questions about Wembanyama’s conduct and offering only, “whatever you saw is what you saw.” Meanwhile, the NBA’s head of officiating acknowledged that the refs missed the call.
Not surprisingly, Knicks fans booed Wembanyama for what we’ll charitably call his physical play. Following Game 3, one enterprising reporter asked Wemby about becoming New York’s latest villain and whether that was “the ultimate compliment.” He replied with a smug smirk before answering.
Of all the unexpected events so far, who could have predicted a Wembanyama heel turn?