The New York Knicks survived a back-and-forth affair against the Detroit Pistons, winning in the Motor City 94-93 on the strength of Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson in the fourth quarter to take a 3-1 first-round series lead back to the Big Apple.
Towns poured in multiple clutch three-pointers and acrobatic shots fading out of bounds. He finished the day with 27 points and nine rebounds. He went 5 for 6 from behind the arc.
“Playoff wins are tough, it’s hard to get them,” said Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau. “We didn’t have much going our way to start the fourth … We needed everybody and just find a way to win. And that’s the bottom line.”
In the third quarter, there was a scary sight, as the all-star point guard Brunson dove on the floor for a loose ball and Dennis Schröder came down on his leg, leaving Brunson in agony. He tried to put weight on his right leg before crashing to the floor.
Yet Brunson returned with 10:14 left in the fourth quarter, and played like the injury hadn’t happened. Prior to the injury, Brunson had 17 points, five rebounds and nine assists, knocking down six-of-15 shots from the field. Afterwards, he led the Knicks’ offensive surge with 15 points and two assists.
Brunson finished the afternoon with 32 points, five rebounds and 11 assists, while shooting 50% from the floor.
“He’s [Brunson] got a great belief and it comes from his preparation,” Thibodeau said. “If you were in the gym, all the things you see in a game, those are the exact things that he works on. His body is already trained for it. That’s what makes him special.”
Detroit’s Cade Cunningham unlocked a different gear, as he put the team on his back in the second half. The budding superstar put together a triple-double afternoon, scoring 21 points, grabbing 10 rebounds and dishing out 10 assists.
He was a force on the defensive side of the basketball, too, recording four blocks.
Former Knick and 12-year veteran Tim Hardaway Jr. put together an eight-point fourth quarter with two stone-cold three-pointers, but it wasn’t enough to come out with the win.
Pivotal Game 4 was a tale of two halves. The Knicks dominated for most of the first half, except for the one-minute and 20-second run at the end of the second frame. Detroit outscored New York 50-44 in the second half, partially due to Towns’ foul trouble and the team’s inability to score in the third.
Despite Mikal Bridges’ struggles from the field, he knocked down two massive three-point field goals in the fourth quarter to keep his team in the game.
It was the second game in the series in which the Pistons suffered a fourth-quarter collapse. In Game 1, they let New York put together a 21-0 run and in Game 4, they led by as much as 10 with 10:14 to go in the game.
The Knicks are back in action on Tuesday night with a chance to advance to the Eastern Conference Semifinals at Madison Square Garden. Tip-off is set for 7:30 p.m. ET.
