Jalen Brunson scored 32 points, including 15 in the fourth quarter after injuring his ankle, and Karl-Anthony Towns added 27 to lead the visiting York Knicks to a 94-93 victory over the Detroit Pistons on Sunday in Game 4 of their Eastern Conference first-round playoff series.
Josh Hart added 14 points and 10 rebounds for the Knicks, who claimed a 3-1 series lead and can close out the best-of-seven series Tuesday in New York.
“Playoff wins are tough,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said. “It’s hard to get them. We didn’t have much going our way to start the fourth and dug down and found a way to win. In the end, a lot of tough plays, guys stepping up, KAT (Towns) hitting the big shots, Jalen (Brunson) big shots, Mikal’s (Bridges) defense, OG’s (Anunoby) defense, Josh’s (Hart) hustle plays, the rebounds we needed everybody and just find a way to win. And that’s the bottom line.”
The Knicks took a 94-93 lead on Towns’ 3-pointer with 47 seconds to go. Detroit’s Tim Hardaway Jr. appeared to be fouled on his missed 3-point attempt as time expired – drawing the ire of Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff and the home crowd — but no call was made on Hart for banging shoulders with Hardaway.
“You go back and look at the film,” Bickerstaff said. “The guy leaves his feet. There’s contact on Tim Hardaway’s jump shot. I don’t know any other way around it. There’s contact on his jump shot. The guy leaves his feet. He’s at Timmy’s mercy. And I repeat, there’s contact on his jump shot.”
Crew chief David Guthrie later told a pool reporter that the officials missed the call.
“During live play, it was judged that Josh Hart made a legal defensive play,” Guthrie said. “After postgame review, we observed that Hart makes body contact that is more than marginal to Hardaway Jr., and a foul should have been called.”
Cade Cunningham led the way with 25 points and Tobias Harris added 18 for Detroit, which tied an NBA record with its ninth straight postseason loss at home. The Philadelphia 76ers set the mark from 1968-71. The Pistons have not won a home playoff game since May 2008.
Detroit, which trailed by as many as 16 points in the first half, opened the third quarter by scoring 12 of the first 14 points to take a 55-52 lead. After New York went in front, 61-59, with 3:55 remaining, the Pistons went on a 12-3 run to close the quarter with a 71-64 lead. During the stretch, Brunson injured his right ankle with 2:54 left when he went down during a scramble for the ball with Detroit’s Dennis Schroder.
The Pistons built the advantage to 10 points at the start of the fourth quarter before Brunson returned with 10:14 remaining. He then scored 13 of the Knicks’ next 21 points as New York tied it at 84 with 4:07 left.
“Yeah, I think he changed his shoes,” Thibodeau joked. “He’s got a great belief, and it comes from his preparation. 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.”
For the second straight game, the Knicks opened with physical play and stingy defense. After Detroit briefly led 6-4, New York scored 25 of the next 38 points in the first quarter. The Pistons committed six turnovers and made only 7 of 19 shots, including none of their six 3-point attempts, in the quarter.
Despite hitting only 5 of 23 shots in the second quarter, the Knicks were able to build a 48-32 lead with 2:39 left. Detroit responded with an 11-2 run, keyed by two 3-point plays by Harris and a 3-pointer by Hardaway, to pull within 50-43 at halftime.
“That group was playing with great energy,” Bickerstaff said. “They were scrappy. They played with great quickness and speed. But the effort kicked up because it was a struggle early for us to kind of find it. But we found a way to just keep it within 12 and then we were able to go on that little run later in the quarter. I think that gave us some life going into the second half.”
–Field Level Media
