Shooting guard Donovan Mitchell made Cleveland Cavaliers history in his team’s Game 2 victory over the Miami Heat on Wednesday in their first-round playoff series by scoring 30 points for the second straight contest.
New York Knicks star point guard Jalen Brunson pulled off a similar feat during his team’s 118-116 win against the Detroit Pistons in their crucial Game 3 on Thursday night, which gave head coach Tom Thibodeau’s bunch a 2-1 series edge.
Brunson finished the contest with a near-triple-double of 30 points, nine assists and seven rebounds, while shooting 9-for-20 from the field (1-for-7 on three-pointers) but an efficient 11-for-13 on free throws. After scoring 34 points in Game 1 and 37 in Game 2, the Villanova product is red-hot to begin the best-of-seven set.
As noted by Statitudes’ Justin Kubatko on Bluesky, Brunson’s Game 3 effort put him in an exclusive club with Knicks Hall-of-Famer Bernard King.
“He’s just the second player in New York Knicks history to score at least 30 points in each of the first three games of a playoff series (Bernard King, 1984 EC1).”
Inside Bernard King’s Historic 1984 Playoffs Performances
King spent five years (four seasons) with New York in the middle of his career from 1982-87, making two of his four All-Star teams and earning two of his four All-NBA honors as well. King was the MVP runner-up to Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird during the 1983-84 campaign and opened that spring’s playoffs with a bang.
Not only did the Brooklyn native start off the Knicks’ first-round postseason series in 1984 (also against the Pistons) with 36 points in Game 1 and 46 more in Game 2, but he went over 30 in each of the next three contests in the best-of-five set as well. King exploded for 46 again in Game 3, 41 points in Game 4 and 44 in the Game 5 clinching victory.
Matching up against Bird and the Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals was a different story, as the 2013 Hall of Fame inductee averaged just 21 points in Games 1-3 vs. Boston, before restarting his streak of games with at least 30 points. King scored 43, 30 and 44 in Games 4-6, before dropping 24 in the team’s Game 7 loss to the Celtics.
King won his only scoring title in 1985, but he also suffered a devastating torn ACL in March that year that caused him to miss the entire 1985-86 campaign.
Brunson, KAT Combo Accomplish First For Knicks in 26 Years
Brunson wasn’t alone in leading the Knicks to their Game 3 win on Thursday, as big man Karl-Anthony Towns also stepped up in a huge way.
KAT scored a game-high 31 points while adding eight rebounds and two blocks on 10-for-18 shooting (4-for-8 on three pointers). Brunson’s and KAT’s scoring efforts were something that Knicks fans hadn’t seen in 26 years.
“Towns and Brunson are the first New York Knicks duo to each score at least 30 points in the same playoff game since Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell on May 18, 1999,” Kubatko included in his report.
Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell helped get the Knicks to their most recent NBA Finals appearance during the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season.
Despite entering the playoffs as the No. 8 seed that year, New York upset the top-seeded Heat in the first round, swept the Atlanta Hawks in the conference semifinals and downed the second-seeded Indiana Pacers in the conference finals. The Knicks eventually fell to the San Antonio Spurs in that year’s NBA Finals in five games.
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