Keon Ellis looked right.
Jalen Brunson darted left.
And suddenly the Knicks are closer to the East’s No. 3 seed than they are to eighth place.
Suddenly, the Knicks — still without All-Star forward Julius Randle (dislocated shoulder) and paint-presence big man Mitchell Robinson (left ankle surgery) — have re-established their standing atop the cluster of Eastern Conference teams competing for the fourth, fifth and sixth playoff seeds which avoid the win-or-go-home Play-In Tournament.
Suddenly, the Knicks are back — just as sudden as the move Brunson uncorked on the Sacramento Kings’ rookie guard in crunch time to seal a 98-91 victory over a quality Western Conference opponent on the road late Saturday night.
The Knicks’ All-Star guard put a physical, hard-fought game out of reach taking yet another first-year guard to school in a hostile road environment with the game on the line.
Ellis, a frenetic, young Kings perimeter defender, guarded Brunson near the half-court line with under a minute left in the fourth quarter and the Knicks up, 96-91.
Brunson, however, caught Ellis paying more attention to a potential screen coming from Isaiah Hartenstein than the All-Star scorer dribbling the clock down near center-court himself.
So he faked Ellis out and left him stuck in the mud.
First the star Knicks’ guard waved off a Hartenstein screen and instructed the seven-foot big man to peel off to the left.
Then, Brunson gestured for Hartenstein to set a screen on Ellis’ right side.
Ellis turned his head to the right in anticipation of a Hartenstein screen.
The screen never came. It was never going to, either.
And by the time Ellis realized he’d been fooled, Brunson had already reversed the Brinks truck into the paint at Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center.
Crunch time is money time, and once again, the Knicks’ star delivered with a euro-step lefty floater over help defender De’Aaron Fox to put the Knicks up seven with just 35.7 seconds left in regulation.
Game, New York.
“He’s such a gifted shot maker,” Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau said after the victory, New York’s third in a row and the second win of a four-game West Coast road trip. “You almost come to expect what Jalen did. It’s every night, and then it’s big play after big play.
“Every time you need a big bucket he comes up with it.”
The basket gave Brunson 40 points. The ensuing pair of free throws gave him 42 on 17-of-28 shooting from the field and 5-of-10 shooting from downtown.
Brunson became the fourth Knick in history to score at least 40 points in back-to-back games. The others are franchise legends: Bernard King, Patrick Ewing and Carmelo Anthony.
He also tied franchise great Richie Guerin with seven 40-point games in a single season. King holds the record at 13, Ewing ranks second with 11, and both King and Anthony are tied with eight 40-point games apiece.
“Grateful, honored, but those guys have a bigger resume than me than I ever will,” he said, humbly, in his walk-off interview after the game. “Much credit to them, but I’m just trying to help my team win.”
Brunson hung his 42-ball without the benefit of the whistle, only attempting four free throws in a game he relentlessly attacked the paint against a physical Kings defense.
Brunson’s average of 18.9 drives per game ranks second in all of basketball behind Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (not counting Memphis Grizzlies All-Star Ja Morant, who has only appeared in nine games this season).
Yet Brunson is only averaging 2.5 free throws per game on drives to the rim.
In fact, Brunson has driven to the rim a total of 1,152 times so far this season, according to data from the NBA’s stats site, and has taken 151 free throws on those drives — about one free throw for every 10 drives to the rim this season.
Utah Jazz guard Collin Sexton, for reference, has attempted 162 free throws — 11 more than Brunson — despite driving to the rim 769 times this season, or almost 400 fewer drives to the rim than the star Knicks guard.
“I don’t want to say too much, but I felt like he’s getting hit a lot, right?” Thibodeau said after the game. “But the best part of him is he never complains. He’s not crying. He’ll just keep going, and he’ll focus on making the shot, which he did.
“So without getting off his game, he just kept going, but to drive the ball as many times as he does, and the physicality that he’s being trapped, they’re pursuing him, they’re hitting him, and he only had four free throws, but that’s what I love about him.
“He’s tough-minded, can figure it out, he knows how the game is being called, he knows that he’s on the road, it’s gonna be tough, and that doesn’t slow him down. He doesn’t let the officials impact him in any way.”
Brunson accounted for 42 of the Knicks’ 98 points. Players not named Brunson shot just 20-of-58, or 34 percent, from the field and 6-of-29, or 20.7 percent from three-point range.
The Knicks beat a fast-paced Kings offense with an unrelenting defensive effort. For the fifth game in a row, the Knicks have held an opponent to fewer than 100 points.
To do it against a top-10 scoring Sacramento team averaging 118 points per game stamps the Knicks as contenders, giving Randle and Robinson a playoff-bound foundation when the pair of missing front-court stars make a triumphant return from injury.
The Knicks held the Kings to just 17 fourth-quarter points. They also held Sacramento’s All-Star center Domantas Sabonis, who finished with 21 points and 14 rebounds, scoreless over the entire fourth quarter.
The Knicks held Sabonis to just two assists, seven below his season average of nine per game.
The Sabonis assignment rested squarely on Hartenstein’s shoulders, and he answered the bell with 14 rebounds and four blocks late Saturday night.
It took a total team effort to neutralize the Kings’ star in the fourth quarter.
“You’ve got to defend every aspect of [his] game,” Thibodeau explained about the star Kings center after the game. “Him running the floor, him leading the break, him on the post, him on the dribble hand-off, him on a pick-and-pop, him in the pocket [making a play after he receives the ball following a pick-and-roll]. And I thought every one of those you’ve gotta be able to do a second and third effort because it’s not just him.”
Most importantly, the Knicks got the proverbial monkey off their backs.
Saturday’s late-night victory bucked a trend the team set struggling to secure victories against teams with winning records.
The Knicks entered the Kings game with a 15-24 record against teams currently boasting records above-.500.
They are now 4-1 in their last five games against these teams. Not bad for a Knicks team still waiting for two workhorses to return to the court.
New York has two more games against Western Conference championship contenders remaining on the four-game West Coast swing: at Golden State against Stephen Curry’s Warriors on Monday, then out to the Mile-High City to face the reigning NBA champion Denver Nuggets led by two-time MVP Nikola Jokic.
If Brunson continues playing at an all-world level, there isn’t a team not named the Boston Celtics the Knicks don’t quite stack up to this season.
The first-time All-Star is averaging 27.2 points and 6.5 assists on 47.5 percent shooting from the field, and his 29.2 points per game since the Dec. 31 Anunoby trade ranks fifth only behind opposing superstars: Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid, Dallas’ Luka Doncic, Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo and Gilgeous-Alexander in Oklahoma City.
If he can keep it up, the Knicks have a legitimate chance to creep further up the Eastern Conference standings.
If Brunson can continue manipulating defenses the way he manipulated the Kings’ rookie on a game-sealing possession, suddenly, the Knicks are a team to avoid in the first round of the playoffs.
And that’s without two of their starting frontcourt players — an All-Star playmaker and a Defensive Player of the Year candidate.
Suddenly, the Knicks look scary.
