The New York Knicks are one game away from their first Eastern Conference Finals appearance since 2000, thanks in large part to the fourth-quarter heroics of star guard Jalen Brunson.
The winner of the 2025 Clutch Player of the Year award for his regular season efforts in crunch time has managed to up his game this postseason to help lead the Knicks to a 3-1 series lead over the Boston Celtics. He authored his latest masterpiece on Monday night in the Garden, as he was the catalyst for New York’s second-half charge to overcome an 11-point halftime deficit and secure a 121-113 home win.
Brunson scored 39 points and dished out 12 assists in the win, with 26 of his points coming in the second half as the Knicks stormed back into the game and sent MSG into a frenzy. His eight points in the fourth quarter actually dropped his scoring average in the final period this postseason, as he has put up frankly insane scoring numbers to close out games. Brunson now has 102 fourth-quarter points in the first 10 games of this playoffs, topping Kobe Bryant for the most to start a postseason since 1997.
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Bryant twice scored 100 fourth-quarter points in his first 10 playoff games, back in 2001 and 2003, and then added a 99-point run to open the 2008 playoffs. Stephen Curry likewise scored 99 in the first 10 games of the 2023 playoffs, but Brunson’s fourth-quarter scoring pace has moved him past those two legends.
Across the Knicks’ two series with Detroit and Boston, they have put an incredible amount of the scoring burden on Brunson, especially late in games, and he has been more than up to shouldering that task. What makes Brunson’s scoring output so impressive is how much of it is self-created. While 51.7% of his threes come off assists, just 9.5% of his twos are assisted, as he is almost entirely self sufficient once he’s inside the arc.
Brunson leads this year’s playoffs in time of possession, having the ball in his hands for an incredible 96 minutes, per NBA Stats, 20 minutes more than the next closest player (Jamal Murray at 76). His usage rate overall, 31.6%, is extremely high, but in the fourth quarter that jumps to a staggering 42.4%, higher than anyone not named Giannis Antetokounmpo this postseason.
With that increased responsibility has come elevated play from Brunson. His true shooting percentage jumps from 55.2% overall to 60%, and he is incredibly reliable with his decision-making, as his assist-to-turnover ratio almost doubles from 2.96-1 overall to 5.33-1 in the fourth quarter. It is particularly remarkable because he’s a 6-foot-2 guard (and that’s perhaps generous) who everyone in the building knows is going to have the ball in his hands, and yet there has been nothing opponents have been able to do to stop him.
Brunson’s fourth-quarter heroics are the byproduct of a Knicks team that doesn’t pull away or put teams away early, but that is in part by design. New York wants to drag teams into the mud with them and push you into a contest for the full 48 minutes. They go through lulls and scoring droughts that can drive fans insane and put them in deficits that seem insurmountable, but they’re banking on the other team wearing down. If it becomes a shot-making competition between the other team’s star and Brunson, their guy is going to win that more times than not.
Through 10 games this postseason, that has been a stressful but successful gameplan, made so by Brunson turning in one of the all-time great clutch scoring runs in playoff history.