I watched the Celtics blow a 3-1 lead to a 7-seed with Jayson Tatum ruled out of Game 7, and my first thought wasn’t anger. It was dread. Because while Boston was falling apart, Jalen Brunson was busy becoming something that doesn’t come around often in New York — a guy who actually wins when the moment gets impossibly big.
The Knicks erased a 22-point fourth-quarter deficit against Cleveland on Tuesday night. The largest comeback in Knicks playoff history, and the second-largest fourth-quarter playoff comeback in the play-by-play era. Brunson finished with 38 points, 6 assists, 5 rebounds, and 3 steals in 46 minutes — and when the Cavaliers were milking a 22-point lead, he walked into that huddle and said, per multiple reporters: “Keep fighting. Keep chipping away. We’re not gonna get it back in one possession.”
Then they got it back.
The Numbers That Should Terrify Boston
Through 11 games in the Jalen Brunson playoffs 2026 run, he’s averaging 28.3 points and 6.1 assists per game. Against Atlanta in the first round: 29.3 PPG, 7.8 APG in a 4-2 series win. Against the 76ers in Round 2: 29.0 PPG, 6.0 APG as the Knicks swept and won three of those games by 29, 51, and 39 points — the first time in NBA history a playoff team won three consecutive games by 25 or more.
Now consider Patrick Ewing’s single best playoff scoring run: 29.4 PPG across 10 games in 1990, with a peak series around 31.6 PPG. Those are numbers Ewing fans rightfully point to as proof of his greatness. But his career playoff average across 139 games was 20.2 PPG. He went 18.9 in the 1994 Finals — his deepest run, the one where the Knicks came closest to a title and still lost in seven.
Brunson is matching Ewing’s peak right now, across a longer sample, at age 29, as a second-round pick who scouts decided wasn’t worth a lottery slot.
ClutchPoints noted this week that Brunson has now strung together five consecutive playoff games with 35 or more points, tying a Knicks franchise record:
Jalen Brunson in his last 5 postseason games vs. the Sixers 👀
2026 playoffs:
Game 1 35 points2024 playoffs:
Game 6 41 points
Game 5 40 points
Game 4 47 points
Game 3 39 pointsHis 5 straight games scoring 35+ points ties the… pic.twitter.com/JYL7zaZhP3
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) May 5, 2026
Jeff Teague said it plainly after Game 1: “He the best Knick ever bro… I’ve done watch the Knicks all my damn life, I ain’t never seen nobody do this in New York.” Stephen A. Smith went further and said Brunson will go down as the greatest Knick of all time if he delivers a championship. Both said it with full awareness of who Ewing was.
What Ewing Never Had — And Brunson Does
Here’s the honest difference: Ewing’s best teams were good enough to reach the Finals once, in 1994, and lose. His supporting casts were solid — Charles Oakley, John Starks, Charles Smith’s infamous blocked layups — but never built to win a championship. Ewing carried that franchise’s hopes alone for 15 years without ever getting rewarded.
Brunson has Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, and a front office that has shown genuine competence. This isn’t a complimentary team built to compensate for one star — it’s a team with multiple weapons that gets exponentially more dangerous when Brunson decides the game is his.
That ECF Game 1 win didn’t happen because Brunson got lucky. He was responsible for scoring or assisting on 23 of the Knicks’ final 32 points. His coach Mike Brown said it straight: “We don’t get it done if Jalen Brunson doesn’t play like one of the MVP guys in the league.”
While the Knicks Rise, the Celtics Fell Apart
The Celtics entered these playoffs as the 2-seed. Defending champions, loaded roster, Tatum back from his Achilles, another title run seemingly mapped out. The optimism felt real just weeks ago. Then the 76ers happened, Tatum’s knee happened, Game 7 happened.
Now the Celtics are watching from the couch while the Knicks host the ECF at MSG for the first time in 25 years.
Brunson is 29, with at minimum four or five more playoff runs at this level in him. The Knicks aren’t going anywhere — they have cap room, a smart front office, and a player who doesn’t believe in deficits. Whatever Boston builds from here, they’ll do it knowing Brunson owns the Eastern Conference until someone proves otherwise.
Ewing never got his ring, and the city waited three decades to feel this again. The guy delivering it was a second-round pick nobody properly valued. That’s the part that’s genuinely hard to stomach if you’re a Boston fan — not that the Knicks have a great player, but that they have the right great player, at the right time, with a real team around him.
That combination is rare. That combination wins championships.
