Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns are arguably the two best offensive players on the Knicks’ current roster. In his first playoff run with the Knicks last season, Towns was determined to show the Knicks fans what he is capable of. But he feels all his efforts went to waste when Brunson stole the spotlight from him in Game 6 of the Pistons series.
In a social media clip that recently went viral from his interview with Carmelo Anthony on ‘7 PM in Brooklyn’, Towns hilariously poked fun at Jalen Brunson for stealing his peak moment as a Knicks player. When addressing a Brunson performance that left him speechless in the season, Towns expressed his feelings about Brunson’s game-winner vs. the Pistons in Game 6.
“I feel like Washington was one of those where he had 50 something, and we played them on a back-to-back, so that was on the first night he let it be known.”
“That was one of them, but I remember when we closed out Detroit this year, Game 6,” said Towns as the Pistons fans in the crowd started to murmur.
“That shot was crazy! That was just one of those moments where it’s just like, you know, when you see him do the crossover, you know he’s about to make it. So I was waiting to see what celly he was going to pull out with it.”
“It was funny, though, because I laughed with him after the game, because I said it’s so funny that the game before, I was hitting those shots. He comes back and he makes his game-winner look way better than mine.”
“I’m like ‘God damn JB! You couldn’t let me have one moment? One clutch moment, my New York Knick moment.’ I make that shot in Detroit, we’re good, step back going right, he said, ‘Hell nah.'”
Karl-Anthony Towns, in the Pistons series, was often playing like the best player on the floor. He averaged 19.7 points, 10.0 rebounds, and 1.7 assists in the series and took over in Games 3 and 4, dropping 31 points and 27 points respectively in each game, to lead the Knicks to a win away from home.
He hit a deep three in the clutch moment of Game 4 with less than a minute left on the clock to give the Knicks a crucial lead. He believes if Jalen Brunson hadn’t hit the game-winner in Game 6, his peak Knicks moment would get the respect it deserves.
Jalen Brunson was also having a terrific first-round series against the Pistons. He averaged 31.5 points, 8.2 assists, and 4.0 rebounds in that series. Brunson’s only bad game in the series was Game 5 at Madison Square Garden, where he only had 16 points. Other than that, he dropped at least 30 points in each game.
Therefore, after his struggle in Game 5, all eyes were on him, hoping for a bounce back, and indeed in Game 6, he dropped 40 points to send the Pistons home in the Playoffs. The final nail in the coffin often gets more attention than all the others.
