The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox.Good morning! Embrace the grime today. Coming up:
Grit and Grime: Are the Knicks actually unstoppable?One thought raced through my head every time I watched a New York Knicks possession in the fourth quarter last night: These dudes are grimy. I mean that as a huge compliment. There’s grit, and then there’s grime. Every bucket, every rebound, every screen oozed difficulty, as if each player was covered in sludge. Grime, even. My body ached from watching as I paced behind my couch. Doing all of that, on the road, in Game 1 of the NBA Finals against a team that employs a 7-foot-4 alien is championship material. It’s just one game, but the Knicks are up 1-0 after last night’s 105-95 win, their 12th straight this postseason. Two more notes on the grime:
New York, and primarily Karl-Anthony Towns, was excellent against that alien, Spurs wunderkind Victor Wembanyama. He finished with 26 points, but it came on 6-of-21 shooting. He was in the muck all night.
On the other side, I don’t know what more to say at this point about Jalen Brunson. The 6-foot-2 point guard, most often the shortest player on the floor, scored 30 points, including 13 in the fourth quarter. A huge 3-pointer with 1:50 left and an absurd fadeaway jumper with 37 seconds left sealed the win. Superhero stuff, and this all came after the 29-year-old left the game in the first quarter with a knee injury.
