SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Jalen Brunson displayed plenty of grit in the New York Knicks\u2019 Game 1 victory in the NBA Finals, but second on the Most Valuable list in the early stages of the series is do-it-all veteran Josh Hart.<\/p>\n
Hart scored only three points, but he collected 15 rebounds, six assists and four steals in the 105-95 victory over the host San Antonio Spurs, and he is hungry for more as the Knicks come back for seconds in Game 2 on Friday (Saturday morning, Singapore time).<\/p>\n
The 31-year-old had three more rebounds than anyone on the floor, which included Victor Wembanyama of the Spurs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis energy is just relentless, it doesn\u2019t stop,\u201d Brunson said of Hart. \u201cI mean, he eats candy all the time. That tells you who he is. He\u2019s a big kid with an absurd amount of energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hart\u2019s contributions were certainly sweet as New York ran its postseason winning streak to 12, tied for second-longest in NBA history.<\/p>\n
He averaged 12.0 points, 7.4 rebounds and 4.8 assists in 66 regular-season games. His postseason numbers are 10.9, 9.1 and 4.7, respectively.<\/p>\n
Hart, though, only considers the numbers when the topic is victories.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes humility and just a willingness to sacrifice,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re in the NBA Finals \u2013 there\u2019s millions of people watching. It\u2019s easy to get wrapped up in human nature of wanting to get recognition, wanting to score the ball, wanting to show people what you can do on the biggest stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s not everyone\u2019s calling and not everyone\u2019s assignment. I know for me, that\u2019s not really my assignment. It takes a little bit of time to find that humility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Knicks coach Mike Brown certainly feels good about having a team-first player like Hart.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe rebounded the basketball. He was great,\u201d Brown said. \u201cHe impacted the game in so many different ways for us. When you look at what he shot from the field, you wouldn\u2019t think that he was probably the most impactful guy on the game last night.\u201d<\/p>\n
New York closed Game 1 with an 11-0 run to leave the Spurs bruised and battered on the home floor.<\/p>\n
San Antonio are loaded with players who are part of their first NBA Finals, but coach Mitch Johnson insisted youth wasn\u2019t the reason for the shaky play down the stretch.<\/p>\n
\u201cOld teams make bad decisions, too, at the end of games,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s looking at a picture, understand whatever that pattern is, whatever led to that situation… if you can recognize it and make a better decision next time… we\u2019ll try to help them with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest symbol of their defeat was Wembanyama\u2019s 6-of-21 shooting. The Frenchman also committed six turnovers.<\/p>\n
He had maintained that he didn\u2019t succumb to the pressure of his first game on the ultimate NBA stage.<\/p>\n
One San Antonio player missing in action was De\u2019Aaron Fox, who scored seven points on 3-of-13 shooting and was regularly assigned to defend Brunson.<\/p>\n
Fox stated the obvious Thursday \u2013 he\u2019s got to shoot better \u2013 while also reminding people that Wednesday\u2019s game counts as just one loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know it\u2019s a long series,\u201d Fox said. \u201cObviously you want to win every game that you have on your home court, but it\u2019s not the way it happens every day. We try to go in and fix the things we need to fix. Obviously we want a different outcome.\u201d REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO \u2013 Jalen Brunson displayed plenty of grit in the New York Knicks\u2019 Game 1 victory in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-716573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}