{"id":239267,"date":"2026-05-21T13:27:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/239267\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T13:27:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:27:13","slug":"knicks-cavaliers-battle-lines-drawn-in-jalen-brunson-james-harden-matchup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/239267\/","title":{"rendered":"Knicks-Cavaliers battle lines drawn in Jalen Brunson-James Harden matchup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It took roughly three-and-a-half quarters, but the Knicks <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/05\/20\/sports\/jalen-brunson-is-stacking-up-derek-jeter-esque-credentials\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">found quite the winning recipe<\/a> toward the end of their stunning Game 1 comeback win against the Cavaliers.<\/p>\n<p>And it was pretty simple.<\/p>\n<p>Jalen Brunson put James Harden on an island in the fourth quarter, as he <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/05\/20\/sports\/knicks-jalen-brunson-kept-on-attacking-cavs-james-harden\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">isolated on the future Hall of Famer<\/a> a staggering nine times and routinely burned his opponent, helping the Knicks <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/05\/20\/sports\/shocking-stats-reveals-just-how-bad-knicks-torched-james-harden-in-legendary-comeback\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">average 1.9 points per action<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was no secret we were attacking Harden,\u201d a smirking Mike Brown said after the 115-104 win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It took roughly three-and-a-half quarters, but the Knicks found quite the winning recipe toward the end of their&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[22381,1266,4777,27721,21,56784,80162,9,11,1104,10,4780,319,428],"class_list":["post-239267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-beyond-the-back-page","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-james-harden","tag-nba","tag-nba-playoffs","tag-nba-playoffs-2026","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-new-york-news","tag-post-sports-newsletters","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}