{"id":693950,"date":"2026-06-09T18:02:15","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T18:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/693950\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T18:02:15","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T18:02:15","slug":"stephen-a-smith-blames-jalen-brunson-for-knicks-game-3-loss-to-spurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/693950\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith blames Jalen Brunson for Knicks’ Game 3 loss to Spurs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen A. Smith blames Jalen Brunson for Knicks’ Game 3 loss to Spurs<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When it comes to the New York Knicks<\/a>‘ 115-111 loss to the San Antonio Spurs<\/a> in Game 3 of the 2026 NBA Finals, ESPN commentator Stephen A. Smith is pointing the finger at Knicks star guard Jalen Brunson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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While reacting to the game, Smith blamed Brunson for the loss, saying that he felt like Brunson was playing for stats as opposed to trying to win.<\/p>\n

Brunson finished the game with 32 points, 5 rebounds and 5 assists, but he took 25 shots top get there, while no one else on the Knicks took more than 13. In the series as a whole, Brunson is shooting 30 for 81 from the floor.<\/p>\n

“Jalen Brunson, I gotta put this loss on him as much an anybody,” Smith said on First Take. ” …\u00a0I said something about him last night that I never thought I would say. It looked like he was playing to win finals MVP than he was playing to win game 3. That’s how it looked.”<\/p>\n

Simply put, Smith thinks that Brunson needs to be better moving forward if the Knicks are going to be able close out the series with the Spurs.<\/p>\n

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Prior to Game 3 in the series, Brunson characterized\u00a0his own play<\/a>\u00a0in the series as “subpar,” and said he felt like he could be better.<\/p>\n

\u201cSubpar,\u201d Brunson said while describing his Finals performance . \u201cWhen I say subpar, just from my standards. I still feel like I\u2019m trying to impact the game as much as I can, but I also feel I can be much better.”<\/p>\n

After his performance in Game 3, it’s clear that Smith would agree with that assessment.<\/p>\n

More NBA news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stephen A. Smith blames Jalen Brunson for Knicks’ Game 3 loss to Spurs originally appeared on The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[36783,355,361,2116,99,3692],"class_list":["post-693950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-jalen-brunson","tag-nba","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-sports","tag-stephen-a-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}