SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Jalen Brunson was the star of Game 1 of the NBA Finals, willing the New York Knicks to a series-opening win. Victor Wembanyama, even while struggling from the field, put up big numbers for the San Antonio Spurs in his finals debut as well.
The stars were stars.
The finals, though, tends to get won by the sum of the other parts.
Game 2 of the title series is Friday night in San Antonio, with the Spurs hoping to pull into a tie before the series heads to New York — and the Knicks aiming at becoming the first team since Houston in 1995 to start the NBA Finals with two road wins.
Tipoff is at 8:42 p.m. EDT and the game will be aired on ABC. The Spurs are 6.5-point favorites.
New York got 30 points from Brunson in the Game 1 win, in which the Knicks rallied from 14 points down in the third quarter and closed the game on an 11-0 run. And while Brunson got tons of credit, the Knicks pointed to other efforts, like the one from Josh Hart.
He had three points. That’s not what mattered. It was everything else — 15 rebounds, six assists and four steals. The only other player to have that many rebounds, assists and steals in a finals game since all those stats began being tracked was Larry Bird in 1986.
“His energy is just relentless. It doesn’t stop,” Brunson said of Hart, his former Villanova teammate. “I mean, he eats candy all the time. That tells you who he is. He’s a big kid with an absurd amount of energy.”
The Knicks are trying to win their 13th consecutive playoff game, which would be the second-longest single-season streak in NBA history. Golden State won 15 consecutive playoff games in 2017.
“We know it’s a long series,” Spurs guard De’Aaron Fox said. “Obviously you want to win every game that you have on your home court, but it’s 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.”
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