CLEVELAND — The game was over, the series done, the arena — which sounded like the inside of a morgue for 2 ½ hours — emptying as rapidly as if they’d announced there was free money scattering the sidewalks outside, covering Euclid Avenue.
There were 19 seconds left in the game, 19 seconds left in the Cavaliers’ season and it was here that they opted to raise the white flag, making official what had been obvious across just about every inch of these five games and these 12 days: they’d been manhandled by the deeper, smarter, better team.
The Knicks had rolled them.
“They punched us in the mouth,” Cleveland coach J.B. Bickerstaff said.
The buzzer groaned and the Cavs wandered listlessly, like a punch-drunk fighter who couldn’t tell if he’d been floored by an uppercut or a right cross. The Knicks untucked their jerseys. Mitch Robinson hugged Immanuel Quickley. Jalen Brunson hugged RJ Barrett. The Knicks had entered this series underdogs. They walked off the floor something else.
They are, officially, a team no one wants to see.
Except, of course, for a fan base that has been starving to see basketball like this for years, for decades, maybe all the way back to the fabled hit-the-open-man Knicks that didn’t just win but won with style and grace and passion.
“The way this team plays resonates with all our fans,” Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau said after this 106-95 win that clinched this best-of-seven playoff series four games to one, and earned them a slot in the Eastern Conference semifinals for the first time in 10 years and only the second time since 2000.
“They play hard and play smart and play together. When you play that way in New York it’s always recognized. You need everybody in a situation like that to win on the road and play the way we did and that’s a credit to our entire team.”
How impressive was this one? The Knicks never trailed and were only tied twice, the last time at 10-10. Of the eight Knicks who played, seven had positive plus-minus ratings, led by Barrett at plus-21, reflective of a third straight terrific game in which he had 21 points, four rebounds and four assists.
They did this despite losing Julius Randle late in the first half after Randle had come out assertive and aggressive, 13 points and six assists in 16 minutes before hurting his ankle again. But the Knicks are playing with such confidence that Obi Toppin stepped right in and scored all 12 of his points in the second half in relief of Randle.
“Next-man-up mentality,” Brunson said.
“My approach is the same every time I enter a game,” Toppin said. “Be aggressive, bring a lot of energy and have fun. We all did that today.”
They did, all of them. The Cavaliers will have nightmares all summer about how Robinson bullied their ballyhooed frontcourt duo of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, and Wednesday he had 13 points, 18 rebounds and three blocks. Josh Hart only scored four points but he played 46 minutes and 46 seconds and grabbed 12 boards and seemed somehow to be guarding about three Cavs at once all night.
And Brunson, naturally, was Brunson (23 points, four assists).
“He’s never rushed, never rattled, very poised,” Hart said of his Knicksanova running mate. “He’s able to control the game. That’s what you want from a point guard.”
And this is what you want from a basketball team: one that peaks at precisely the right moment, as this team has, one that walked into a usually deafening Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse (where the Cavs lost only 10 games all year) and stole Game 1 and then pocketed Game 5. They are fearless, they are selfless, and whoever they play from here, they’re going to give an honest effort. It’s what they do. It’s who they are.
“We get to play more basketball,” Brunson said.
They get to play more basketball. They get at least another week or two of season starting Sunday at the Garden against the equally smoking-hot Heat, and as a bonus they were able to send Donovan Mitchell home way earlier than anyone expected.
“I had to be better than I was, and I wasn’t,” Mitchell said. “I didn’t do my job and I deserve the criticism that comes with it. I have to own that. I have to wear that. All summer.”
All year, it seemed the Knicks would have to answer for Leon Rose’s decision not to ransom their assets — and maybe Barrett or Robinson, too — to make Mitchell a Knick. They answered for it all right. And now they get to play more basketball.
“New York is the mecca of basketball,” Toppin said. “For us to be in the second round …”
He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t have to. There will be more basketball for the Knicks this spring, there will be more electric nights at the Garden like the two we got last Friday and last Sunday, throwback nights when it felt like the crowd tried to roar loud enough for 1994 to hear them, or 1973. They’ll get more basketball, too.
New York gets more basketball. As a wise man once said: “Yes!”
