Jalen Brunson & the Knicks figured out the soft spots in Victor Wembanyama's defense
Yahoo Sports senior NBA analyst Kevin O’Connor and Amin Elhassan break down Brunson's excellent second half in Game 1. Check out the full conversation on “The Kevin O’Connor Show” and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you listen .
Video Transcript
So we're gonna start here with Jalen Brunson.
Jalen Brunson, 30 points in the game, 19 points in the second half.
Jalen Brunson, here to play, and for him it looked like this Wemby adjustment- Yep wasn't quite as severe as it was for SGA last round, at least in game one.
So there, there, there was a couple of moments where he was doing the SGA thing, which is drive into the paint, Wemby's there, and like, "I'm not even looking at the rim.
I'm trying to throw it out."
Yes.
And I was wondering, well, is this gonna be the, the continuation?
But you see how he started to figure out, kinda do the math of like, "Okay, these are my soft spots here that I can attack."
We had two scares with him injury-wise- Ah in the first half, and that was everyone held their breath of what is this gonna mean for the Knicks if Jalen Brunson can't go?
But luckily he came back, and he pl- he was excellent.
He was exactly what, you know, Knick fans have been touting him for and what, everyone's kind of in Becky Hammon's mentions- Oh, so you're gonna say the name?
Yeah.
Well, her jersey's hanging right over there behind me, so.
Somewhere up here, yeah.
But, like, this, this is exactly what everyone's talking about is, like, this is a guy, his size, I won't say his size doesn't matter in terms of his offense, but he's accustomed to it.
He knows how to find his advantages, and tonight in that second half in particular he did that.
I mean, it was interesting.
Throughout the game, right, he was 6 of 20 when Wemby was on the floor.
Mm-hmm.
6 of 11 when Cornet was on the floor.
So the numbers do indicate, oh, he struggled- Right when Wemby was on the floor.
But you watch the second half of that game, to me it looked like there was an adjustment, a more comfortability.
Right.
There was a play in which where I think, like six or so, seven minutes left- Right in the fourth quarter where he drove into the basket.
Mitchell Robinson sealed off Wemby- Right on, on a layup.
It was his second big layup in- Yeah within a minute.
And it was like, okay, there he's getting in a rhythm here against Wemby.
The Spur, the Knicks are learning how to do some things- Yeah to free him up getting into the paint.
