If you simply looked at the box score from Game 2 of the Detroit Pistons–New York Knicks series and tried to reverse-engineer some narratives, you would probably look at Jalen Brunson’s 37 points and seven assists (both game-highs), Karl-Anthony Towns’s 10 anonymous points in 33 minutes, and the final score showing a 100–94 Pistons win and conclude that Brunson had a great game and that the Knicks dropped a game at home because his bum-ass teammates didn’t step up. Wrong! Let’s check the highlight reel.
Detroit committed 24 personal fouls on Monday night. Brunson shot 11 free throws.
Brunson has drawn 23 fouls in two games, which is more than every other Knick combined.
“He’s good at drawing fouls,” Ausar Thompson, Brunson’s primary defender, said before Game 1. “Well, he’s good at selling fouls. So, you just gotta be smarter.” Asked what challenges he would face guarding Brunson, he said, “None.” Thompson is a nifty screen navigator, and in Game 2 it felt like he was being punished for actually getting to difficult spots too fast, as if the referees could not believe his athleticism.
After Brunson baited Thompson in for his final foul, he held up six fingers as Thompson walked away, correctly predicting the margin by which his team would lose.
The NBA’s play-by-play footage omits this foul, where Brunson got up into Thompson’s arm then nudged under it and somehow drew a foul. It does show him getting into Tobias Harris for three free throws.
I am agnostic on the competitive legitimacy of this brand of foul-baiting. Brunson flops all the time, which is horrid to watch and frustrating to play against, but just as insidiously, he spends many possessions cynically winning position on the court, creating contact with his defender, and sprawling out onto the hardwood. It’s not as dishonest as flopping, but it’s perhaps more dishonorable. He is hooping like an actuary.
There is nothing impressive or cool about a tiny guy using his battering-ram head to take up space before jumping into a guy’s chest. It’s like watching someone grimly compile a spreadsheet. Here is a margin; here is how you exploit it. What irks me is that Brunson’s effectiveness is not dependent on his ability to win an inch on the perimeter and turn it into two free throws; he is capable of incredible feats of skill and strength. When I watch this man bounce off the chests of shot-blockers, or spin into gorgeous, high-arcing middies, I feel like I am watching one of the smartest players in the NBA. When I see him spend entire fourth quarters not even trying to do so because he is too busy falling down, I feel like turning the game off.
Contrast that with the other two best players in this series. Towns didn’t really touch the ball, which is especially baffling as Isaiah Stewart, who defends him well, didn’t play in Game 2. The Towns experience can be equally baffling, though it’s way more fun because it involves a huge man with goofball facial expressions trying to do Steve Nash stuff. Said experience also reliably generates good shots. Towns is a great shooter and skilled passer, and when he touches the ball, good things often happen and possessions generally involve less standing. He took two threes and logged zero assists Monday night, because the game came down to Brunson dribbling the ball for 20 seconds of each possession, or as long as it took to launch himself into and off of a defender.
Cade Cunningham, on the other hand, was magic. The Pistons star is so fun to watch, gliding around screens, confidently diagnosing coverages, and manipulating the game at an extremely high level. He got most of his work done in the first three quarters, and while the Pistons nearly collapsed when OG Anunoby played him well in the fourth, he kept moving the ball out of pressure and trusted his teammates to make the most of their four-on-threes. The Pistons shot just 6-for-27 from three, and they still won because Cunningham was in control.
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You will notice that Brunson gets roasted on a bunch of those Cunningham highlights. Per NBA.com’s John Schuhmann, the Pistons have made a point of bringing Brunson’s man into the action as much as possible. His man has set 30 ball screens in two games, and Detroit is averaging 1.4 points per possession in such cases, which is the most of any of the 34 players who have been put in those circumstances 20 or more times. Fittingly, Brunson made the wrong decision on the most critical play of the night, Dennis Schröder’s dagger three. I think that’s beautiful.
