Josh Hart scored a playoff career-high 26 points, Jalen Brunson had 19 points and 14 assists, and the New York Knicks moved halfway to their first NBA finals appearance since 1999 by beating the Cleveland Cavaliers 109-93 on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden.
Mikal Bridges also scored 19 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 18 points and 13 rebounds for the Knicks, who won their ninth straight game. It is the NBA’s longest postseason winning streak since the Boston Celtics won 10 straight on their way to the 2024 championship.
Hart went 5 from 11 from three-point range and also had seven assists.
“Just a whale of a game from Josh,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said.
Two nights after rallying from a 22-point deficit in the fourth quarter, the Knicks made sure they would be in control late with an 18-0 run in the third quarter that gave them a 71-53 lead. Fans chanted “Knicks in four! Knicks in four!” in the final minute, long after the starters had gone to the benches.
“In our mind it’s 0-0. We’ve got to win the next game. It’s the most important game of the year and that’s how we treat it,” Towns said.
Donovan Mitchell scored 26 points and James Harden had 18 for the Cavaliers, who will have to climb out of a 2-0 deficit for the second straight round. They host Game 3 on Saturday.
“Nothing to hang our head about,” Mitchell said. “They protected home court, and we’ve seen this before so we’re going to go to Game 3.”
The Knicks are in the Eastern Conference finals for the second straight year but haven’t played for the championship since losing to the San Antonio Spurs in 1999.
Brunson scored 38 points in the Game 1 comeback. He had only two points in the first half Thursday before making the first basket of the run that broke open the game and finished the highest assist total of his playoff career.
Hart burned a Cavaliers defensive strategy that seemed built around leaving him open from long range after he was benched for the rally in Game 1, playing just three minutes combined in the fourth quarter and overtime.
The forward had been shooting just 26.7% from three-point range and after a third straight miss from long range early Thursday, he put his jersey in his mouth and bit it, bouncing the ball down hard in frustration three times. But he kept firing.
“I knew I had to just keep shooting and if I did that I’d be good,” Hart said.
Mitchell got off to a slow start with just seven points in the first half, triggering more of the questions that followed Game 1 about whether he was injured.
Cleveland cut it to single digits with just under eight minutes left but ruined any chance of getting closer with poor free-throw shooting, missing 10 in the game and finishing at 68.8%. The Knicks eventually pushed their lead to 19 points.