Jalen Brunson cooks in Knicks comeback win
The Athletic NBA Daily
The Athletic
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🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
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Summary
Jalen Brunson scored 17 of his 38 points in the fourth quarter and overtime as the New York Knicks overcame a 22-point deficit to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers in game one of the Easter Conference Finals. Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni give their instant reactions to the Knicks massive comeback over the Cavs, Brunson’s incredible crunch time performance, and Cleveland’s James Harden problem. Then, Mike Vorkunov joins the show from Madison Square Garden with discussions around the postgame from Kenny Atkinson and where the Cavs might adjust in game two.
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Host: Dave DuFour
With: Es Baraheni and Mike Vorkunov
Executive Producer: Andrew Schlecht
Audio/Video Producer: Alex Oliver
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily for May 20th, 2026. |
| 0:04.0 | I'm Dave Dufour here with Esperi coming up. |
| 0:06.9 | The Knicks Stormback to steal a victory from certain defeat in game one of the Eastern Conference Finals. |
| 0:12.9 | We have Mike Vorkinoff here to talk about it with us after S and I break it down. |
| 0:27.0 | Good morning, S. How you doing, buddy, better than the Cleveland Cavaliers, I'm betting. |
| 0:34.5 | Oh my God. I can't believe it, man. We were sitting there where like, this is such an impressive win for the Cavs. |
| 0:40.0 | It seems obvious. You talked about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. |
| 0:46.5 | It was like the opposite thing for the Cleveland Cavaliers. They absolutely collapsed. It was incredible to watch if you were not a Cleveland Cavaliers fan just because of it was all self-inflicted. |
| 0:54.5 | And I'm sure we'll talk about it all throughout, but a 22-point collapse, first time that both conference finals games, the first conference finals games, in, you know, to start off game one, go to overtime in NBA history, which is incredible. |
| 1:11.0 | Okay, but one of these was not like the other. |
| 1:14.2 | Yeah, it was honest. |
| 1:15.9 | Until the Knicks started coming back, this game felt like a different sport. |
| 1:22.1 | And I mean, part of it is just the intensity just wasn't there. |
| 1:26.5 | What wasn't the same? |
| 1:27.7 | Didn't feel like as big of a game as Spurs and Thunder. |
| 1:31.2 | And obviously. |
| 1:31.6 | It felt like a regular season game, honestly. |
| 1:33.2 | A little bit, right? |
| 1:34.3 | Like it had that sort of energy. |
| 1:35.7 | I think that that was part of why the Knicks looks so bad for three and a half quarters of the game. |
| 1:41.9 | They didn't have the the right intensity the right |
| 1:44.9 | energy and still s uh as impressive as the calves were if the nicks had just shot better this was a |
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