Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart could only watch.
They walked back toward the scorer’s table with around two minutes left in Game 5 — Brunson dealing with his latest ankle tweak of the series, Hart favoring a “little bit of everything” injury that occurred in the final minutes — and could only observe as Cameron Payne couldn’t connect on a floater, Mikal Bridges missed a 3-pointer and then finally converted a shot, only for Ausar Thompson to respond at the other end. They could only wait for the timeout from Tom Thibodeau that would allow them to check back into the game with the Knicks trailing … and didn’t arrive until 27.1 seconds remained.
In a series where Games 2-5 now have been decided by a combined 12 points after the Pistons’ 106-103 win at the Garden on Tuesday, Thibodeau’s decision to wait before using his final timeout, which he later called a “coach’s decision” based on only having one timeout left, captured just how razor-thin the margin of error has been in this series.
Who knows what would’ve happened if Brunson, who had both hands on the ball while falling out of bounds, managed to spike it off a Detroit player with around 20 seconds left and the Knicks trailing by 3? Who knows what would’ve happened if Miles McBride didn’t miss his first free throw with 2 seconds left or a Knicks player had been spotting up in the area where Karl-Anthony Towns slapped the rebound after McBride intentionally missed the second?
