Stats, clips, and bad analogies from two epic Game 1s

Harden's Happy Death Day moment, Wemby as the weapon of first resort, and more

Two Game 1s gave us a double helping of instant classics. One was a nail-biter from the start, while the other… you know what, this is 3,000+ words already. If it’s okay with you, let’s skip the preamble, and please forgive any typos.

Here are some observations, stats, clips, and nonsensical jokes regarding two of the best playoff games I’ve seen in years.

ECF Game 1: Knicks 115, Cavaliers 104 (OT)

• Do you remember the movie Happy Death Day? It was a fun slasher from a decade ago with a Groundhog Day twist: the victim gets murdered by a masked killer, wakes up at the start of the same day, gets slaughtered in a new grisly way, wakes up again, rinse, repeat.
  
  I thought of that movie as I watched Jalen Brunson ruthlessly hunt James Harden in the halfcourt over and over and over again in the game’s defining run. The Knicks didn’t overcome a 22-point fourth-quarter deficit with a blistering transition attack; they actually had zero fast-break points in the fourth quarter! It was just slight variations of the same death scene on repeat.
  
  Harden contested pretty well, at first! You can’t ask him to do much more than this:

  

  But it got worse over time. The All NBA Podcast has some disturbing stats on the sequence, such as Harden defending as many isolations in one quarter (eight) as we have on record, or Harden giving up 1.6 points on an incredible 21 possessions as a screen defender in the fourth quarter and OT. Those are incomprehensible numbers. It’s not hyperbole to say I’ve never seen one team go after one player so often and so successfully.
  

• I’m somewhat sympathetic to the Cavaliers. Almost none of Brunson’s shots were easy, and I’m sure they figured he’d miss eventually. But if you’ve ever played the game at any level, you know basketball is a dominance sport. There are times where a player knows — knows! — he can take and make any shot he wants against a specific, inferior opponent, regardless of mere facts and stats and expected shot values.
  
  Brunson reached that level against Harden last night, and when someone enters that zone, it’s up to the other team to knock him out of it. The Cavs, led by coach Kenny Atkinson, cowered, instead.