Breaking news: Jalen Brunson of the Knicks breaks his left hand during the Game 7 loss.
Breaking news: Jalen Brunson of the Knicks breaks his left hand during the Game 7 loss.
The New York Knicks‘ hopes of making the NBA playoffs are being affected by their ongoing injury problems. The Knicks suffered their ultimate blow tonight in their final game of the 2023–24 campaign, losing badly to the Indiana Pacers 130–109 in Game 7 of their second-round series.
Knicks All-Star Shams Charania of The Athletic and a number of other NBA writers have reported that Jalen Brunson left the game at 4:06 in the third quarter due to a fractured left hand.
When Brunson departed the court, New York was behind 88–74. The Knicks found their fourth-quarter uphill battle to be just too challenging in the absence of their main captain and offensive catalyst. The Pacers easily defeated the Boston Celtics by double digits and advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals to play them.
A string of ailments, including Brunson’s shattered hand, marred New York’s valiant but disastrous postseason journey.
Josh Hart, the guard for the Knicks, managed to play through an abdominal injury in Game 7, while OG Anunoby, the forward for New York, was forced to miss Games 3-6 due to a hamstring strain, and he left the game after only five minutes of play.
The Knicks were already forced to play without forward Julius Randle, a three-time NBA All-Star, going into the postseason. In addition to Brunson, Anunoby, and Hart’s ailments, New York also lost Mitchell Robinson and Bojan Bogdanovic, two important role players, to injuries throughout the first two rounds.
Even for a Blazers fan across the nation, the Knicks’ 2024 playoff run proved to be a disastrous sequence of events (and possibly a clear example of poor load management). Despite this, the squad was enjoyable to watch and simple to root for.
