printable ncaa bracket Jalen Brunson's Knicks playoff exploits are generational

Knicks fans still talk about Bernard King’s heroics in the mid-1980s, though the team never got past the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Jalen Brunson is putting up numbers that no Knick has equaled since King, and he may just be getting started.

Brunson had played in 39 career postseason games prior to Game 4 against the 76ers in the first round of the playoffs and had scored 40 points just twice.

In little more than a week since then, the Knicks star guard has done it four times in a row, including dropping a scintillating 43 in Monday night’s 121-117 victory over the Pacers in Game 1 of the conference semifinals at Madison Square Garden.

Now, all of a sudden, Brunson is squarely in King’s territory in the franchise’s record book.

Only King, with seven, had more 40-point playoff performances than Brunson’s five for the Knicks. Six of those came during a 1984 playoff run, when King dominated the Pistons in the first round and then nearly carried the Knicks to another series win before they fell to the Celtics in seven games in the following round.

King, as Brunson has, scored 40-plus in four straight games that postseason. They are two of just four players in NBA history to accomplish the feat. (The other two? You might have heard of them: Jerry West and Michael Jordan.)

Brunson seems like a good bet to eclipse King’s franchise mark for playoff 40-spots — though there’s no telling how many more prolific nights King would have had at this time of year had he not suffered a torn ACL in March 1985. King was never the same after the injury, and the Knicks fell apart to such a degree that they got the top pick in the 1985 draft, which landed them Patrick Ewing.

Brunson — who, like King, originally hails from the tri-state area and began his NBA career elsewhere — has a chance to secure a much different Knicks legacy in just his second season with the team.

Brunson scored 21 of his game-high 43 points Monday night in the decisive fourth quarter. He shot 14-of-26 from the field and a perfect 14-of-14 from the free-throw line, and added six rebounds and six assists.

He had some help: Josh Hart put up 24, 13, and 8 while playing all 48 minutes, Donte DiVincenzo hit the tiebreaking 3 in the final minute and the Knicks benefited from a favorable home whistle.

But it will be up to the Pacers and head coach Rick Carlisle to figure out a way to at least slow down Brunson.

The Pacers gave up 35 points to Damian Lillard in a Game 1 loss to the Bucks in the first round, and the series might have had a different outcome if Lillard hadn’t injured his Achilles in Game 3. He missed Games 4 and 5 before struggling in a hobbled Game 6 showing.

Brunson, for his part, shows no signs of slowing down.

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Alonso’s worrisome walk year

The last time a homegrown New York slugger was about to hit free agency, Aaron Judge went out and had one of the best offensive seasons of all time.

After betting on himself, Judge set an American League record with 62 homers and turned that success into a nine-year, $360 million contract from the Yankees.

Pete Alonso isn’t the all-around player that Judge is and his star power isn’t as high, but he’s pretty close.

There already were questions about how lucrative a contract Alonso would get when he hits free agency after this season, in part because first basemen haven’t received the same level of megadeals as outfielders and shortstops.

And that was before Alonso got off to a brutal start.

Judge had just one homer in his first 13 games in 2022, but he ratcheted up the pace in mid-April and on the morning of May 7, he had nine homers, a .293 average and an OPS over 1.000.

After a tough weekend at Tampa Bay and then not getting the start Monday night before going 0-for-1 off the bench in the Mets’ 4-3 win over the Cardinals, Alonso is hitting just .205 with a run-of-the-mill OPS of .710.

And since hitting his 200th career homer on April 27, Alonso is in a 1-for-29 funk with just two RBIs, five walks and nine strikeouts in a nine-game span.

“I need to be better,” Alonso said following Sunday’s loss. “All the work, stuff like that [and] preparing for the game, no one really sees that. No one really cares about that. People care about performance. So it’s just frustrating not to be able to come through.”

Rangers redux?

There have been a number of similarities between this season’s Rangers team and their last Stanley Cup-winning squad from 1994.

Both teams won the Presidents’ Trophy after finishing the regular season with the most points in the league, and they also shared their spring surges with the Knicks, their co-tenants at Madison Square Garden.

And now, there’s one more thing these Rangers have in common with ’94: an extended winning streak to start the playoffs.

After the Rangers swept the overmatched Capitals in the first round this year, they won Sunday’s Game 1 against the Hurricanes, 4-3.

It’s the franchise’s longest winning streak to open the playoffs since 1994, when the Rangers won their first seven postseason games en route to the Cup.

That year, they swept the Islanders in the first round and beat the Capitals in the first three games of a 4-1 series win.

The rest of the Rangers’ run was significantly tougher — with back-to-back seven-game series wins over the Devils and Canucks.

They have a problem

It appears the Yankees’ four-game sweep to open the season in Houston wasn’t a fluke.

The Astros have made it to every ALCS since 2017. They’ve seen managers come and go, and dealt with front-office changes and roster turnover.

Through it all, they remained the team most fans loved to hate, mostly because of the sign-stealing scandal of 2017 that many believe carried over at least through 2019, when they lost the World Series.

But the Astros team that’s coming to The Bronx to face the Yankees on Tuesday is something the baseball world hasn’t seen in a decade: They’re bad.

At 12-22, they are just a half-game out of last place in the AL West — and that’s after a recent stretch during which they won five of six games.

Former Yankees coach Joe Espada took over as manager for the retired Dusty Baker and has presided over the Astros’ tailspin in the first month-plus.

Among the culprits: Veteran first baseman Jose Abreu, so unproductive he agreed to be sent down to the minors with an almost-impossible OPS of .269.

Alex Bregman, who just turned 30 and is coming off back-to-back standout seasons, has fallen off a cliff with just one home run and an OPS of .552. Like Alonso, the third baseman is picking a bad time for a crummy season as he approaches free agency.

Cristian Javier is on the IL, and young starters Hunter Brown and Spencer Arighetti have been awful.

And a bullpen that was supposed to be dominant has gotten terrible performances from three of its most important weapons: Josh Hader, Ryan Pressly and Bryan Abreu.

Prospect of the day

Two games into his Florida Complex League season, Jeremy Rodriguez already has a multi-hit game.

The Mets shortstop prospect batted leadoff for the rookie-ball squad and smacked two hits with an RBI on Monday afternoon.

The 17-year-old, acquired in last summer’s Tommy Pham trade with the Diamondbacks, started the matinee with a strikeout before collecting singles in the third and fifth innings.

— Andrew Battifarano