Ranking Jalen Brunson and the Most Clutch New York Knicks of All Time
Jalen Brunson has brought clutch basketball back to the New York Knicks. And oh, what a sight it is to behold.
This season alone, he has won the NBA's Clutch Player of the Year award, hit a series-winner in the first round of the playoffs against the Detroit Pistons and helped spearhead a handful of epic comebacks versus the Boston Celtics in the conference semifinals. Since coming to New York in 2022-23, only two players have hit more shots to tie the game or take the lead, across the both the regular season and playoffs: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokić.
More heroics figure to follow as the Knicks get ready to face off in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Indiana Pacers. Yet to simply call what Brunson does "clutch" is an understatement.
The Knicks have not fielded a star so tailored to big moments since, well, um, er...that's a great question. Let's try to answer it.
Ranking the most clutch Knicks players in franchise history will prioritize signature moments rather than just stats and entire portfolios. After all, high-stakes heroics are just as much of a vibe and about the story behind them as they are quantifiable displays of greatness. They are about capturing a time and a place, sometimes an entire era.
These Knicks players, many of them legends, have typified that feeling more often and/or on a larger scale than anyone.
10. John Starks
1 of 10
Signature Moment: Dunking on Horace Grant and Michael Jordan (kinda) to help seal a Game 2 victory in the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals.
John Starks' baseline dunk receives more attention for His Airness being in-frame rather than its clutchness. That script should be flipped.
The fourth-quarter jam came inside 50 seconds to play and helped the Knicks pull away and grab a 2-0 series lead over the three-peat-seeking Chicago Bulls. New York would go on to lose the series, but this smash transports us back to a time in which the seemingly unbeatable Jordan-era Bulls felt vulnerable. That's a big deal.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that this throwdown still ranks among the most iconic basketball stills of all time. That's more cool than clutch, but being clutch is cool, so here we are.
9. Jeremy Lin
2 of 10
Signature Moment: Burying a game-winning three against the Toronto Raptors in February 2012.
To what end a performance in the middle of February can be clutch is debatable. But Jeremy Lin's game-winner against the Raptors represented both the actualization and peak of Linsanity, even more so than his 38-point outburst versus the Los Angeles Lakers just a few days prior.
That Knicks season would be one to forget without Lin's ascent. This game in particular marked a shift in the final moments. New York didn't have Carmelo Anthony, while Amar'e Stoudemire was 8-of-22 from the field and not even a consideration to finish off the final play. Lin let the clock wind down, in a tie game, and pulled up to swish a three with 0.5 seconds remaining.
This is one of those situations in which you'd expect to feel the air get sucked out of the building. Lin and the Knicks were on the road. Instead, Air Canada Centre was filled with cheers—reverberating appreciation for a modern-day NBA phenomenon.
The moment is doubly special, perhaps even painful, because of how the season ended. That Knicks group never took off, Lin wasn't available in the playoffs due to a meniscus injury, and he would wind up leaving for the Houston Rockets in free agency that summer.
8. Carmelo Anthony
3 of 10
Signature Moment: Hitting game-tying and game-winning threes on Easter Sunday 2012 during an overtime victory over the Chicago Bulls.
Feel free to roll with Carmelo Anthony's 41-point detonation against the Miami Heat in Game 4 of the opening round of the 2012 playoffs if you please. That win staved off elimination for the Knicks and was their first playoff win since 2001.
Still, going that route rings a little hollow when New York would go on to lose Game 5 and then the series. His Easter Sunday romp from that same season is a better fit for his signature moment.
With the Knicks down by three inside 20 seconds to play, Melo drilled a pull-up trey over Taj Gibson from the right wing to force overtime. In the bonus frame, following a Tyson Chandler tip-out off a J.R. Smith miss, he put down another triple over Luol Deng from basically the same spot. The bucket gave him 43 points—and the victory.
Melo's track record with New York is spotty. It isn't marked by the success you want from the 2011 mega-trade. But Peak Carmelo was one of the NBA's most dangerous scorers. He was never the most efficient in clutch time, but he gave the Knicks somebody on whom they could lean.
Not coincidentally, Melo leads the franchise in game-tying and go-ahead buckets in the final three minutes of quarters since 1996, which is as far back as tracking data goes.
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7. Bernard King
4 of 10
Signature Moment: Scoring 44 points during a Game 5 overtime victory against the Detroit Pistons in the first round of the 1984 playoffs.
Bernard King is a human bucket. As one of only 16 players in league history to score 50-plus points in a game at least eight times, it would be a genuine shocker if he did not appear on this list.
King's Game 5 explosion looms largest out of all the individual performances on his resume. He went off for 44 points while playing through the flu and two dislocated fingers. Michael Jordan who, am I right? (Not really, but still...)
That game is still remembered for Isiah Thomas going kaboom in the final 90 seconds or so to force overtime. It shouldn't be. The Knicks pulled out the win and series victory, and King continued his march toward one of the greatest individual postseasons of all time.
Through 12 playoff contests that year, he averaged nearly 35 points while downing over 57 percent of his field-goal attempts. No other player has matched those benchmarks while appearing in as many games.
If you lower the threshold to 30 points on 55 percent shooting, King's name pops up alongside a who's who of all-time greats: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Giannis Antetokounmpo, LeBron James and Shaquille O'Neal.
6. Patrick Ewing
5 of 10
Signature Moment: Putback against the Indiana Pacers in Game 7 of the 1994 Eastern Conference Finals.
Patrick Ewing put a capper on his historic Game 7 versus the Pacers by rebounding and tip-dunking a John Starks miss to give the Knicks a one-point lead with under 30 seconds to play. The night ended in a haze of Madison Square Garden cheers and inquiries into whether Reggie Miller really committed a flagrant foul.
More critically, it also ended with New York punching its first NBA Finals ticket since its 1973 championship.
Ewing finished the evening with 24 points, 22 rebounds, seven assists and five blocks. To this day, he is one of only five players with a line of at least 20/20/5/5 in a playoff game, joining Tim Duncan (who did it three times, because of course he did), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Shaquille O'Neal and Bill Walton.
Though Ewing's career resume is often marked by the absence of a ring, he is without question one of the Knicks' all-time greats. His greatest flaw was having his prime overlap with that of the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls. Even so, he remains New York's all-time leader in playoff points, rebounds and blocks.
5. Allan Houston
6 of 10
Signature Moment: Series-winning runner against the Miami Heat in Game 5 of the first round of the 1999 playoffs.
Trailing by one point inside five seconds to play of Game 5, the Knicks inbounded the ball from the left sideline. Head coach Jeff Van Gundy called for a play that had most, including the announcers, believing it was designed for Patrick Ewing.
Allan Houston received the ball instead, took one dribble and ended up with enough time and space to get off a floater. The shot hit the front of the rim, then the backboard, before dropping in with 0.8 seconds remaining.
Series-winners are always iconic, but coming out of a lockout-shortened regular season, the Knicks were the No. 8 seed. To that point, an No. 8 seed had only upset the No. 1 seed once in NBA history.
Houston's heroics made history—and ensured New York would continue a Cinderella playoff run that extended all the way into the NBA Finals.
4. Larry Johnson
7 of 10
Signature Moment: Converting a four-point play to win Game 3 against the Indiana Pacers in the 1999 Eastern Conference Finals.
Game-winning dunks are cool. Ditto for game-winning threes.
Game-winning four-point plays, though, are simply the coolest.
With New York trailing by three in the final seconds, Larry Johnson delivered the most improbable of victories by drilling a left-wing triple over Antonio Daniels and drawing the foul. He made the free throw, giving the Knicks a 2-1 series advantage and paving the way for them to dispatch Indiana in six games.
The reaction is just as memorable as the degree of difficulty on the shot and the stakes of it all. After beelining towards the other end of the court, Johnson and teammate Chris Childs assumed very "The job's not done" demeanors, which ran in stark contrast to the overt, manic elation from the Madison Square Garden crowd.
"It was unbelievable," Johnson told B/R of the shot back in 2018. "We came in as the eighth seed that year, and to be able to hit that shot against Indiana at the Garden with the fans was great."
The Knicks would go on to make the NBA Finals. While they were then handily beaten by the San Antonio Spurs, the run from the end of the (lockout-shortened) regular season through the conference finals was the stuff of legend.
Johnson's four-point play encapsulates that magic more than any other moment.
3. Jalen Brunson
8 of 10
Signature Moment: Dropping 40 points and seven assists, including a series-winning three-pointer, in Game 6 of the first round of the 2025 playoffs against the Detroit Pistons.
Too soon? Not at all.
Jalen Brunson has amassed enough accolades and racked up enough clutch plays to crack the Knicks' all-time Mt. Rushmore of stars. Narrowing the criteria to crunch-time moments only bolsters his placement.
The 28-year-old has a full catalog of high-stakes heroics to celebrate. His series-clinching three against the Pistons is the biggest not just because of what it signaled (a second-round berth), but what it prevented.
If the Knicks lost Game 6, they could have lost Game 7 and the series. What happens then? Surely head coach Tom Thibodeau gets fired. Perhaps trades follow suit. Brunson's three-pointer—along with his eight-point detonation in the final two-and-a-half minutes with the Knicks trailing by seven—extended a season that isn't over yet and could feasibly end with the organization's third-ever title.
Brunson's entire postseason campaign reinforces his Clutch Player of the Year victory. He has made 14 shots in the final five minutes of close games. Nobody else has more than eight.
If any of his clutchest moments came after Round 2, he'd have a case for the second spot, maybe even the first. Heck, by the end of this year's playoff run, he just might move up the rankings.
2. Walt "Clyde" Frazier
9 of 10
Signature Moment: Dropping 36 points and 19 assists in Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals to secure the Knicks their first title in franchise history.
Willis Reed taking the floor with a muscle tear in his right thigh has a monopoly on memories from Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals. But it should not entirely eclipse one of the greatest championship-round performances in league history from Walt "Clyde" Frazier.
New York's point guard spearheaded the team's attack after Reed made his first two shots of the game. Frazier's stat line looks unreal even today. Los Angeles Lakers legend Jerry West is the only other player to drop at least 36 points and 16 assists in a Finals tilt. (Interestingly, he did it in Game 4 of that same series.)
1. Willis Reed
10 of 10
Signature Moment: Playing through a muscle tear in his right thigh during Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals.
Generational clutchness is seldom associated with a game in which someone tallies only four points and three rebounds. For Willis Reed, though, his heroics came in the form of availability.
After suffering a torn muscle in his right thigh that sidelined him through Games 5 and 6, the regular-season MVP gutted out an appearance in Game 7. He required painkiller injections just to take the floor, and even then, he walked onto the court with a visible limp.
That grit galvanized the fans at Madison Square Garden and Reed's teammates. "When I saw that,” Walt Frazier later explained, “something told me we might have these guys.” He was right.
Reed played for just a half, but he defended Wilt Chamberlain and hit his first two shots. More importantly, he imbued the Knicks with a life force that can be neither quantified nor explained, but you understand that it exists, that it is important, and that New York doesn't bag the franchise's first-ever title without it.
Dan Favale is a National NBA Writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.
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