NEW YORK — The best player in this series, and especially on Sunday afternoon, wasn’t Donovan Mitchell.
Not even close.
The star has been Jalen Brunson, the point guard who carried the Knicks to a pivotal 102-93 victory, giving Tom Thibodeau’s squad a 3-1 series lead.
Brunson scored 29 points while totally outplaying Mitchell, who missed 13 of his 18 attempts in a miserable showing.
RJ Barrett added 26 points, drawing chants from another supercharged MSG crowd, as Julius Randle was benched for the entire fourth quarter.
Randle had been a disaster in the third quarter, showing little effort on defense as the Knicks squandered an earlier 15-point advantage. Thibodeau made the bold move of sitting down his All-Star, who finished with just seven points in 27 minutes on 3-of-10 shooting.
In his place, Obi Toppin played all but 40 seconds of the final period as the Knicks ran away down the stretch.
In Friday’s Game 3, the Knicks held the Cavs to 79 points, the smallest total for any team this season, not just in the playoffs.
Afterwards, Mitchell Robinson agreed that Cleveland players were hesitant to challenge him at the rim. The center even grabbed his arms and shivered, calling the Cavs “shook up.”
Two days later, little changed in the first half.
The Cavs were outhustled and outmuscled, trailing by 15 in the second quarter. But they recovered in the third quarter, in large part due to Randle’s lethargy. Cleveland targeted the power forward, who seemed to have little interest in rotating on pick-and-rolls or even putting up his hands to contest shots.
That led to his benching and an effective closing lineup of Brunson, Barrett, Toppin, Josh Hart and Isaiah Hartenstein.
The Knicks were down their starting shooting guard, Quentin Grimes, who suffered a bruised shoulder in Game 2 and was ruled out Sunday. The 22-year-old’s arm was in a sling on the bench.
It thrust Hart into the lineup, who became the initial Mitchell stopper. Miles McBride filled in the rest, logging five minutes while giving Mitchell fits in the first half.
