Knicks’ Jalen Brunson Returns to Game 2 vs. Pacers After Suffering Foot Injury

New York Knicks fans can exhale.

The Knicks https://twitter.com/NY_KnicksPR/status/1788372339140264330 that star guard Jalen Brunson was dealing with a sore right foot in the first half of Wednesday’s playoff game against the Indiana Pacers and was questionable to return. He went into the locker room for an extended period of time during the first half of Game 2 of the second-round series.

However, he returned to start the second half.

New York is already without Julius Randle, Mitchell Robinson and Bojan Bogdanović, which has left them quite thin in these playoffs.

The entire bench managed a grand total of three points in Game 1 of the series against Indiana, and that was with Robinson.

The team can ill-afford any injuries moving forward, let alone one to the player who has been carrying it throughout the postseason. Brunson entered Wednesday’s contest having scored 40 or more points in each of the last four games, including 43 in Game 1 of this series.

Hey also https://twitter.com/NBAHistory/status/1786263183604195798 Michael Jordan and LeBron James earlier this postseason as the only players in NBA history to post at least 35 points and five assists in four straight playoff games of the same postseason.

Jordan and James are quite the company to keep, which underlines how incredible Brunson has been in these playoffs.

Anything short of an Eastern Conference Finals appearance would be considered a disappointment at this point for the Knicks, who are the No. 2 seed in the East and seized a 1-0 lead over Indiana.

However, any significant injury to Brunson would drastically alter that reality. The Knicks likely wouldn’t have the firepower to keep up with the Pacers over the course of a seven-game series if their star player and leader joined the long list of players who are already sidelined.

That’s why it was such a relief for the team that Brunson returned to start the second half.