Brunson's 18 Straight Points Power Defending Champion Knicks Past Cavaliers 109-97

There are nights when a game turns on a single stretch, and on Saturday night in Cleveland that stretch belonged entirely to Jalen Brunson.

The New York Knicks were trailing, the crowd at Rocket Arena was loud, and the defending champions were staring at another awkward evening on the road. Then Brunson took the ball, and for eight minutes in the second quarter, nobody else on his team needed to score. Eighteen straight Knicks points. Three three-pointers, one of them a four-point play. Three two-point baskets. Three free throws. By the time he was done, a 36-30 deficit had become a 63-53 halftime lead, and the game never really came back.

Brunson finished with 31 points, nine assists and six rebounds in 34 minutes, and the Knicks went on to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers 109-97, their third straight win and the first time this season they have sat above .500. It was also their first trip back to Cleveland since they swept the Cavaliers out of last season's Eastern Conference finals in four games, and the tone of the night suggested the balance of power in that rivalry has not shifted.

Karl-Anthony Towns was the other half of the story. He came out flying with 14 points and four rebounds in the first quarter alone and finished with 29 points and 13 rebounds, bullying Cleveland inside from the opening minutes. OG Anunoby added 15, and Landry Shamet's back-to-back three-pointers late in the third quarter pushed the lead to 88-69, the largest of the night, quieting all but the pockets of blue and orange in the crowd.

Cleveland had its moments, mostly wearing No. 45. Donovan Mitchell scored 21 of his season-high 37 points in the fourth quarter, a furious late flurry that kept the Cavaliers honest but never truly threatened. The hosts never got closer than eight points down the stretch, and when the final buzzer sounded, the gap felt about right.

It was a strange night for the Cavaliers in other ways too. James Harden, their big summer addition, continued his poor start to the season with seven points on 2-of-9 shooting, and Cleveland was shorthanded, missing center Jarrett Allen with a knee bruise along with Jaylon Tyson and Sam Merrill. The Cavaliers, playing the second night of a back-to-back after beating Philadelphia 119-95 on Friday, looked a step behind a Knicks team that had found its rhythm.

The context matters here. New York opened the season by becoming the first defending champion in 15 years to lose its first three games, and for a while the title defence looked like it might unravel before it began. Now the Knicks have won five of their last six, they are 5-4, and the player who carried them through last spring's run — the reigning NBA Finals MVP — is doing it again. When Brunson and Towns are rolling at once, this team still looks very much like the champion it is.

Cleveland, meanwhile, drops to 5-5, and head coach Kenny Atkinson spent the week fielding jokes about his infamous "analytically" remark from last spring's series, when he claimed the Cavaliers had analytically won two of the first three games of a series they were about to lose in a sweep. On Saturday he conceded the obvious: the Knicks had dominated that series, and on this evidence, they are still the team to beat in the East.