The Result Carries Weight
The New York Knicks hold a 2-0 lead over the San Antonio Spurs, and if Game 2 was any indication, the Finals MVP award is shaping up to be a two-man race between Karl-Anthony Towns and Jalen Brunson. That's not a sentence anyone would have written before this series started.
Towns has been the most impactful player on the floor through two games. He posted 18 points and 12 rebounds in Game 1, then followed with 21 points and 13 rebounds in Game 2. His odds have jumped to +165 at FanDuel, and it's easy to see why. He's held Victor Wembanyama to 22 shots outside the paint versus 20 inside, forcing the 7-foot-4 center into a volume of fadeaways and long jumpers that simply isn't his game. Wembanyama is shooting 40.5% from the field through two games, down from 51% over the first three rounds of the playoffs. Towns deserves the lion's share of credit for that drop.
The matchup already has enough history; the job is to keep the reading list shorter than the tension.
The Moment That Swung It
Defensively, Towns has been doing the unglamorous work that doesn't show up in highlights. He's forcing Wembanyama to catch the ball farther from the basket, moving his feet when Wemby tries to drive, and stonewalling his runs to the rim with physicality. On the other end, Towns has attacked Wembanyama from the outset—going 3 for 5 from three in Game 2—and used the aggressive pressure against him to put the ball on the floor and beat him to the basket. The Knicks are plus-25 with Towns on the floor through two games, the best mark on the team. Small-sample point differentials rarely tell an accurate story, but this one does.
Brunson, meanwhile, has been inefficient in the traditional sense. He needed 31 attempts for 30 points in Game 1 and shot 7 of 25 in Game 2. Nobody cares. In Game 1, he hit five of nine shots for 13 fourth-quarter points, including what was probably the biggest shot of the game to give New York the lead with under two minutes to play. In Game 2, he made two huge fourth-quarter buckets, added a steal, and hit the free throw that gave the Knicks a 105-104 win. His box scores look rough, but he's getting mauled by San Antonio's defenders and still making the money plays when it matters most. In Game 2 alone, he recorded five steals.
The Race Tightens
Wembanyama is putting up monster traditional numbers—55 points on 42 shots through two games—but he's been forced into shots that don't play to his strengths. He's 1 of 14 as the primary defender in Game 1. If the Spurs somehow come back, he's the obvious choice for MVP. But right now, the series looks functionally over if the Spurs lose on Monday.
Towns has been the best player in this series. Brunson has been the clutch performer. If Brunson has a couple of efficient scoring games to close this out and Towns has a quiet one, the recency bias that most voters carry might hand Brunson the award anyway. That's just how these things go.