Jalen Brunson is expected to keep the ball in his hands and fire away again in Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday, with the Knicks guard projected to top 25 shot attempts. Through three games, he has already taken 81 shots and scored at least 30 points twice, including a 30-point night in Game 3 at Madison Square Garden.
That volume is the reason Brunson is drawing attention in Wednesday’s betting slate. He has reached at least 25 shot attempts 17 times this season, and in those games he averaged 34.1 points. Four of his postseason performances above 30 points came at home, which helps explain why the matchup is built around his scoring ceiling now that the series shifts back into the spotlight.
The issue is that the efficiency has not matched the workload. Brunson is shooting 37 percent against the Spurs defense, a rate that leaves room for concern even as the shot count keeps climbing. He has still found ways to clear 30 points in five postseason games, but the path to another big night has been far less clean than the raw totals suggest.
That friction is what makes the projection interesting. Kirien Sprecher said he expects a similar trend with Brunson, who should let it fly 25-plus times in Game 4 and is due for some positive regression. The logic behind the pick is simple: the attempts have been there, the home scoring has traveled, and the current shooting rate looks low enough to invite a bounce-back if the volume stays intact.
Brunson is not the only player being tracked closely. Devin Vassell has gone over his number in each of the last two games, but he took only four three-point attempts in Game 3 after taking at least six in 13 of the last 16 games dating back to Game 1 of the Spurs’ second-round series against Minnesota. For Wednesday, the sharper question is whether Brunson turns another heavy shot night into a result that matches the expectation attached to him, or whether the 37 percent clip keeps the pressure on one of the biggest workloads on the slate.
