News & Blogs
Knicks Bulletin: ‘They have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’ – Posting & Toasting
Knicks Notes: Rust vs. rest, MSG impact, challenging Donovan Mitchell and James Harden – SNY
Knicks vs. Cavaliers streaming, TV info, and full Eastern Conference finals schedule – The New York Times
Knicks Eastern Conference Finals Primer: Cleveland Cavaliers – Posting & Toasting
Knicks’ conference finals ticket prices run rampant as NBA Finals pursuit continues – The New York Times
Knicks Notes: How Karl-Anthony Towns unlocked Mike Brown’s ‘equal opportunity’ approach – SNY
The Run.down Knicks vs Cavaliers R3G1 Postgame Show – The Strickland
Knicks Vs Cavs ECF Preview – Knick of Time
OVERTIME WIN IN GAME 1 😤 | Rapid Reaction – Knicks Fan TV
Knicks vs Cavaliers (ECF, Game 1) – Recap & Reaction | POSTGAME SHOW | Knicks Film School – Knicks Film School
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193 replies on “Knicks Morning News (2026.05.20)”
It’s hideously expensive and James Dolan spies on you, so it is not without a little reluctance I report that there is still no place like MSG during a great playoff game.
Well, I am not going to lie.
The Knicks went down 20 in the fourth and at about that moment my eyelids closed.
Good thing to wake up to.
And you thought those Celtics wins would be hard to top.
Still in awe of what Brunson did in the fourth quarter.
Knicks vs Cavaliers (ECF, Game 1) – Recap & Reaction | POSTGAME SHOW | Knicks Film School – Knicks Film School up above is pretty damn fun. Just wish I had 4 hours.
Lol my dog had been patiently asking to go outside for most of the 2nd half. After that 4 point play put Cleveland up 21 I threw in the towel and took him out. I missed basically the entire comeback but luckily I turned the game back on.
Wow. Without knowing the result, I watched the next morning here bc of the time difference. In – sane. Even after we charged back, I thought the whole thing would go for nought due to that asinine arm pull foul from KAT 🤬
Breen was great on the call and a late game paraphrase was something like “Donovan Mitchell was nowhere to be found in the fourth quarter and overtime.” I hope it stays this way.
Brunson is really something.
Then I read the KB game thread. Amazing.
Onward!!
I still want to understand what the hell Brown was thinking on defense by sending hard doubles all over the third quarter. It was an insane strategy.
Also hope he learned his lesson about the lineup.
My son drove to Kentucky yesterday from northern Virginia and got there in time to watch the Knicks from his hotel room. He is on a journey out to Kansas for a friend. He watched the game through until the Knicks were down by 22. His text said, I’m so mad, I’m turning the game off and going to sleep. I have to be up early in the morning.
I sent him this note: “Knicks 18-1 run, down by 5! Brunson burner!”
He responds, “I will reluctantly tune back in”
Merril’s shot goes in an out.
“holy god”
“the one time Merrill misses”
He said, “I really need to go to bed”
“Thanks for letting me know what was going on tho”
I watch ’til the end, basically silently screaming at the TV.
Then he messages me: “Knicks won”
lol
what a night
Like with Atlanta, the Knicks seem to have a different gear. This time they found it in the 4th.
Crazy team
The 5-out lineup was 44-8 last night.
I kept believing, as i always do, although most of the times we don’t comeback… but, holly cow, what a win for the ages! I hope we don’t get carried away, but this is a great team, no doubt about that! Let’s enjoy this run!!
As we all prolly suspected, our cutters to make easy baskets just weren’t there last night. This clearly frustrated KAT who did a few stumbling-giraffe-to-the-hoop moves to compensate, but we needed a different idea.
Then watching Brunson just torch Harden one on one — possession after possession (how many!?) — was like those rare dreams where everything goes right.
Brunson v the world should be used sparingly, but when you need the hero ball and you get the hero ball, it’s def great to have the hero on your team.
PS — I do think Cyber is our lucky charm. Tracking the thread with the game, it seemed every time Cyber went away from the TV to re-fill his drink or whatever, we went down another four 😉
I was half mad most of the time thinking that Brown had waited too long and that they’d run out of time. I really thought that the KAT offensive foul on Allen when OG was about to make it a 2 point game was the end of it.
That’s a wonderful idea, Rama. It’d be amazing to be in the Finals. Where are you in europe?
OG looking springy in the 4th and OT after looking like Game 7 vs Indiana for the first 3 quarters is a major relief.
can you imagine CavsBlogger right now with the absolute coaching malpractice that Atkinson pulled in that 4th quarter.
and that after I thought he was amazing for the first 3 quarters, especially the hack-a-mitch up 15+.
I don’t even care about the lack of timeouts being called, which some twitter people are all upset about (unless it’s to make a substitution). I understand dancing with the girl that brought you, but all you have to do is sub in someone for Harden who was obviously gassed and who was pretty unremarkable on offense even when he wasn’t gassed.
If you hold the Knicks to an ORtg of just like 130 for the last half of the 4Q you win that game by multiple possessions. Instead they gave up an ORtg of 175 lol.
This is not to take anything away from Brunson who is just so amazing.
And hats off to Landry Shamet who is the best vets minimum contract in the league by a country mile. Shut down all-NBA Donovan Mitchell? sure. Hit big 3’s to fuel the greatest playoff comeback in NBA history? Sure.
Speaking of Mitchell – has anyone heard anything about an injury for him? He was not moving normally later in 4Q and overtime.
For Game 2 – I don’t imagine there will be starting lineup changes but I do imagine Hart’s leash will be very short.
and man – the return of the dumb KAT fouls. Can you imagine we had lost by a single possession with his brainless fouls on Allen.
Kind of disappointed that the only Mike Breen BANG yesterday was a halfway interrupted BA… when he thought Merrill was hitting that shot.
So I’m in NYC right now for a conference. I saw a Broadway show last night but it got out by halfway through the second quarter.
Met up with a friend and fellow Knicks fan at a bar. Then watched the Knicks fall behind and we were so bummed only to watch them storm back. It was insane!
Oh the devastation on the faces of the Cavs players on the bench during the break before OT. And Atkinson. He looked like a man on death row. I agree with whoever wrote yesterday, I have no idea how do you come back from that.
No doubt. And Shamet always seems like he is running his ass off out there — Like he knows his minutes are few, so he might as well sprint “all out” on every single play. Same with Alvarado, and to some extent now with Clarkson. They were swarming everywhere in the first half to get us back that first time.
Credit too to Mikal. Quietly playing his ass off, just as advertised.
That whole sequence was the dumb KAT foul followed by an Allen tip in and a missed OG 3. Cavs up 6 with the ball with 1:30 left. I thought that was the game.
We’re gonna win this in 4 or 5. No way Cleveland recovers from this.
Kenny Atkins decided on his own that Sam Merrill should help guard Brunson after he cooked Harden. Sam Merrill.
Still can’t believe what I witnessed last night.
Thoughts:
-MSG is the best arena in the universe. By a country mile. I wouldn’t be surprised if the needle on the local seismograph quivered on every big play, most notably on Shamet’s 3 in regulation that bounced in to tie it in regulation. It took me a half hour to navigate my way to the IRT platform. I was a sweaty, panting mess.
-It was not Brown’s finest hour, but benching Hart was a critical move. Love the guy, but he was a detriment. That’s a situation where you have to think Thibs would have been too stubborn to make that move to the Deuce/Shamet counter. Deuce had nothing, but Shamet was pivotal to the comeback.
-The hack-a-Mitch thing was very deflating, especially on a night where KAT reverted to his more annoying form. The crowd was turning on Mike Brown for not subbing him out. One guy in our section was particularly vocal and since the crowd was silent, everyone heard him.
-Even though the crowd started rockin’ well before that, I didn’t get out of my seat to start screaming until Brunson hit that 3 to cut it to 5. After that, I’m not sure if I ever sat down again, nor did anyone else.
-You could tell that the ticket prices impacted the diversity of the crowd. Very corporate.
-I didn’t see a single empty seat, nor a single Cavs jersey. Nor did I hear any Cavs fans cheering when the Garden went silent in the early 4th. What a contrast with Philly and Atlanta!
“That whole sequence was the dumb KAT foul followed by an Allen tip in and a missed OG 3. Cavs up 6 with the ball with 1:30 left. I thought that was the game.”
You weren’t alone. That and the Mobley 3 were major buzzkills in that run.
It’s hilarious that they went 44-11 to close the game, Hart played one defensive possession, and was a -3.
“It’s hilarious that they went 44-11 to close the game, Hart played one defensive possession, and was a -3.”
That was when they were up 9 in OT and Brunson had 5 fouls, and Strus hit a wide-open look. Again, credit to Brown for not being Thibs and saying “I just have to have this guy on the floor.” But I have a boatload of confidence that Josh will bounce back in spades.
Wonder if the Cavs are beginning to regret trading Garland for Harden.
Bridges’ two 3’s…one at 97-90 and the other at 99-93 were big time…he really came through..
I don’t think Cleveland is deflated…they’ll be ok…assuming spida isn’t hurt…i don’t see them laying down now by any means..
One of the reasons I predicted that the Knicks would win this series relatively easily was that Kenny Atkinson has never impressed me as a coach. Does anyone think that we come back in this game if Carlisle was the Cavs’ coach?
It’s ultimately not about Josh. I thought he played well outside of the missed shots and some defensive issues. It’s just that tactically it’s not a great series for him. It happens.
Spurs/OKC will do the same thing to him if they get there.
“I thought he played well outside of the missed shots and some defensive issues.”
Well, that’s quite the qualifier! I mean, everyone else in the starting lineup was at least a plus 12, while Hart was a minus 23. Shamet was a plus 25. I know plus/minus is wonky, but in this game it seemed pretty accurate. He was a massive detriment.
One slightly encouraging thing about Josh is that prior to the start of the third he was practicing 3’s from the right corner and after missing a few they started dropping. Then when the game started, he drained one from that exact spot. I think the shot will come around. And he did make some strong moves to the basket, although he also drove into rim-protectors.
Cavs are bottling up our cutters very well. Hoping Brown has some better ideas to unlock Passing-KAT, because plan B is Jalen-Jalen-Jalen-Jalen.
What I mean is that it ultimately doesn’t matter that much if Josh individually plays well if he mucks up the offense for the rest of the team by letting Allen sit under the basket.
That works if the paint is open. It doesn’t matter if you cut and then the center is there to contest. This is a lineup issue honestly and not a KAT/cutters issue.
… so KAT should shoot threes … no?
If Allen has to cover a shooter rather than Hart, it opens so many possibilities: KAT popping for 3s, JB-KAT P&R, KAT as hub. But you need spacing for those things.
“What I mean is that it ultimately doesn’t matter that much if Josh individually plays well if he mucks up the offense for the rest of the team by letting Allen sit under the basket.”
There was a point where the Knicks were shooting 10% from 3. Many of those shots were uncontested. OG, KAT and Brunson were a combined 3-17 from 3, and no lineup shot 3’s well before the end of the 4th.
But whatever, the important thing is that we have counters. Last night, the first counter was Deuce, and he sucked. But Shamet was ready to play and didn’t miss.
Win or lose, the fact that we clawed our way back into that game speaks to our strategic depth. KAT, Hart, OG, Mitch, and Deuce all had sub-par games and yet we still had enough to overcome that.
There were so many moments during the Knicks run where it looked like it was going to be a fake comeback:
– Mobley’s 3 pointer with 3:09 left to put Cavs up 8
– KAT’s idiotic offensive foul with 2:01 left where OG had a clear lane to cut it it to 2
– Allen’s tip in with 1:51 left to put Cavs up 6
At one point I turned to my son and said “So losing by 6 or 8 is still better than getting blown out, right?”
(And btw, the crazy bounces on Shamet’s 3 were the basketball gods paying us back for Hali’s absurd heave to tie game 1 last year.)
Hart is gonna come out firing away in Game 2 and will probably hit a few 3s.
I don’t agree that they had quality looks. They had to shoot a bunch of grenades at the end of the shot clock because the offense was going nowhere. The Cavs were getting MUCH better shot quality than the Knicks.
They also never used Deuce alongside 4 shooters. If I’m not mistaken, Deuce played with Hart a bunch, and then with Clarkson. He wasn’t good, Shamet defended Mitchell better. Ultimately, the counter cannot be a player, it’s a strategy, and I’m glad Brown went to it finally, but he waited until the game was all but lost barring a historic comeback.
Italy at the moment, but was planning to head to Valencia in a week or two. Got a free place to stay. But maybe it’s time to become one of those annoying ex-pat Americans in Portugal….
One of the few actual thoughts I was able to make last night besides “OMG this is amazing!” was that in last year’s game 1 collapse, Thibs played a Deuce-Hart-OG-KAT-Mitch lineup that had actually built our seemingly insurmountable lead in that 4th quarter. He never played that lineup again in that game or the rest of the series.
When Landry Shamet hit a 3 to cut it to 17, I’m not kidding at all when I say MSG knew there was a run coming.
It’s hard to think about the Xs and Os, and really anything before the 9 minute mark or so of the 4th, after such a magical night, but we do still have to win 3 more games, and so:
-Using KAT as a hub wasn’t working nearly as well as it was during the first two series. I won’t say we should abandon it entirely, but the Cavs’ defensive vulnerabilities are much more susceptible to Brunson than KAT…as they found out the hard way in the 4th. We may have to revert to a more typical PNR heavy offense.
-Not a Mitch night. We’ll need more from him to keep this series nice and short, and of course to make the one that hopefully follows interesting. Some really uncharacteristic porousness at the rim defensively.
-Darius Garland is an imperfect player, no doubt. I would be aghast if my favorite team traded him for 2026 James Harden.
-The above would bother me much, much, much more than the possible Mikal overpayment. Mikal can be annoying in all kinds of ways, but it remains the case that the ability to hit very difficult shots is quite valuable in the NBA, and especially in the playoffs. He saved our skin last night.
In terms of adjustments, it feels good to be the team that has more options. The Cavs tried Keon Ellis and he was useless, and outside of the 3 guards off the bench they just don’t have much else to throw out there, they need to rely on Harden and Mitchell and if Harden is bad and Mitchell shies away from the moment, that’s it.
Hart was bad last night but he’s going to find ways to be useful more often than not, and well, if he doesn’t we have 4 options that can all be useful in Mitch, Deuce, Shamet and Clarkson. Last night it was Shamet, but the others all have had moments in the playoffs too.
Yeah, as I said in the thread, it was a poorly coached game by both teams. Brown was a little better, but we got a few lucky bounces, and Mitchell may have been hurt in the fourth, which is probably why Atkinson felt he needed to keep Harden in, but also why the Cavs presented little resistance. Credit to Brown for making a change when Thibs would have stuck with his plan, but he also put us in the hole with a lot of poor choices and bizarre strategies.
some amazing stats, courtesy of espn:
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48822201/new-york-knicks-cleveland-cavaliers-comeback-eastern-conference-finals-game-1-victory-key-numbers
“When Landry Shamet hit a 3 to cut it to 17, I’m not kidding at all when I say MSG knew there was a run coming.”
This is true, that was when the crowd woke up. I wasn’t buying it yet, but yeah.
“Mikal can be annoying in all kinds of ways, but it remains the case that the ability to hit very difficult shots is quite valuable in the NBA, and especially in the playoffs. He saved our skin last night.”
The recent Mikal hate (especially after game 3 vs. ATL) was way, way over the top. Sure, Leon overpayed for him, but his contract extension is far from onerous. The dude has a .687 TS% in these playoffs, and has been our most consistent defensive player. He also is available every. fucking. game. for as many minutes as you need him. And he continues to make huge plays on both ends when it counts most.
1. I’m still astonished by how poorly they played early in the game since I was expecting the opposite (other than OG needing a game ot two).
2. IMO, the Cavs were gassed late. That tough 7 game series took something out of them relative to our freshness. Still, bad coaching, especially with all those timeouts remaining.
3. I don’t think we should change the starting lineup yet, but Hart has to get a fast hook if the offense is struggling due to spacing.
4. Shamet has been about as clutch as it gets this season and better on defense than I thought. I love that guy.
5. Brunson was beating Harden at will, but many of those were NOT easy shots. He was incredible down the stretch.
6. Bridges sure picked the right time to peak on both sides of the ball. He’s been sensational so far. He’s been exceeding my hopes and expectations and I’m his biggest fan here.
7. OG looked hestitant (a little afraid to test his leg?) early in the game, but by the end he was getting aggressive again on both sides. Hopefully, his shot will sharpen back up next game or soon after.
8. I way prefer Deuce or Shamet over Clarkson even though Deuce was quiet last night.
9. Hack a Mitch is an issue, but he has to play.
10. Garland for Harden was beyond idiotic long term and maybe not so smart short term either.
11. Still a bit in shock that we didn’t just make a run and fall short. We actually won.
“I don’t agree that they had quality looks. They had to shoot a bunch of grenades at the end of the shot clock because the offense was going nowhere.”
I disagree with this. They had some grenades, as did the Cavs. They missed a bunch of good looks. They also turned down some good looks after it was clear that they lost confidence.
The Knicks kept spamming the same play over and over again and Atkinson never adjusted.
They had either Wade or Merrill guarding Brunson, and would try to hide Harden on either Bridges or OG. Whichever one Harden was guarding would come set a screen for Brunson, the Cavs defender would die on the screen, and Brunson would now be matched up in isolation with Harden. Because Shamet was in the game the Knicks would spread the floor and you had to respect all the other shooters, couldn’t send help. Since Harden has no prayer of guarding Brunson, it turned into a nightmare.
They did this every time down the floor. They got the switch they wanted a whopping nine times in the fourth quarter and overtime. If you watch the highlights it’s remarkable how many times it happens.
By the end they started sending help but it was way too late and Brunson would find the open man anyway.
We were rusty, especially OG. Cavs came in humming because they had just got done with a 7 game series. That was their shot and they blew it.
We won’t be rusty after this game.
The legend of Jalen Brunson continues…
“The Knicks kept spamming the same play over and over again and Atkinson never adjusted.”
When asked about that postgame, Atkinson defended this strategy, claiming that Harden has been one of their best defensive players in the playoffs.
That’s kind of where it is clear that he is not a great X’s and O’s coach. Harden was good against Cade because they are similar physically…big, strong, methodical players. Brunson’s quickness and footwork are an entirely different animal. That should have been pretty obvious.
OG is gonna have a monster game 2. You could tell in the OT that he was shaking off the rust and hesitancy.
I think this is spot on. They weren’t all great looks, but some were decent looks and they just couldn’t get anything to go down, and so they started attacking the rim more and ran into some excellent Evan Mobley rim protection. NYK started hesitating on 3PA and for a long stretch played into the Cavs’ strengths.
The Cavs also did us a huge favor by putting the rock in Harden’s hands instead of Mitchell’s down the stretch. Harden was awful on both ends.
I’m guessing that Spida was completely gassed, similar to the way that Cade looked completely gassed down the stretch in Game 7. I know that these are elite athletes, but sometimes the body won’t do what you tell it to do. The physical margins between being an asset and a liability are very thin…the legs don’t have to lose much to flatten out a shot or to not be able to keep someone like Brunson or Shamet from getting to their spots.
That may have been true for other Cavs as well,
Great game! Maybe I wasn’t paying attention enough yesterday, but i don’t get the Hart criticisms. The entire team was playing rusty the first 3+ quarters. Could it just be coincidence they shook off the rust when he was out? He didnt seem particularly worse than anyone else when he was out there.
It also works in our favor that the schedulers didn’t provide an extra day’s rest between games 2-3 for travel. We should be the fresher team for the duration of this series.
Hart absolutely had his Hart-ish moments and people who write off how essential he is drive me insane, but the ghosts of hesitancy-to-shoot-when-open past reared their ugly head a few times. He did attempt 5, which is high for him, but it felt like there were a number of times he passed up open looks and it affected our spacing.
There are no clear solutions other than going to Shamet, Deuce, et al. when it’s warranted and Hart hitting something closer to 2 of every 5. Even more than that would be great!
Just to be clear, I’m not disagreeing with marechal’s Hart takes, I think they are fair but somewhat overstated.
I’m a little surprised to see that Game 4 wouldn’t be during the day on the Memorial Day holiday. Also a little weird (but less so) that Game 3 on Saturday isn’t a day game.
The good news is that the schedule couldn’t possibly be any easier to remember: every odd numbered day at 8:00 p.m. Let’s aim for being done by May 25 or 27!
“Hart absolutely had his Hart-ish moments and people who write off how essential he is drive me insane, but the ghosts of hesitancy-to-shoot-when-open past reared their ugly head a few times. He did attempt 5, which is high for him, but it felt like there were a number of times he passed up open looks and it affected our spacing.”
I hated that he hit one that didn’t count because they fouled us a moment before he got the shot off. It was a nice one from the top of the key. (Come to think of it, that’s kind of where he generally shoots from anyway, isn’t it? He almost never takes baseline shots, and I can’t remember him taking any corner 3s, either. It’s top of the key 3 or drive to the basket. Works for me.)
I think OG also passed up some 3’s in this game that if he was not coming back from the layoff…he would have taken…if he starts hitting 3’s then it presents more stuff for cavs to deal with…and will open the floor…
KAT’s reversion to flailing and dumb stuff was concerning…
One funny thing that came to mind was that until the comeback, most of what Bad Pags said was looking pretty spot on!
“I think OG also passed up some 3’s in this game that if he was not coming back from the layoff…he would have taken…if he starts hitting 3’s then it presents more stuff for cavs to deal with…and will open the floor…”
Also, in the pregame pod on KFS with the Cavs’ beat guys, they pointed out that the book on OG’s lack of wiggle on drives was out. He looked terrible on all of his drives because they were waiting for him. Hopefully he adjusts.
Game 2 I think you have to go to the five out lineup early and force Cleveland to figure out how to solve the pick and roll defense problem. Down the stretch Harden was both running the Cavs offense and also guarding the Knicks’ best offensive player and it truly unfolded in a disastrous fashion.
Keep spamming that play until they figure out a counter.
I think we now have the offensive blueprint against the Cavs. They don’t have mobile wing defenders who can fight over screens, so you just put Dean Wade into the PnR until you get a Harden or Mitchell switch into bbq chicken or pass to the open shooter. The only fix I see is for them to stop playing drop, which Atkinson has been loath to do all season.
I wonder what a schmuck Mark Cuban felt like watching that game knowing before the 21-22 season he could have resigned Brunson for 55 for 4 and had a pretty fair back court of Luka and Brunson. He had already seen them do great stuff together and seen Brunson excel in a big playoff spot with Luka out.
Let’s just do it in reverse for Game 2. Run Brunson straight at ’em for the first 18 minutes, get a 20-25-point lead, and then coast…….rather than having to play catch-up. Sounds simple, and it might just work.
I’m guessing that the Cavs wil make some adjustments and continue to give us some problems in the first half-3 quarters, but will run out of gas in most cases. Spida is still capable of putting up 40+ and they are a pretty strong defensive team. They will clearly be playing more desperate going forward.
But Brown will make some adjustments as well and guys will shake of the rust and shoot better. At the end of the day when all adjustments have been made, Brown has more cards to play, while Atkinson will run out of options. Yesterday was exhibit #1 of us having counters to all of their strategies.
Knicks in 5 looking pretty good.
Let’s try to think of this in the simplest terms:
Based on the Cavs that we saw last night, can we see a path forward to them beating us in four out of six games?
Atkinson needed to bench Harden down the stretch, that’s how bad his defense was.
Cavs devolved into the Celtics’ chuck 3s offense in the 4th.
Shamet was huge in his minutes on offense and defense.
Mikal making the big plays everyone imagined when he came here. He doesn’t need to do a lot, but when he does it needs to make an impact. Last night he made an impact.
Some teams can stop Brunson. Some teams can stop KAT. Not many teams can stop both. So far this is looking like a Brunson greenlight series.
Our team ain’t perfect, but I’ll take Mike Brown over Kenny Atkinson any day of the week – and it’s hard to imagine how anyone believes a team that is dependent on James Harden can reach the Finals under any circumstances.
Long way to go but man, that really felt great. So many playoff demons exorcised last night. I also just have this deep trust in the guys (particularly because of Brunson’s play and his leadership) to find ways to win. We don’t really have anybody who seems to shrink when the lights are brightest – I thought maybe that was Mikal, but he figured it out and has been outstanding of late.
Think we’re going to the Finals!
“Based on the Cavs that we saw last night, can we see a path forward to them beating us in four out of six games?”
Only if we consistently shoot 20% from three and make constant insanely dumb plays and coaching decisions and turn the ball over a lot, as we did for three quarters last night. So no.
Looking back at close wins the next day are always alot easier and fun than when experiencing it during the actual game…
Rama, where? It would be freaking epic to meet to watch whichever potential Game it will be to seal the Knicks-to-Finals deal 🙂
(Yes I know. It would be at 2AM. WHO CARES!!!!)
To me the main issue with the Cavs approach was not so much keeping Harden on the court, but just automatically giving up the switch. OG did not have to make any effort to actually prevent the switch. It was weird. Most teams would fight like hell to prevent the match up they don’t want in that circumstance. Maybe Atkinson thought that Brunson was not really getting easy shots, which frankly is true, but it’s Brunson and at some point you need to change the coverage.
I don’t think the Knicks need to take Hart out of the starting lineup or anything like that. They can do like OKC subbing I-Hart out a couple of minutes into the game. Hart should only play when the Cavs only have a single big on the floor, in my view.
Defensively, the Knicks need to find a way to prevent Mitchell from cooking Brunson like he did in the 3rd. I think that’s why they started the silly double teaming. I’d have Brunson defend Harden one on one, I don’t think Harden will cook him as much as Mitchell did.
One last thing on the Hart/starting lineup issue. I think the Knicks could still beat the Cavs making the same lineup choices they made yesterday. I think the series would be much harder if they do that, but they are better and could still win.
They absolutely would not beat the Spurs or OKC if Wemby or I-Hart can just pack the paint while ghost screening Hart. The Spurs would do to Hart what they did to Caruso, except Hart will never shoot 14 3PAs in a game.
I can’t help but compare this game to our G1 collapse last year.
These are the kinds of things that convince me we live in a simulation. Last year we had probably less than 1 in 1,000 chance to have that kind of collapse in totality. I’ve experienced about 30 NBA seasons in my lifetime, and figure to experience maybe 30 more. In the long run, of course, everything and anything will happen. But we don’t get the long run. We get to experience a slice of it, very slowly. It seemed a rational expectation that I’d never experience anything like that again. That’s part of what led to that ineffable sense of loss — the scales felt permanently imbalanced, like I couldn’t possibly live long enough to see us end up on the other side of that kind of event.
I dismissed any possibility of a comeback when we were down 22, and I confess that I went wobbly. For a moment I was more a deformed clown than reformed. To think that we should be in the ECF G1 exactly 1 year later and be on the opposite side of a similar 1 in 1,000 collapse would be absurd. To think that we should be pulling off another late 20-point playoff comeback would be equally absurd (we now have as many of these in the last two seasons as the entire rest of the NBA does).
Well, it happened! And just as the 6-point comeback against the Sixers in 2024 G2 healed some old wounds from 1995, last night healed the fresher scars from last year. Was it quite as devastating as what Indy did to us? Maybe not exactly. We did it in more time and with shot-making not quite as insane. We also only defended our home against an underdog instead of stealing a road game against a favorite. On the other hand, the Cavs suck on the road, and they need to win at least one road game to win the series — blowing this chance to do so is a disaster.
Still, it was bloody close enough. When G1 went to OT against the Pacers I knew we had lost that game, because conceding a comeback like that is a total mental collapse. When we lost the game I likewise knew we had lost the series, because there’s no coming back from that. Well, the shoe is on the other foot. When OT came I knew we were gonna smoke them. And now that this has happened, I can’t see the Cavs winning the series. I am thus upgrading my prediction to:
Knicks in 5
[EDIT: Oops… used the wrong log in…]
Is Hubbie still alive?
I don’t know how to explain Josh Hart and I’ve given up trying to, but for everyone who thinks he can’t play in this series just remember that guy has had a lot of big games in Cleveland (remember the ’23 playoffs, and yanking Mitchell’s chain in ’24). It’s all about feels with him, and he must love the rims in that arena or something. No doubt that was bad Josh last night (it was bad KAT, too), but I have a lot of confidence he will punish that defense when we get to Cleveland, if not sooner. And it’s great to know we have Landry on standby for game 2 (I give Leon a lot of grief but I’ve always loved the Landry signing — it’s one of the shrewdest moves any GM’s made in free agency and we should be able to keep him with his EB rights).
You ever know somebody who does irritating shit over and over again then repeatedly comes back with some half assed hat-in-hand apology, then just resumes doing the same irritating shit at the first possible opportunity?
Yeah, I know some fucking asshole who is just like that. The same fake sincere apology every time, followed by the same infantile bullshit.
Fuck that guy.
“I don’t think the Knicks need to take Hart out of the starting lineup or anything like that. They can do like OKC subbing I-Hart out a couple of minutes into the game. Hart should only play when the Cavs only have a single big on the floor, in my view.”
Isn’t this a conflict, though? Because based on what you wrote the Cavs always have two bigs on the floor at the start of the game…….which means that Hart shouldn’t be in our starting lineup.
Hubert, I *love* the attempt at the new avatar. Unfortunately, all we can see is Embiid’s dumb face, and none of Mitch’s primal one.
You can avoid all the hoopla about benching Hart by removing him after a couple of minutes. You live with the two minutes of sub-optimal lineup configuration but avoid killing the vibes if that is the concern.
Man, that sounds terrible. Who do you know that does that kind of thing? What irritating shit did they do at the first opportunity?
Would you say it’s worse than someone incessantly bitching every time a poster speaks his mind about a basketball team, letting that person live rent-free inside their head instead of just going on living their life?
I think you might be right, that the switches were the actual plan, and that Atkinson believed Brunson was being forced into tough shots. Which is insane. Those shots might look tough but it’s Jalen Brunson taking them. Those shots are his bread and butter. Giving him space to operate at the top of the key, sending no help, then offering a weak James Harden contest is just suicide.
Do we know what the time was with 7:49 remaining? I’m looking for the exact time of day because it was 10:25pm when Pags stopped being Eddie Mush and finally predicted (with sincerity) that the Knicks were going to lose the series.
I told you, Pags — you have one job!
If you fail again, I will personally commission JK47 to compose a takedown song of you that hits harder than Not Like Us.
Stromboli! So probably pretty far from you – if I remember you’re in central Italy? I’m here for another 10 days, haven’t figured out where I’m going in June.
“Do we know what the time was with 7:49 remaining? I’m looking for the exact time of day because it was 10:25pm when Pags stopped being Eddie Mush and finally predicted (with sincerity) that the Knicks were going to lose the series.”
Don’t know the *exact* time, but based on my texts to GF and GF’s parents last night, it was very shortly after 10:20 p.m. (but definitely *after* that time).
I thought JK was talking about KAT…
Given both the Hack-a-Mitch situation and Hart not fitting perfectly on offense at the moment, seems an optimal time to start Mitch. Also, until late we were not winning the rebounding battle. (Or any other battle…)
Plus it would make it more likely a big could be at the rim to contest Mitchell.
Not saying I have mysterious cosmic powers or anything but looking back at the game thread, posts about us mounting a comeback begin at exactly 10:27 PM…
Yeeeesh, very far, yes. I will actually be in Palermo from June 3rd to June 8th, but I think it’s too far (but hmmm… Finals…)
“I thought JK was talking about KAT…”
lol that was harsh even by his standards!
Cavs must feel fucking horrible right now. What little spine they germinated in pistonia might have ass cracked.
I think going forward we need to make Harden beat us on offense. No more putting 2 on the ball when he has it, even if it’s Brunson. I think he already has dead legs and that’s not going to get better until after this series – we’re every other day until the end of it.
It really is crazy how analogous this is to last year’s ECFs – except last year we were the ones with very dead legs.
And Raven I totally thought JK was talking about KAT too lol
My bad — did it again with the log in
“Merrill… three pointer… BA — in and out!”
What a remarkable moment… the yin to the yang of Halliburton’s bounce.
If Merrill had hit that shot I think it actually would have been worse than anything Reggie or Tyrese ever did. So glad I don’t have to consider it.
I find Nate Duncan to be sort of insufferable but he has some interesting stuff on his twitter account sometimes – here is one of those:
https://x.com/NateDuncanNBA/status/2056983049993416732?s=20
Yeah, marechal’s comment at 10:27 p.m. indeed seemed to be the first one that had anything that was in any way positive:
“What a surprise, the 5 out lineup goes on a run.
Makes me even more angry that Brown waited until the game was out of reach.”
two thoughts on this – one, funny to see more and more the wild thought that we are all a bunch of non-player characters in some sort of matrix may be actual…
how crazy, but yeah, looks like the universe may be “intelligently” designed and coded…
two, was listening to neil degrasse tyson talking about the recent ufo disclosure stuff…
he made a point that humans and bananas share 20% of the same dna…so, he expects that aliens would appear even more drastically different than that from us…
aside from the variance of whatever planetary forces exist, not expecting a whole completely different of dna…
Don’t call it a comeback…
He did it throughout the philly series, too. It’s probably never going to get cleaned up, we just have to live with it. Like Mikal, it’s easier to deal with his shortcomings when he’s doing lots of good things.
Good god that foul on Allen, though. (In fairness I thought OG should have shot the open 3.)
Thanks to Alan I gave macri another shot and really enjoy him now. On his pod today they said something to the effect of “just have a game where you shoot 10 threes, please.” I agree wholeheartedly
what a sentence to write…sounds like freedom…
Sure, the path forward would be to play like they did for the first 40 minutes, not last the last 13.
But it will be very hard for them to do that 4 out of 6 times.
They are a “good” capable team that won 64 last year and 52 this year, so we are going to have to come with at least our B+ game to win. The Knicks were playing awfully last night until they weren’t.
And as Robert Frost famously wrote in the last line of The Road Not Taken, ” And that has made all the difference.”
I went on a media blackout after ECF Game 1 last year, and now I can’t consume enough content on last night’s game. Much prefer this world.
need one of these second spectrum people to tell me what the Cavs PPP was when Knicks put 2 on the ball handler vs not.
Feels like Brown made some actively bad decisions in terms of too much Hart when there were 2 bigs on the floor and also the ridiculous coverages he threw out there in 3Q. Not only did the Cavs do a great job finding open shooters out o the short roll but our scrambling also led to a ton of offensive rebounds for CLE.
If you just don’t do those things and assuming the game is close in the 4th, I feel extremely good about the series. The Cavs are not going to find a fountain of extra energy this series.
Honestly dude I’ll settle for OG just not getting hurt. The difference between how he looked coming back vs Jalen Williams was so extreme. A number of factors could have contributed to that, so I’m not saying anything with certainty. But the way he looked and the whole waiting right up til game time to clear him thing didn’t exactly make me comfortable.
wonder where kidd will land…hard to imagine him sitting out next season…
right now would guess the magic over the bulls…
Cuban is even more overrated that Daryl Morey.
The clippers were seriously considering not picking up Harden’s option last summer, and somehow they turned him into Garland. Unreal.
Turning Zubac & him into Garland, the 5th pick, and an unprotected 2029 is some magic.
It will be interesting to see what they can do with Kawhi. He’s been better and more available than Giannis for the last two years.
This is too simplistic.
It’s like saying just let Tyson Chandler dunk 15 times off the PR and we’ll have a great offense. There’s a reason these things are not and often cannot happen unless the opposition is both terrible and stupid.
Why not, geo? Who says all life in the universe has to based on carbon and our form of DNA?
Silicon and Germanium have the same valance as Carbon and have similar chemical properties.
If you are going to think outside the box, think outside the box!
I’m hopeful because of how he looked at the end of the game, but yeah, I agree. His shot is totally off, which might indicate that he’s not lifting enough. But he did go for that dunk in OT, so here’s hope.
He’s Jason Bourne.
+1
As Hubert mentioned he finally felt confident to let it rip at maxQ on that play. He felt it ready to hold up to a maximal leap.
Yeah, the idea that aliens will be bilaterally symmetrical bipeds just with green skin and bulging eyes has always been an insane take to me. One of my favorite old Star Trek episodes involved aliens that were half-circles of rock humping around in a cave. Of course the ship’s staff could walk around the cave breathing the atmosphere, but what can you do.
As for OG, I’m solidly in the camp that he’ll return to form Saturday. Thursday I expect him to play good defense and throw up a few more clankers. Which should be fine.
I do appreciate when aliens are truly alien in design, like Rocky from Project Hail Mary or Victor Wembanyama from the San Antonio Spurs
valid point bob…
and considering the variations on life we see here on this planet – not too crazy to think just how wild and different things can get with different “universal” forces affecting the situation…
it just seems like any spacefaring species/race would need to have some kind of similar base, just to be able to make the craft itself…
what is becoming more obvious though is the trend towards AI synths and that it may just be an evolutionary constant for most/all advanced space traveling species…
different components but similar form and “purpose”…
I guess I just have the belief that the universe itself uses the same model(s) over and over again…
love ya Bob, glad to know I’m not the only one sitting around thinking about this kind of weird and totally irrelvant to the moment kind of shit…
fascinating how we keep building these crazy machines (thinking the quantum computers and large colliders specifically) to get more answers and more questions to answer…
Agreed.
Everyone knows they come from our future. That’s why there are advanced insectoids, advanced lizard creatures, advanced tall northern European looking humanoids and humanoid looking shorter greys that like abducting humans and doing tests. They all evolved on earth, figured out how to time travel, created Wemby with advanced DNA techiques and wagered on the Spurs in game 1.
@Caitlin Cooper
9 feet away on his 3PAs!
More seriously, I am not a physics guy, but it seems to me the physics issues with traveling very long distances and being in space for a very long time disappear when you are talking about artificial intelligence and self repairing and duplicating robots or synths. They could theoretically travel for millions of years in all directions and eventually find us. Plus, I suspect our understanding of physics is somewhere around the same level as a chimp’s understanding of the triangle offense (and I’m being generous to us). What we think is impossible, may be child’s play to advanced AI.
To be a little fair to Brown, it must be hard to know which Hart is going to show up on any given night. I mean, for Chrissake, he shot .413 from three this season! Not to mention all the wonderful hustlebunny shit he does.
Of course Brown should’ve switched him out earlier… but I’m just glad he did it eventually.
It’s also crazy that none of our points during the comeback were in transition. Cap just set it up and took care of business.
And very few free throws too. Those came in OT, but not during the comeback.
We are limited by our imagination.
He also tried to dunk after he injured himself!
I think there’s a difference between healed and cleared to play. Jalen Williams looked healed. OG looked like he was playing with a level of risk that he and the medical staff have deemed acceptable.
And the whole “trust the medical staff” thing doesn’t help me much because we don’t know what their mandate is. If OG and the organization are prioritizing the ECF because “making the finals = a successful season”, then the medical team can clear him to play now with minor reinjury risk and still be great at their job.
OG looked perfectly healthy in OT.
I’m not trying to Pags I’m just worried.
On the flip side, I am not worried about Josh Hart at all. He just has these games sometimes. This actually isn’t our thermal exhaust port. We’ve been good at punishing this defense throughout the year.
(For the record, that was never the thermal exhaust port to begin with… it was opposing teams ability to target Brunson and KAT.)
my favorite stat about the Knicks hunting Harden:
–(from All-NBA Podcast twitter account)
This is better than Steph Curry shooting free throws. Just ridiculous.
Once we find an exploit we behave like zero day malware. Just absolutely fry the nervous system of the opposition with depth and flexibility. This post season has been pretty fucking cool.
On nba today just now…they flashed the factoid…in nba postseason history…teams trailing +20 pts and less than 7 minutes (whatever yhe time was) remaining in 4th qtr….were 0-663…..let that soak in…
They killed harden and Atkinson
Yes… and doing that 5 seconds after original injury didn’t pass the test. last night after the OT liftoff, he seems to have survived and he did it with confidience it wouldn’t put him at risk after a 13 day layoff and multiple full practices.
Jalen Williams had 26 days between playoff games after only playing 35 games this season. You are comparing apples to oranges.
No one is arguing that if he had an additional week, it would’t be “more ideal”, but the results on the floor last night were very encouraging. He was moving well and felt conidient enough to late it rip at full bore after 30+ minutes of play. As positive an out come as could have been imagined of of 3 practices in 13 days..
Also our skin and bones are basically a spaceship for the neurons that run the show. Our existence would probably be really fucking weird and scary to them. Like AI.
It was pretty cool, and it’s what the modern NBA is built on, but he didn’t pass to anyone, or require any screens, he just created his own space and scored, like he literally didn’t need anybody else on the court with him. Turns out there is an “I” in team, and it’s also spelled Brinson Birner, btw.
We are limited by our imagination.
i can barely comprehend what quantum computing even is or can do…
my understanding is no more linear 1’s and 0’s…360 degrees of possibilities…
imagine though when the chips get sufficiently cooled, and stuck in some kind of humanoid machine…
with what I imagine to be vastly superior capabilities in near every way to a human – imagine what that thing is going to create…
yeah man, bring back the three laws of robotics…pretty please…
By the eye test Cleveland looked like a pretty good defensive team for 3+ quarters yesterday.
In general, they’re not really a very good defensive team. They’re okay. They were 15th in the league in defensive rating during the regular season, and league average-ish across the board in the Four Factors: 15th in defensive eFG%, 11th in turnovers, 12th in defensive rebounding, 17th in defensive FT/FGA.
In the playoffs they’ve also been decent-not-great– they’re 8th out of 16 teams in defensive rating, despite playing relatively weak offensive teams in the first two rounds. Middle of the pack in the playoffs in all of the defensive Four Factors except for defensive rebounding, where they have been poor.
This is not really true though. Send him out there with Mitchell Robinson, Jordan Clarkson, Josh Hart, and Mo Diawara in the lineup surrounding him, and now all the Cavs defenders can sag off their man, pack the paint, and throw all kinds of help at Brunson. With the five out lineup on the floor, you can’t do that.
A few times the Cavs DID try to send help, and Brunson simply found the open man for a clean look from 3.
That was the point. One guy is healed, the other is cleared to play.
YMMV. I didn’t find them very encouraging.
This contest of Strus’ 3 looks very much like a man laboring to move:
https://www.nba.com/stats/events?CFID=&CFPARAMS=&GameEventID=720&GameID=0042500301&Season=2025-26&flag=1&title=Strus%2025%27%203PT%20Jump%20Shot%20(8%20PTS)%20(Merrill%202%20AST)
More seriously, I am not a physics guy, but it seems to me the physics issues with traveling very long distances and being in space for a very long time disappear when you are talking about artificial intelligence and self repairing and duplicating robots or synths. They could theoretically travel for millions of years in all directions and eventually find us.
there’s 50 year old response to the fermi paradox using this logic to make the opposite point: there are no von neumann replicators at madison square garden despite modest galactic commuting impediments and thus the inevitably of ineluctable, pervasive intelligence explosion is missing a molar somewhere. as you quietly intuited strat, as a general discussion topic it is ferociously on point for this particular moment as it is known as the hart-tipler conjecture, and can be thought of as monsignor hart cajoling us to acknowledge that honestly embracing the reality of a vast empty space may require we accept the absence of certain sacred cows from our starting assumptions.
Why it’s everyone talking about Allen Iverson? AI is the answer indeed.
I don’t really agree here. I think we have good enough evidence that the defense can work. They’ve been the 3rd best defense in the league since the Dallas game. The center-on-Hart issue remained a problem even in the best stretches of Knicks play. Again: it’s not a Hart issue, it’s more about what it does to the other players.
i am still confused about og’s condition. in the first half i felt pretty certain he was still in pretty bad shape, but in the second half it looked more like he was being extremely careful but and slowly gaining confidence rather than being as restricted as it seemed. his awkward lunge toward strus on the miscommunication with kat looks stilted, but og often looks pretty oafish when he is closing out late and trying not to foul, so it’s hard to tell.
i strongly agree with someone above who said the suddenly hard double harden 35 feet out felt like an act of self harm. they didn’t start doing this until about 4 minutes left in the third and i have absolutely no idea what catalyzed it. hopefully we can can count it among a few extremely cheap lessons we may have learned last night, which included the realization that no, kat 25K minutes in does not magically become jokic against most opponents the minute you give him the ball in the pinch post and tell him passing is fun.
If you don’t get invited to the party maybe it’s you.
yeah, that was a bit of a bummer, 5 assists and 7 turnovers…
hopefully we get a better performance tomorrow…
If you wanted to be kind to Strat, rather than forcing him to read that paragraph, just tell him to read about the Drake Equation.
Of course that play shows OG spectacular team D as that play was created by Mobley’s excellent screen on Hart which allowed a clear path for Merrill to the hoop until OG flashed out to the right side of the FT line. Sorry OG wasn’t fast enough to out run the ball on a cross court pass.
In the overtine in his 29th-34th minutes he DID manage the launching attempted dunk where he was fouled, 9 points and 3 boards in OT. And also this where i think he looked fine:
https://streamable.com/fwkql4
Look at Mobley’s splits when defended by the slow and injured OG. I thought he was better, not worse as the game got deeper.
All of which doesn’t mean he won’t explode some body part the next game, but we shall see.
IMO Using KAT as the hub of the offense didn’t work well against the Cavaliers for two reasons. One, the Cavaliers are much better at really protecting the rim than was Atlanta or Philadelphia, and the Knicks’ Cutting and passing didn’t take away this room protection. Two, Atkinson worked for Kerr in Golden State for several years and obviously knows both how offenses with a lot of Cutting work and how to defend against them. The Cavaliers seemed well prepared to defend us when KAT was running the offense.
So I watched all of Brunson’s 4th quarter buckets again, and I’m gonna say something which will probably get a lot of pushback – Harden did not do a bad job defending him. A lot of those shots were high degree of difficulty, and I’m not sure anyone could have stopped some of those crazy high off the glass circus shots Brunson hit
Not saying Harden is a great defender by any means, just that Brunson was on a massive heater and I’m not sure anyone could have stopped him last night.
https://x.com/MSG_Rocking/status/2057067577378033980?s=20
I think treating Hart like Ausur Thompson almost won them game one. They eliminated the pistons that way then we adjusted. We have options where the Pistons do not. They jammed all the lanes. Strawberry jammed em.
Reformed Pags, Proper Pags… what’s next? Crazy Pags? 😀
hey pepper, hope all is well…
simultaneously both gaudy and gauche…love it…
my friend mentioned moving to the phoenix area a while back…
with stuff like that, people don’t need to hear any negative thoughts on the situation that I might have…
so, just mentioned the excessive prolonged heat and the notion that the people living there are very different from cali folks (where she’s originally from)… basically desert rednecks…
sorry, not sorry for letting that one slip…
seattle sounds nice…any thoughts on moving to a more rural location in washington?
Oh, thank you, my friend! 🙂 It’s probably just a coincidence, but although i’m not overly supersticious, i’ll try my best to not be away from the screen. We need to do everything we can to keep the dream alive. 😉
Farfa, KBA and Rama makes Italy the largest KB community outside the US. It must be because of the pizza. 😀
Fun start
just checked the score – is it really 0 – 0 after 4 minutes…
The robot is lying to you geo, or you’re seeing hockey
hi geo…trucks like that seem dime a dozen here in az…well..not as tricked out as mitch’s.. the undercarriage neon is a nice touch…
the rednecks are counterbalanced with the part time residents now…seems like tons of people who are only here for part of the year and bolt when it starts getting hot…like about right now…downtown scottsdale seems like south beach west without the beach…
haven’t explored too much outside seattle metro…did spend some time on the san juan islands last summer…that is nice…driven south to Crystal Mountain area to ski a few times…seems a bit too rural for me…but we’ll see…gotta get boots on the ground and check it out…for now…looking to stay in the 10-15 mile radius from the core…I like the vibe there…have the buyer house inspection next week…if that goes relatively smoothly…I reckon I’ll be on my way by early July….and not looking back.
Dmar, I agree with you about Harden. Also, I don’t think the Cavs have anyone to put on Brunson who will be a lot better than Harden was. All of their choices are not great.
Dayum
Love Caruso temporarily becoming the best player in the NBA for no particular reason. He took Wemby off the dribble like it was nothing!
Castle posterized ihart
Another big factor is the CAVs play with 2 bigs that can move their feet. They can put Mobley who is tall and very long and quicker a foot than KAT so his passing vision is obstructed and KAT can’t drive around him and they elected to leave Hart open and have Allen’s shotblocking as a free safety.
Against smaller wings and glacially slow Embiid, that offense was much more viable.
The answer was to replace Hart if he isn’t making them pay for not defending him.
The game becomes way harder for the Spurs defensively when the OKC scrubs start hitting 3s.
There’s so much gravity on this court right now we might be witnessing the beginning of the singularity.
😊
Jesus, Wemby…
Are the Spurs trying to break the turnover record? So many lazy passes
OKC sphincters are gonna get pretty tight if this stays close down the stretch. Losing both home games would be brutal.
let’s go spurs…
sure glad philly didn’t have mccain out on the court against us…
Dylan Harper went to the locker room with an apparent hamstring injury, ruled out for rest of game. Ouch!
Now that Ohtani is done hitting homers and throwing shutout innings for the night I can watch the NBA game…
…oh, wait, it’s on Peacock. Nevermind. Guess I gotta watch Treinen pitch instead.
nbc donnie…
just go get some aluminum foil from the kitchen, roll it up and jam it in the back of the tv, it on free tv…
OKC playing like this is a must win – uh o
these guys fucking each other up
Nope, that’s Access Hollywood.
That was one physical game.
JDub with the hamstring injury and Ajay Mitchell with another injury? Hmmm.
Just catching up with this game. So IHart had 8 OREB but also got posterized AND pulled Castle’s hair?
Ajay looked like just a knee to the inner thigh.
Losing Harper would be a massive blow to the Spurs.
I -Hart was the MVP of this game
Castle is really good, but a turnover machine
3 hammies two for OKC and one for Spurs… need like three more for OKC before we can match depth
edit 2 mammies and a knee to the thigh
Someone won’t be happy tomorrow.
So the Knicks not only had an amazing comeback, but they also might be able to play the Spurs with Harper hurt (or the Thunder with multiple injuries)! This has just been the most fortuitous postseason ever!
watching the yanks/jays…
one of the jays outfielders wearing a bunch of dookie jewelry around his neck lays out full to try and catch a ball, which thankfully he misses, and lands really hard on the ground…
a few minutes later, walks off the field with the trainers, hand on his chest, right where all those chains and medallions were hanging…
it really felt like a live time visual life lesson happening…
I admit that I had to look up “dookie jewelry.” It didn’t sound good, and it wasn’t.
another way of saying ostentatious…
dookie just sounds way cooler doogie…
complete transparency…the whole purpose of the post was to be able to use the word dookie…
the opportunity doesn’t often present itself…
filled me with some joy to see that guy go crashing in to the grass with all that stuff around his neck dangling as he leapt…just because the occurrence involved the word – dookie…
mick the quick never played with all that shiny stuff hanging on him…
As Michael Scott likes to say, “I’m not super stitious, but I’m a little stitious.” 😉
Viva Italia. What pizza? I’m here for all the conjugation and subject/verb agreement 😉
https://x.com/MSG_Rocking/status/2057191974688428288/video/1?s=46
No one on injury report for either team, not even as “Probable.”:
Expected Lineup
PG James Harden
SG D. Mitchell
SF Dean Wade
PF Evan Mobley
C Jarrett Allen
MAY NOT PLAY
None
Expected Lineup
PG Jalen Brunson
SG Josh Hart
SF Mikal Bridges
PF OG Anunoby
C K. Towns
MAY NOT PLAY
None