Bring on the Cavs

Thanks to Brooklyn's loss and Philly's win, New York will head to Cleveland for Round One.

Good morning!

Are you ready for war?

🏙 Game Night 🏙

Who: Pacers

Where: Indiana

When: 7 pm

TV: MSG

Personal Injury Report presented by Weiss & Rosenbloom: As Julius Randle continues to heal, RJ Barrett will be eligible to make his return, although with New York clinching the 5th seed, who knows if he’ll play. For Indiana, they’ve officially been eliminated from postseason contention and will sit Tyrese Haliburton and Chris Duarte. Myles Turner is questionable.

Halftime: Click here to enter. Also, this will be the last halftime zoom until the playoffs begin. Hope to see everyone there!

Time for Rest? Thibs said the other day that he wouldn’t consider resting guys until everything that could be locked up was locked up. Well, things are locked up.

Does that mean we’re getting 48 minutes of DaQuan Jeffries, Trevor Keels, Jericho Sims, Evan Fournier and Deuce McBride? I doubt it, but one would figure that certain guys - ahem, Jalen Brunson, ahem - will see light minutes, if any, from here on in.

Bring on the Cavs

It ended up happening on a night when the Knicks didn’t even play, but thanks to a missed Spencer Dinwiddie corner three that ensured a Brooklyn loss, an MVP performance from Joel Embiid against Boston, and a Cavs win in Orlando, New York knows their playoff fate¹:

Round one against the Donovan Mitchell and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

If someone would have told me before the season that we’d be getting Knicks vs Cavs in April, I’d have guessed that Cleveland had a disappointing regular season which ended in a play-in berth, with New York waiting to play spoiler. Never in a million years would I have expected both of these teams to finish ahead of last season’s top seeded Heat, the greatest on-paper team of all time, the Brooklyn Nets, the “all in” Atlanta Hawks, the perpetually competitive Raptors, and a Bulls team that was first in the East as late as 60 games into last season.

But that they did. And really, even that doesn’t tell the whole story. Not close, in fact.

After decades of the West dominating the league, to the point that there were annual calls for the best 16 teams to get into the playoffs regardless of conference, this season, the East was a beast. The three best net ratings in the sport all belong to eastern conference teams, with the Bucks - arguably the title favorites - holding it down in 5th. The West, meanwhile, has been defined by consistent inconsistency from its supposed contenders and the unproven Nuggets, Grizzlies and Kings leading the pack.

Amidst this backdrop, the Knicks have not only survived, but thrived. Although they rank 8th on the season in net rating, they are closer to the 6th place Nuggets than the 9th place Suns. And since they turned their season around following a hellacious loss to the Mavs back on December 3, they are one of just five teams with a net rating of 5.0 or higher, a hair above their first round opponent:

In that time, they are one of four teams to be top 10 in both offense and defense along with the Celtics, Nuggets, and yes, those pesky Cavaliers.

The strong play of each team as they head into this matchup is one of so many reasons why this matchup should be hotly anticipated, even by fans with no dog in the fight. They are both slow as molasses, ranking in the bottom five in the NBA in pace, as I’ll explore more below. At the same time, both teams can score with the best of them, with the 5th and 7th best offenses in basketball.

Oh, and do you like close games? Well then you’re in luck. Neither of these teams ever gets blown out, with the Cavs leading the league with the fewest losses by more than 15 points and the Knicks tied for the second fewest at three. They are each small up top and big down low, with traditional centers on the floor at all times and supremely talented shot-creating guards helming their respective attacks.

Ahh yes…those guards. Of course, this series is about more than them, and there are arguments that any one of eight or nine players should be considered X-factors. We’ll get into all of that in the coming days.

But we know who this really comes down to.

One year ago, Jalen Brunson ended any doubt that he could be a lead guard on a good team when he decimated Donovan Mitchell and the Jazz, essentially putting the final nail in the coffin of that era of Utah basketball. Then, a few months later, it looked all but certain that the two would become teammates. When that didn’t happen, they merely continued their rivalry with renewed vigor.

It has all led up to this.

Neither team will come out of this smelling like roses if they lose, although the stakes should certainly be higher for the higher seed. With what the Cavs gave up to get Mitchell, and with the assets the Knicks were able to retain by not trading for him, there should be no question as to who faces more pressure.

But any New Yorker who has ever seen the back page of a tabloid knows better. If the Knicks lose, questions will be asked about why they didn’t pull off the trade last summer, at least until the next opportunity comes up to acquire a star.

That opportunity might arrive very soon, and it might just depend on how the next few weeks go. But that is a story for another day. For right now, the Knicks go into this series with one star already in tow, with another chomping at the bit to get back on the court, and perhaps the best supporting cast in the entire league backing them up.

The impossible story, one too unrealistic for Hollywood, is about to reach its dramatic conclusion.

Because this season was never going to end any other way.

Bring on the Cavs.