Still Processing

Now that I've gotten a few hours of sleep, some more thoughts on last night.

Good morning.

No, you didn’t dream it.

I think.

(BTW, I’ve been sending out more free posts than usual, including today. I just want as many Knick fans as possible to enjoy this as I’m enjoying it. As always, if you’re a free subscriber and want to up your game, dare I say there may never be a better time to do so :-)

Still Processing

I’ve been a Knicks fan for 33 years, the last nine of which I’ve spent writing or talking about this team in some form or fashion. In all that time, I can’t ever remember waking up the morning after a game feeling like I do today.

Part of that is obviously the stakes, and this being the first NBA Finals I’ve experienced since I was a teenager, but it’s more than that.

The Knicks have not officially won anything, yet by winning the first two road games in this series, they have put themselves in the same position as 38 other teams in NBA history, and those teams have emerged victorious 33 of 38 times. Only five teams (the ‘69 Lakers, the ‘94 Rockets, the ‘04 Mavs, the ‘17 Celtics and the ‘21 Clippers) have come back to win in this scenario.

There’s a similar record of 32-5 for teams that go up 2-0 in the NBA Finals. The only five teams to come back from that deficit are the ‘69 Celtics, the ‘77 Blazers, the ‘06 Heat, the ‘16 Cavs, and a team that Mikal Bridges remembers quite well, the ‘21 Bucks.

And then finally we’ve only ever seen two teams take the first two road games of an NBA Finals: the 1993 Chicago Bulls and the 1995 Houston Rockets. Both won the title, although Charles Barkley’s Suns were a John Paxson triple away from forcing a Game 7 in their own building.

This is all to say that the Knicks have put the Spurs in a position where, were they to come back, it would serve as one of if not the most improbable postseason comebacks in league history, and for a team whose three best players have an average age of 21 no less.

Then again, the Knicks are in the midst of their own run that is already in the running for the greatest playoff stretch the NBA has ever seen. 13 straight wins, 11 by double digits, with a postseason net rating of positive 18.1. For comparison, the ‘16-17 Warriors that went 15-0 before allowing the Cavs a gentlemen’s sweep had a postseason net rating of positive 12.9. The Shaq & Kobe Lakers that went 15-1 en route to the 2001 title finished at a positive 13.4. It bears repeating: we have never before seen this level of dominance on this stage, in New York or anywhere else.

Put the two together, and we have this cognitive dissonance that the 2026 Knicks will either be known for one of the most spectacular achievements in the history of the sport or for one of the most spectacular collapses in the history of the sport, with little gray area in between.

That brings us to last night’s win, which walked the exact same tightrope. For a 30-minute stretch in the middle of the game, the Knicks outscored the Spurs by a margin of 72-46, dominating in every way a team can dominate - with their starters, with their bench, with shooting, with defense, with experience, with skill, and with a whole lot of goddamn grit. When New York went up 97-83 with a little over six minutes left, ESPN’s win probability gave them a 98.2 percent chance of winning. That wasn’t quite as high as the Knicks in Game 1 vs Indy last year or the Cavs against the Knicks in Game 1 this year, but it was pretty darn close. That was followed by several minutes of basketball that made Obsession feel like Mary Poppins, but ultimately concluded with a happy ending.

Reconciling the first 42 minutes of the game with the last six will be as much of a challenge for the Knicks over the next two days as it will be for us. We can only guess how much confidence that final stretch gave the Spurs, and how much that confidence will be offset by the disappointment of the loss combined with the challenge of going into Thunderdome on Monday night.

And then on top of all that, we have to grapple with an officiating crew that seemed to be possessed by the ghost of David Stern.

By the end of the night, I was half expecting Tony Brothers to eject and immediately suspend any Knick player who wasn’t sitting quietly on the bench with his hands folded and eyes on the floor.

Ultimately, I’m just happy that we don’t have to worry about what our emotions would have been if they lost, with an internal tug of war between anger over the egregiously poor and borderline disgraceful officiating and disappointment over being so close to what now feels like a commanding lead. Still, sitting here almost 12 hours after the game end, I’m fucking pissed. Pissed.

I didn’t know my ass from my elbow in 1994, but I distinctly remember my dad explaining to me how the league was trying to litigate Riley-ball out of the NBA and that’s why the Rockets received such a favorable whistle. Fast forward 32 years, and suddenly the hand checking that had the refs blowing their whistle in the ‘94 Finals - hand checking that was subsequently made illegal later on in the goddamn nineties - came back like baggy jeans in Game 2.

Between that, needing to use a challenge to get the foul call on OG, the Fox double-dibble / offensive foul that wasn’t called, the ridiculous third and fourth fouls on KAT, the Mitch tech, the non-tech on Fox, and the phantom Deuce backcourt violation, how could anyone watch that game and think the fix wasn’t in? Shit, you had Spurs fans calling out the refs for their one-sided calling of the game:

And we wonder why Knick fans feel like we can’t have nice things.

Whatever. I’m going to try hard not to think too much more about that over the next few days, right up until Zach Zarba is announced as the head ref for Game 3. At this point, I’d have more respect for Adam Silver if he named Tim Donaghy the lead official for Monday night.

Instead of all that, I’m going to focus on happier thoughts. In no particular order (and I’ll get into the film on some of this stuff for Monday, as well as a look at what went wrong down the stretch):

• The most ginormous of shout outs to the no-Brunson/no-KAT lineup that completely flipped momentum in the 3rd quarter. The five-man unit of Bridges, Shamet, Robinson, Alvarado and McBride outscored San Antonio 11-6 in 5:04. Spectacular stuff.

• Speaking of which, F*ck ‘dem Picks.

• Karl-Anthony Towns is the halfway MVP of the 2026 Finals and MVP of the 2026 postseason. No disrespect to Jalen Brunson, but this one isn’t close for me. His stretch at the start of second quarter might be the best two-way ball I’ve ever seen from the big man.

• Kudos to Mitchell Robinson. Not only did he guard Wemby on the last two misses, but he went 3-of-6 from the line in a game where very point mattered.

• Landry Shamet had two incredibly defensive plays - one where he channeled Roy Hibbert and went vertical in the lane, and the second when he bothered Wemby enough to force a miss at the rim. He immediately followed that up with a triple to end a 7-0 Spurs run early in the fourth and swipe momentum back for the Knicks. Huge, huge swing in the game.

• It wasn’t Jalen Brunson’s best - understatement of the year - but the shot he had to tie the game may go down as one of the biggest in finals history, and it came 48 hours after another one of the greatest shots in finals history. The guy just finds a way.

• And finally, nirvana:

See everyone on Monday. Enjoy the weekend.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”