Best of Knicks on WFAN: Reacting to the first loss in 46 days

**Evan Roberts** (0:00)
This is the first adversity we have seen since late April for the New York Knicks. As I said prior to the series, I thought they'd go up 3-1 and win in 6 If that still happens, we love it. It's not a sweep. It's okay.
And I don't feel bad for anybody that spent a whole bunch of money on that game and saw a loss, because if you were convinced that they were never going to lose a basketball game again, you were probably nuts. I almost got there, but not fully there. Good morning, Boomer. How are you?

**Chris McMonigle** (0:23)
Yeah, good morning, Jay. I'm doing great. And thanks to CBS Sports and, of course, WFAN and Steve Apriar being down here to give us an opportunity to talk about the Knick game this morning. We're supposed to have today off. And the reason we're down here is because of that golf tournament talked about four years in a row down here at Jupe Process. Everybody's gone out of their way to make sure that we could be here and we could talk about last night's game. And quite frankly, you and I were watching this game. It was a horrendous start to the game. Yeah. I don't know. The Knick players were either nervous or they were just out of sync. I mean, guys were throwing balls away.
I don't even think they had a shot at the basket like for the first three minutes of the game. I mean, everybody's running all over the place and just looked like they were completely disorganized. And then the start of the second half was horrendous. And, you know, Jalen Brunson, you know, had a good game point wise and everything. But there were moments in this game where I felt like he was a little out of control. And again, they're all over him. They are really, really trying to make him work. And you could see it and, you know, they were talking about it on the broadcast last night. And then if McHale Bridges doesn't want to get involved, seemed like he was allergic to the basketball last night, which is unfortunate because he's been a great player for the Knicks. And one of the reasons why they've won all these games is because guys like him and Landry Shammin have stepped up in certain areas of the game. But yeah, I mean, you know, spurs are a bunch of young, great young players.
They have some pride. You know, they have the background of the San Antonio history and everything else that they are playing off of right now. And I just thought it was a really ugly game from the offensive standpoint of the Knicks, even though they did score 111 points. It just didn't look like the free-flowing offense that we had seen in the previous two games.

**Evan Roberts** (2:10)
Yeah, not everybody was getting involved. The turnovers were really frustrating. And I know Mike Brown, who said, you know, prefaced it a million times by I don't complain about much.
But he said, quote, I never thought I'd see an NBA Finals game. And I saw it tonight that there'd be that much of a discrepancy in free throws. So I don't in watching this game. Yes, there is some times where it's just natural reaction to be annoyed any time that your team is called for a foul. And then there isn't a call against your team. But the Knicks to me had plenty of opportunities in this game to just take off like they have in every other win that we have seen. And it just didn't happen for them. The bigger shots went for the San Antonio Spurs. Castle with that huge three. The Knicks were missing threes. It just was, they didn't have it. I mean, for the first time since late April, they didn't have it. Now, do you want to tip your cap to the Spurs for coming into that environment down 0-2 and say, man, I mean, a young team, Garden, all the juice, all the things that we had been talking about. Fine. Yes, I will give them credit as a young team. They played better, but I mean, the Knicks played by far their worst basketball game in a long time. Now, I know they played some bad games and come back in the fourth quarter and then it erases how bad that they played, but it didn't happen this time. So now, this being a loss, to me, this was the Knicks not being themselves more than the Spurs coming into the Garden and beating them, even though I'm not going to just completely wipe away the credit for the San Antonio Spurs. But I still think they're going to win game four. I still think they're going to win the series. But it wasn't going to be perfect.