Can Wemby’s Spurs Shake Off a True Gut Punch? Plus: Adam Friedland on NYC Coming Alive, Trump at MSG, and the World Cup.

**Bill Simmons** (0:00)
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All right, we're coming to you live on Netflix between Game 2 and Game 3 of the NBA Finals. Adam Friedland coming up in a little bit. First time he's ever been on the BS Podcast. I'm excited to talk to him. I have a bunch of random reactions coming off Game 2, heading into the rest of this series, and because I'm an experienced professional who's had a podcast for over 20 years, I feel like I can do this on the fly. I wrote down a bunch of stuff. First of all, most incredible Knicks playoff win, Game 2, since LJ's four-point play. Brunson goes seven for 25 for 20 points, and they still win. They don't get a single call for 90 minutes, other than a challenge that they challenged and won the challenge to get the OG three. They still win. They blow a 14-point lead in the last six minutes of Game 2, they still win. They have Townes absolutely destroying Wemby in the first half of the game, to the point that at half time, Shaq and Kenny had to do a long miyacopa. I was right there with them. To cement his sudden arrival as one of the 12 most important guys in the league, we will talk about that a little bit later. Yet, Bridges leaving his own body and officially making everybody who's ever criticized what they gave up in that Nets trade, myself included in the last year, just because they gave up all the assets they would have needed to get Giannis. But who needs Giannis now? You're two wins away from the title. So you had this incredible Bridges game. And then you had Wemby closing with a really horrific three point airball that got lost in what happened next. A horrible two for one fall away 22 footer. The Spurs did two things in the last 40 seconds of this game that I hate. One is we got to get a two for one and you end up getting a terrible shot. I'd rather just get one awesome shot. And then the foul to give I just have always hated. And they did the foul to give which of course when Wemby fouls Brunson with 10 seconds left, you have no foul to give and suddenly he's shooting free throws. You have an all time iconic people screaming out loud as it's happening bad turnover with Wemby. Which we'll get to in a second. You've already heard people talk about it for two days. I have some additional thoughts. And then you have a wide open 18 foot miss from a 22 year old guy that was actually a really good shot.
The question is whether that's the right play and the right moment for somebody like that who's been kind of skidding backwards in the last two minutes of the game. But the castle play, throwing the ball off his back, I think was the closest we've seen in the NBA to the Chris Webber timeout play in college against North Carolina for a bunch of reasons. One, the coach is standing next to Wemby and he's doing this. He's telling him to go to push it because he doesn't want to call a timeout to set up a play. I don't know why he was so excited to have his 7 foot 7 center dribbling the ball up with 10 seconds left in a must-win game. I probably would have rethought that. There's a great angle of Wemby from the other side and he's got both of his point guards to his right. Doesn't even look at him. Looks forward. Castle, I'm torn on this because I think Castle thinks Wemby is going to take the ball down, which he's done in the past. So he's starting to put his head down and run. But I also feel like if you're a real point guard, you want the ball, you're going to come to the ball, you're ready for the ball. And Castle's, he's a guard, he's not a real point guard. If that's Fox or Harper, they're turning around, they're trying to get the ball from Wemby because they want the car keys in that moment. And it was just an absolute clusterfuck. And I kind of couldn't believe it as it was happening. It was, I think, one of the all timers for an oh no! And everybody had that reaction. There were great reactions that people captured all over the place, but when I think about you throw that play in and then how the game ended and just blowing an incredible comeback, the most damaging, non-clinching, non-injury finals of the last 50 years. So we're removing all the game sevens. We're removing stuff like Halliburton last year against OKC because that's probably number one, like losing your best guy in a game seven.