Hour 1: Knicks Loss

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No, we're not going to start with the Yankees actually winning an extra inning game on the road. We're not going to do that because this is going to be about the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs. And the Knicks lost the game at the Garden yesterday. And we have ourself a series. Now, the narrative that's out there on social media and by a lot of the pundits as well is that the Knicks got jobbed by officials. So when you look at the amount of free throws in the second half that the Spurs had to what the Knicks had, you would actually think that that was the case. I don't think that was the case. I think the Knicks got out played. And when I watched that game yesterday, I felt as if I was watching a Knick game from in the middle of the season. The things that haunted them when they didn't play as well as they should have happened yesterday. They didn't play with a Christmas. They watched and sat and admired Jalen Brunson dribbling the basketball. And if you ever want to see an empty calorie, 32 points, that's exactly what Jalen Brunson gave you yesterday. And it's not a knock on Jalen Brunson. But I'm going to round off the numbers. In the three games of the series, I believe he's taken 81 shots. 81
And the next closest Knick is Carl Anthony Towns, who's taken 39
If they're going to go back to the one man show and not move the ball around, they're going to lose. And I thought that Charles Barkley said it very well on the post game inside the NFL or NBA yesterday. It comes down to this.
The game tomorrow is incredibly big. Because if the Knicks lose tomorrow, all of a sudden the two wins that they had in San Antonio wiped away. They have lost home court advantage. So if they win tomorrow, I think it becomes a cake walk. They will either clinch it in San Antonio or in game six in New York. But if they lose tomorrow, then it becomes a best of three with two of the games in San Antonio. And you can say, well, Michael, they won the two games in San Antonio, games one and two. It's going to be a different animal. It's going to be a different animal because it looks like San Antonio might have figured something out and the Knicks are regressing or regressed for one night back to the things that gave them problems in the first three games against Atlanta. And then they decided to run the ball and the offense through Carl Anthony Towns. Yesterday, Carl Anthony Towns was a non-factor. Non-factor. He took ten shots. And I thought that San Antonio's smartest move, and we talked about it a lot yesterday on the show with Tim Legler, is that by putting Wemba Nyama on Carl Anthony Towns, Carl Anthony Towns' range from far out drew Victor Wemba Nyama out to the three-point line. And that opened up the paint for the Knicks, where they could drive the paint and get fouled. But yesterday, the paint was clogged up by Wemba Nyama. And nobody wanted to challenge him. A few did. Oji Ananobe did. I thought Oji Ananobe had the best game of any knick yesterday. But other than that, no. I think they're fearful of getting their shot blocked.
And there are some things in some sports that really make players nervous. In baseball, if you're sitting on a change and you get a fastball and you're way far behind, you look dumb. No player likes to look dumb. If you drive the lane in basketball and you get the shot viciously blocked, that's an insult to your manhood. And nobody wants that to happen to them. And the Knicks assiduously avoided going into the paint. So what the Spurs did was they put Wembe on Josh Hart. Now Josh Hart did the best that he could, but Wembe still would not come out of the paint. Josh Hart was hitting three point shots at a much higher clip than you would expect from him. He had a great first half. He had some big three point shots in the second half as well. But Wembe essentially was playing a zone. They could not get him out of the paint.