Loading summary
Transcript143 lines
- [00:00]
A
This episode is brought to you by new era the 90s weren't just a decade, they were a moment. And now it's back. Introducing the new era NBA Hardwood Classics 90s edition. Bringing back the golden era of basketball with iconic teams like the Bulls, the Rockets, the spurs, the Suns, the Pistons. Yeah, that's the 90s. That could be the teal horse Pistons. The Hornets are the classic 90s team. The original teal stuff, the Hornet buzzing around any old school Bulls, warriors. That's the kind of stuff that I love. That's kind of NBA Jam kind of stuff. That's what we're talking about. Plus 90s all star games caps complete with host team side patches for that authentic throwback feel. Available in a wide range of fitted and adjustable styles. Visit neweracap.comringer to shop now and use the one time code Ringer for 20% off your first order.
- [00:48]
B
This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast reliable Internet means everything for your business and even this podcast that that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with Internet, advanced wi fi, phone, TV, mobile services plus 24. 7 US based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum
- [01:09]
A
business so visit spectrum.com business to learn.
- [01:12]
B
More restrictions apply Services not available in all areas.
- [01:23]
A
Coming up on a special Sunday night edition of the Zach Low show, the New York Knicks are NBA champions for the first time in 53 years. Every champion deserves a moment of celebration before we move on to the off season.
- [01:40]
C
Everyone.
- [01:40]
A
I do it every year in various ways. This is moment number one for the Knicks. I did Bill's pod last night. I just, I had more things to say, more emotions to share, more people to talk to. Sean Fennesee, lifelong long suffering Knicks fan is here to talk about how he experienced the Knicks championship from afar. Some frozen moments from he and I that we will all try to remember from this incredible, anomalous weird run. And then Fred Katz, who was there for all of it including in San Antonio for the clinching game, just talks about the sights, the sounds of a team spraying champagne, drinking tequila, celebrating a championship, hugging family members, plays from he'll remember forever Jalen Brunson's place in Knicks history, the OG Anunoby tippin as one of the most consequential final swinging plays in the history of basketball. Just all things Knicks title run, a little bit of off season talk sprinkled in Giannis in particular and dear and Fox in particular and Spurs. Future spurs are going to be fine. We talk about all of that that's coming up on the Zach Lowe Show. Welcome to a Sunday edition of the Zach Lowe Show. We don't normally record on Sundays, but we make exceptions for NBA championships. And one thing we do on this show is we pause every year and we luxuriate no matter who wins, no matter what the circumstances, before we pivot to Giannis and Chet Holmgren talk and all this stuff everyone wants to do. We sit with the NBA championship because it is so hard to win. It is such a monumental accomplishment. It is. The point of all the other hundreds of podcasts we do about trades and free agency signings in the draft is to get to the point that the New York Knicks just got to capping off a historic, anomalous, almost insane 163 playoff run with the greatest playoff point differential in the entire history of the NBA. For a team that won the championship for the first time in 53 years, the new York Knicks sit atop the basketball world. Sean Fenasey, you have waited a long, long time. You have moved to the west coast where you must have been feeling an enormous amount of FOMO watching the city explode last night. How are you feeling? How did you watch the game? What have you been doing for the last 24 hours?
- [04:17]
C
Zach, thank you for having me here. This is very special. I never, ever, ever thought that I would see this moment. I am beyond myself and truly having the best 12 hours I've had that I can possibly remember in my life. I'll tell you how I watched the game. I watched the game the exact same way. I watched every single game in this series and every single game in the previous series, which was seated on my couch and then occasionally deciding to make the decision to move to my bedroom. And I've watched most of these games with my five year old daughter. This is by far the latest she's ever stayed up in her life. And I watched every single game through gritted teeth, mostly frustrated and scared. And the reason for that is not because I didn't believe in this team or love this team and love these players. It's because I have 43 years of previous Knicks experience to measure them against. And the franchise historically always hurt me. And I feel like a changed man. I feel like a new person. I actually think something has changed inside me because of all the things you just described. The point differential, the record over the last six, seven weeks of basketball, the way that they won, the way that they comported themselves on and off the court throughout this entire stretch, the way that Brunson instantaneously ascended to the rarest of error for New York athletes. I did feel fomo, and yet I'm really happy that I didn't freak out and decide to fly to New York or something and just ruin whatever mojo is going. I'm as superstitious as the next guy. And so even though I was just with my family last night, I also was with all my friends on the Internet for like 14 straight hours. I stayed up till 3 o' clock in the morning just listening to podcasts, looking at tweets, reading recaps, just, you know, absolutely reveling in everything that I never thought was going to happen. So I'm in the best state that you've ever found me.
- [06:17]
A
Zach Lowe Wemby misses a 3 with, like 3 seconds left. Rebound ricochets. It's officially over after OGN and Obi hits a free throw to put him up for that three misses. When that three misses, you could hear the crowd pop in San Antonio. Like, I don't know what percentage it was. I had. I had friends at the game who estimated it was 40, 50%. It was loud, and it was loud every time the Knicks did anything good. What does Sean Fennesy do at the moment that that three hits off the rim and, you know, it's actually over? I can exhale.
- [06:47]
C
It was the one moment throughout this entire stretch where I needed to just place my daughter to the side. She was sitting on my lap. She had picked up a Brunson, Brunson, Brunson chant. And I needed to just get up and just wander around the room for a minute and try to catch my breath. It was very, very similar to game four. Game four was an absolute. It was like a three hour surgery. I felt like things were being taken out of me actively throughout that game. First in the first half because of how painful it was, and in the second half because I felt like I was being rebuilt in real time. And this game had the exact same feeling at the end of the game where something left my body. Maybe it was the demons that have been haunting us for so long. Maybe it was something else. I don't know. But I felt transformed and just wandered around the bed for about three minutes, My wife looking at me as though I were some sort of ghost. And then I picked up my daughter and I just pointed to the team and I just said, When I was four years old in 1986, my annual new York Mets won the World Series. And I said, I don't remember that happening. I know that I saw it, but I have no memory of that moment. And My daughter, who's 4 years and 10 months old, I said to her, just watch this and try to remember this, because there's no guarantee that this will ever happen again. And you really have to revel in this. And this is the sort. This made her a Knicks fan for life. And if it didn't, then we're gonna have big problems. But to watch her get so invested in this and to do it with me and to have that moment together was super special. Do I wish I was screaming like a maniac on the streets of Manhattan? I do, I do. I would have had the time of my life last night doing that. But I also wouldn't have traded it for the experience that I had.
- [08:42]
A
First of all, your description of the clenched teeth. I just don't think a five game series can ever be better than this. It's got to be the greatest five game series in the history of basketball anyway. I mean, every game it feels like I was only at three of the five games. One in San Antonio and three and four in New York, which really were the games to be at most of all for various reasons. And I feel like the series has been going on for five weeks because every game was just this, like just white knuckle wall to wall. Which is why I chuckled a little bit when Wemby after the game said, we absolutely dominated most of the series. Most is the wrong word. Victor Wembanyama, you dominated parts of the series, parts of every game. The problem that you had is that the Knicks then dominated other parts of every game. And where that all netted out was four extremely close games that came down to the wire. Five extremely close games that came down to the wire, and you won one of them. So I don't like, I understand that you say things in the heat of the moment and whatever, but absolutely dominated most of the series just isn't true. And it was just like, I live surrounded by Knicks fans in Connecticut. My entire life for the last month has been answering questions about what the game was like to be at. What's going on? Are they actually going to do this? Hearing people's hot takes on the game, The Knicks, Wembanyama, I told you earlier today, I was in a public place trying to take a little outdoor snooze for 15 minutes and I just overheard this woman say that Victor Wemboma seems like a really obnoxious guy. And I'm like, okay, I guess this is just going to be another two hours. Um, it's Just been absolutely all consuming and it was just the tension of every game was unbelievable. And some of these big moments will, will live forever. And, and you mentioned game four. I was at the game, I was watching it happen brick by brick by brick. And I don't mean that to facetiously about the Spurs. I just mean the, the, the, the, the makeup of a comeback slash collapse like that. And it was like an out of body experience. I was up on the bridge of msg, the very top with a great view of all the action and it's happening and you realize it's happening like okay, it's 21, it's 18, it's 15, it's 13. And it was just like. But is it really happening? What's happening? Is this actually going to happen? And then just the combination of Hart missing the layup, Wembanyama missing the free throws, Castle get putting the spurs back ahead. Just the, the swings of emotions. And I watched the Anunoby tip it. I almost never do this. I stood up in my seat because there, there's an elevation behind us so I'm not in anyone's way. And I just had my hands on my head like this, just. And I don't care who wins. It's just so excruciating. And Brunson misses that shot. And I've re. How many times you rewatch it? Have you hit a hundred times yet?
- [11:54]
C
Well over, well over there. There are multiple plays in the last three games that I've watched over 50
- [12:00]
A
times and Anunobi's wide open. And the thing that stands out in rewatching the play, which I didn't really download in real time with my hands on my head and my mouth agape, is he's calling for the ball. He wants the ball. He's open. Because in a decision that has not gotten enough scrutiny and may never get enough scrutiny, the spurs decided that the greatest defensive player on the planet needed help against a point guard that he's a foot and a half taller than. With 4 seconds left and no time for that point guard to really do anything. And Anunoby calls for the ball. He's got his hands up and as soon as you realize he's not getting it, he rushes to the rim with the urgency of someone who thinks I will die to win this game. I will do whatever it takes to win this game. And he goes up and gets it. And I just stood there like this until the game ended. And then after the game ended, as MSG became a karaoke bar for 30 minutes and nobody left and nobody moved. That game alone was a movie, a marathon, whatever you want to, whatever you want to say. And all these games were incredibly intense. It's just, it's felt like a 14 game series because it's been so good.
- [13:11]
C
It's. As a, as a fan, as a die hard fan, it's felt even longer than that this has felt. And especially because the previous five or six weeks of playoff basketball had not felt like that. I mean, they just so thoroughly dismantled the two previous teams that these games being so intensive felt so brutal. And I just have very little experience with this as a fan. You know, I watched the Mets in 15, I watched the Subway series, I watched the Knicks in 99 and, and 94. And I just don't have a ton of championship experience. And long series, not single game elimination series are historically painful for teams. I cannot imagine what it must be to be a Spurs fan right now. I know they have five titles since 2000, but that was nightmarish the way that the same script went over and over again. I want to say a couple things about what you just described. One, I didn't have any feeling for what was happening in that moment at the end of game four. I didn't see OG calling for the ball. I didn't see the fact that Brunson took what was ultimately not a very good shot, but was not such a dissimilar shot that he hit in Wemby's face about two minutes earlier in the game. I think the fact that he hit that shot in that game, maybe that encouraged Wemby to try to, like he consistently would make mistakes in an effort to make up for a mistake that he had made previously in a game. I felt like I watched him do that defensively a lot. But the thing that I wanted to ask you about that has been on my mind and I have been texting Bill Simmons this for, for a week now is, and I don't, I don't know if a single reporter has asked either Mitch Johnson or Mike Brown about this, but I feel like three games ago after game two, the Knicks very clearly realized that the spurs had a game plan that they were not going to move away from, which was they were going to play full effort from the first second of every game and that the team was not well conditioned enough to make it to the fourth quarter. It's true for Wemby, but I think it's also pretty definitively true for Castle, Visell and Fox and those guys. If you watch their defensive effort and the shots that they took in the fourth quarters of the last four games, they looked gassed. And in those games. And you described Wemby trying to come out on Brunson to defend that play. When he turns his back to go towards the basket after, while OG is mid flight, he's not even leaving his feet. He is routinely not leaving his feet in the fourth quarter. And so what I'm wondering about, and you being the elite analyst that you
- [15:43]
A
are,
- [15:45]
C
was that a strategy that the Knicks had deployed that actually falling down so brutally in the first quarter of every single game? So since they started pressing in game two, were they playing possum in some way knowing that they could get back into the game offensively in the second half? Because it was the same script every single game.
- [16:05]
A
So my buddy Matt asked me that exact question three hours ago because Brunson had the quote after the game, like, I guess we don't really start playing until 9 o'. Clock. And he said, why do you think that this happened over? He didn't say playing possum, but he was just curious. And I said probably part of it is just random. Like the Knicks missed some random shots, the spurs made some random shots. But I do think part of it is the spurs just come out in a gear defensively that when they hit it, they're really hard to score. Like when he had four blocks and it felt like I barely sat down to start the game and he had four blocks and for whatever reason they just couldn't sustain that gear as the game went on. And the Knicks, they don't turn the ball over, they don't make a lot of mistakes. They are a very good puzzle solving team and they solved it. I said with Bill last night, their offensive rating, people are going to look at the stats in five years, like 111 points per 100 possessions, that's like dead last. In the regular season they had a horrible offensive series. They won because of their defense, because of the spurs malfunctioning on offense. And I will always say, like, look man, that offensive number looks bad. They're facing an insanely good defensive team, top two in the number two, I think in the regular season, the best defensive player in the league with time to game to do one thing which is think about how to stop your team with a refereeing regime that has decided, with the exception of Karl Anthony Towns, we're just going to let everyone beat the shit out of each other the entire game. And I don't really care what the numbers are The Knicks had a good enough offensive series, and that's all they needed to do to win the Finals, and that's what happened. But I really do think the spurs came out shot out of a cannon and couldn't quite sustain that level of intensity. And I took a lot of shit from spurs fans before the series when I said, I think the Knicks are deeper than the Spurs. And, like, neither bench acquitted themselves, like, super well. The Knicks had no bench points for, like, the entire first three quarters of the game, but, like, Carter Bryant kind of couldn't play in the series. Harrison Barnes didn't end up playing much at all, and the series got played out of it. Cornette was played to the fringes of the series by the end, like, other than Harper. And Keldon Johnson was like a bit player in a lot of these games, too. They just didn't have guys that they trusted to play big minutes. And I think that fatigue was. And Wemby has never played minutes like this ever. And, yeah, you had two days of rest between games, you know, four and five and all that, but he's. He's being asked to do so much and he runs the floor so hard in both directions. And a stat that I just apropos of this. In the first half of last night's game, I kept writing in my notes, he's not rolling to the rim. He's not rolling to the rim. He rolled to the rim on only nine screens, according to Genius IQ tracking data in the first half and 17 or 18, I think, in the second half. Someone clearly said to him in the locker room, like, you, I know, I know it's hard. I know that you're tired. You just got to summon everything you've got. Because when you roll to the basket, good things happen to our offense, and when you don't, we don't really have a lot of levers that we can pull against this team. And I absolutely think that fatigue was a factor, more so for the spurs and maybe the Knicks. And there's one play that I want to talk about later with you where I think that happened, but it was just bizarre how it's 31:15 in the second quarter of the game last night and two of the Knicks 15 points to that point. We're going to talk about sort of frozen moments that we will always try to remember from these. This game and these playoffs. One of them, two of those 15 points came on a pretty blatant ogn nobe double dribble that the world will forget about. In my notes And Victor Wembanyama will never forget about because everyone was like, wait, what just happened?
- [19:35]
C
He was baffled.
- [19:37]
A
And 31:15. I'm sitting there watching the game like it's my, I was acting like in my, in my, my heartbeat, my pulse was like, it's zero, zero. Like I know what's going to happen and it's going to be close at the end.
- [19:47]
C
Yeah, I think there were a number of completely bizarre plays in this game. And it had that incredible rock fight feeling. I, I, I just, I, I was noticing this throughout the game. This isn't a frozen moment, but I, I believe Wemby went to the bench five different times yesterday, including late in
- [20:06]
A
the game when I, they took him out. And Brunson immediately was like, I'm going to the rim.
- [20:11]
C
Rim's here. It was four and a half minutes. I think it was a six point game, maybe a four point game at that point. And he brought Cornette in and as soon as he did that, I was starting to feel this before this, but as soon as he did that, I was like, it's over. It's over if he can't, if he is so gassed that he can't stay on the floor right now. And some of it, it felt like in the third quarter it was a little bit of Mitch Johnson overcorrecting for the criticism that he got after letting WEMBY play 44 minutes in game four. And I understood that. But you could tell at the end of the first quarter when Wembanyama was as dominant, I would say, as we've ever seen a big man, at least in my life, watching the sport, the way that he protected the rim and was so clearly in the heads of the Knicks and they actually made an effort to go to the basket against him in the first quarter. But I do think there was something, and maybe it wasn't a coached idea, but there was a mentality amongst the team that was like, we're going to make him work. We're going to make him work from second one. If Castle is going to d me up 94ft, then we're going to go to the basket and we're going to try to tire him out. And by the time you get into the third and fourth quarter of this game, you can see him just not elevating. It's the third game in a row where he took a ton of jump shots in the fourth quarter, and some of them were good shots and some of them were not, and some of them he made and some of Them he missed. But as soon as you see the fact, I don't know if he's asking to come out of the game, I don't know what the decision making is. But with four and a half minutes to go in a, in an elimination game on your home floor, for him to come off the floor, I was like, is this. Did they just hand this to us? This is un. Because you knew exactly what Brunson was going to do. Because it was the same thing that he's done in every single minute in which Wembanyama was not on the floor, which is he just attacked. And his shot making last night and his feel for the moment and every touch was unreal. It was Pantheon level stuff. He was not that through the entire series. But last night there was never a.
- [21:56]
B
Never.
- [21:57]
C
There was not a scintilla of doubt that he wasn't going to be in control of the game. So I don't. I'm kind of fascinated by it with a little bit of distance as a, you know, set aside euphoric fandom for a second, I couldn't help but noticing the rhythms of the team. And even Harper, who is a magnificent player and terrifying. He even seemed to just be out of gas. He missed two free throws. He missed that layup at the basket in the, in the, at the end of the fourth quarter. Those two shots were shots that he was, you know, he was hitting those shots in OG's face in game three. Like there was just. They had just kind of run out of energy. I thought Castle was played really lousy and I thought Hart and Bridges had him in a straight jacket all game five. So I don't. It was just one of those things where I was like, is this just a much better condition team? They didn't have to play two seven game series. They did not have to play OKC to the limit. But even still, I'm like. And you know, Bridges famously is a. Is a freak when it comes to conditioning. Hart is a freak when it comes to conditioning. These guys can play 48 every night. But that to me, the decision making of the Spurs. Brunson's just fearlessness in any situation. OG's tip in and something about the togetherness of the team, the fact that they never talked shit, they never took individual credit for things. They just. I'm obsessed with watching these Brunson interviews. Every Brunson interview is just unbelievable to me. It's not just because it's heartfelt, but he just is deflecting all praise, all praise. He's sitting next to his dad and they're both like, yeah, we didn't really see this as possible, but we talked about it and we hoped it could happen. He's the NBA champion, NBA Finals mvp. And he's like, I definitely didn't see this.
- [23:41]
A
So, okay, number one, rest versus rust. I'm always taking rest every time in the playoffs. I was telling everyone before game one, I think the Knicks will play well tonight. I'm not worried about the layoff. I know they looked rusty in Game 1 against Cleveland, which feels like nine months ago, that the Landry Shambh shot hit the rim and went up and fell in. I just am not. I just would rather be rested. I just don't want the wear and tear. They definitely made a conscious decision. We are going to make Wembanyama move on defense. We're going to go out of our way to try to drag him up, up the floor in the pick and roll when we can and when we can't. I know one of the emphases they had was if he's hanging around the baseline, we want our corner, our corner shooters to drive at him, to engage him and make him guard a drive, close out, rotate to another person off. We just want him moving around all the time. You mentioned his defense at the beginning of game one. Maybe this, maybe the like most courageous slash, saddest moment of the NBA Finals was Landry Shamit putting his head down and being like, I'm going for it. I'm going to give it a shot. Wemby. And it's just like, I don't like, I think Landry Shambit just disappeared into like, into the time space continuum somewhere, like in a black hole. Okay, let's go through. Well, before we get to the other frozen place, I just don't think enough can be made of the Anunobi tippin. It's the greatest play in the history of the Knicks, with apologies to about 10 other people who have made 10 iconic plays. Are you pleased as a Mets fan that it's become known as the OMG tippin? Do you get a little bit of a kick out of that?
- [25:21]
C
I am. I have a screenshot of the New York Post cover now in my photos forever. I mean, it's a perfect nickname for an indelible moment. And I agree with you. I don't think you can overstay. Now. I will say I think I heard Bill say this last night when you guys were talking too. But I do think that Towns would have just dunked the missed putback too, because he's standing right behind him. And also not being boxed out. Extraordinary to me that, I mean, that's another thing that there's just something about the weird grittiness of New York basketball where it's like box out is the thing that you hear screamed at you by your father who's your coach your whole life. And you know, the Knicks are just a great box out team. This is the team of Mitchell Robinson and Josh Hart. They just box the fuck out on every rebound and it's amazing watching them and to see two different guys be in position for that at the most important moment of the game. And it felt once again like youthful indiscretion on the part of the Spurs.
- [26:15]
A
Let's, let's, let's talk about. One of my frozen moments was going to be that Harper mislay up at the end of the game because I want to go through the end, the end game of the Knicks actually winning the championship. And so with like 37 seconds left, I mean, this is what I wrote in my notes. Jalen Brunson makes one of the single best passes of his entire career. A wraparound pass that skips two Knicks in like the rotation order and hits Hart at the top of the key. I mean that is, that's the championship in his hands. It's, it's not the shooter you necessarily want, but it's a guy who's made some big shots for the Knicks. It's the championship in his hands. The level of tension in that moment as that shot went up, I cannot overstate. Like my eyes were bugging out watching the flight of the ball. It misses and Harper goes coast to coast and all of New York City, this is a 20 year old kid going one on whatever the end of an elimination game of the finals. Reckless, maybe all of New York, correct me if I'm wrong, all of New York City was probably like, this fucking guy is terrifying. I'd rather have it be pretty much anyone else on the Spurs.
- [27:31]
C
He was the only guy with any juice in the game at that point too. I mean there were not, there was not a single Spur who was making any meaningful offensive impact in that quarter or even in the third quarter. So yeah, I thought for sure it was going in. I think it was 27 seconds when he took that shot.
- [27:44]
A
So Anunoby is tracking back and he sees Vassell on the right wing and there's a moment where it looks like he might veer that way as Harper's dribbling up the middle. But he also sees Bridges sprinting his ass back and is probably going to catch Vassell or at least disrupt the passing angle and kind of pivots his body back to get in front of Harper. And if you freeze it at the summit, his hand is just like just almost on the ball.
- [28:15]
C
Yes.
- [28:15]
A
But he's falling backwards a little bit and he doesn't have as much elevation because he's backpedaling. But he does just enough to disrupt that shot and Harper leaves it short at the rim. Hart then rebounds the ball with 28.3 seconds left. Exactly 28.3. Spurs down two. 4.4 to 5 seconds is like the no one knows what to do segment of time. Do we foul or do we play for the stop? I would err on the side of fouling. Dispers apparently didn't even think about it. They foul and then the free throw thing starts. Castle has the put back to make it 92, 90. And then the other frozen moment is they wait seven and a half seconds to foul Mikhail Bridges at the end of the game. And I like they were trying for a turnover. They basically trapped Brunson in a rugby scrum at half court and were mauling him and there was no call. So they almost got the turnover. But that amount of elapsed time I think ended up biting them in the ass at the end of the game where they just didn't have any time to do anything.
- [29:18]
C
Down four in that moment, the take foul that they had ON HART At 27 or 28 seconds, I was actually screaming pass the ball to Brunson. Pass the ball to Brunson. When Hart grabbed the rebound, as soon as he grabbed the rebound. Because I actually, I know enough to not want Josh Hart on the line in that moment. I love Josh Hart. He's a legend forever. He should also have a statue like he is a beloved New York Knick. But that's not the player in that rost on that lineup that you want at the line. In fact, there were a number of players who you didn't want at the line because the Knicks missed a lot of free throws in the, in the fourth quarter of this game. But I was desperate that he would look for an outlet pass. But he didn't. And they fouled. Right. I think Fox fouled him right away.
- [29:53]
A
So it was the right play. Cause you just can't, you can't risk the Knicks milking the whole clock and then a long rebound at a deflection and the game is over.
- [30:02]
C
Yeah, the, the, the other foul that you're talking about where they burned clock off. I couldn't understand why. I don't remember who it was who made it with the ball up or maybe, maybe it was Brunson the whole time who made it up around the sideline and then went around to half court. And then he, you know, he's just clearly being fouled by two different players as he's approaching the half court line. And they didn't call that foul and it was really weird. And maybe it was because it seemed like they were trying to make a basketball play and not intentionally fouling him. And then there was obviously an intentional foul on Bridges and Bridges, who's a good free throw shooter. But I thought the broadcast was really good about this where they were just like this guy has taken so few free throws in this series and has been so not at the center of the offensive action of the series. It's a tough spot to be in as a free throw shooter. And he missed one of two. And when he missed one of two, I was like, well, this is not over. Like there's just a. There was just a not overness to this entire thing. And I've heard people say this the, you know, this is the franchise of the LJ four point play. So just being up four even with eight seconds left doesn't mean anything to us. It's like we've seen teams come back from this in bizarre ways. And this has been. We don't have to talk about this too much, Zach, but a bizarrely officiated five game series. Bizarrely. And whether you want to say it was in one direction or another, the number of missed calls, the regularity with which guys were being pummeled in ways that would never be allowed in a regular season game. And then just the technical foul strangeness. I was just like, everything's on the table here until it's 000 on the clock. This is not over. So I was never feeling like, okay, we're completely good no matter what happens.
- [31:40]
A
Let's take a quick break, talk a little bit about some other big picture stuff including the what if of a Game 6 the Zach Lowe show is brought to you by FanDuel. Another NBA season is in the books. But the fun doesn't have to stop there. This MLB season, FanDuel is giving you a chance to call your shot with daily dingers. Just make your free pick on who's hitting a home run and if you're right, you'll get a profit boost to use on your next Bet head to FanDuel.com Low to opt in and make your daily dingers pick, play ball and swing for the fences on FanDuel, an official partner of the MLB 21 or over in select states or 18 and over in D.C. kentucky or Wyoming. No purchase necessary. Opt in Required bonus issued is non withdrawable Profit boost Tokens Restrictions apply including any token expiration and max wager amount. See terms@sportsbook.fanduel.com gambling problem call 1-800-gambler call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org chat Connecticut this episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. How ready are you for the FIFA World Cup 26? Every decision matters here, even yours, because Michelob Ultra, the official beer sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 26, is giving you a chance to win a million dollars worth of tickets and prizes. Michelob Ultra from the pitch to the poor Superior is worth paying for. Enter now at michelobultra.com SuperiorAccess FIFAWorldCup 26 Michelob Ultra FIFA World Cup 26 Superior Access no purchase necessary. Open to US residents 21/ begins on December 1, 2025 and ends on July 31, 2026. Multiple entry periods. Visit www.michelobeultra.com SuperiorAccess FIFAworld Cup 26 for for free entry. I said with Bill the other night last night, and I believe this, I think this is like in terms of like literary narratives. The Knicks winning and the spurs losing and Wemby coming out a little bit scarred, basketball wise and as kind of a polarizing figure, at least to the largest fan base in the NBA, maybe other than the Lakers fans, is just a home run for the NBA. It's so much better than oh, he already did it. Like it's already his league. And not only does he not do it, he averages 26 a game in the finals on 42% shooting. He accumulates a whole bunch of flagrant fouls, some called, some uncalled, and I think we would have been looking at a suspension in Game 6. And it's another reason I was kind of glad as a neutral fan that the Knicks won last night is because if they come back at MSG and beat the spurs without Wemby, it's just so anticlimactic. And we're coming off of finals that ended on the most the saddest possible anticlimactic moment with Halliburton last year. I just think it's, it's awesome for the league that he comes back he leaves in this state with these things to work on in his game. And the flip side is like the closest thing the NBA really has to a Red Sox Cubs style drought ends with this incredible one of a kind team that has no players on it that have ever made first team all NBA ever and is put together in such an unusual way. And I saw some feedback on social media. I checked. I shouldn't have checked that. Some people think I'm getting a little caught up in the moment for the Knicks. Being a little hyperbolic when I describe it as a totally anomalous playoff run. And I don't apologize. Like I'm not getting caught up in the moment. First of all, I get it caught up in the moment for every team that wins a championship because it's the point of the whole goddamn enterprise is to win one. And as test as the Knicks 53 year drought testifies to, it's very hard to win one. Like some of these teams have had repeats and dynasties. They make it look easy, it's hard to win one. So hell yes we should celebrate it. It is absolutely anomalous. There is no team that is like this team in terms of it was a pretty good regular season team, some flaws, some warts, some down periods, 53 wins, like not doesn't scream like, oh, that's a clear championship contender. And then whoosh, two months later, 16 and 3, 15 and 1 in its last 16 playoff games. The greatest point differential in the history of basketball. Like it doesn't happen. The closest Comp is the 2001 Lakers who won 56 games in cruise control in the regular season and went 151 in the playoffs. But it's not a comp. That was a defending championship team with Shaq and Kobe. It's like a completely different thing. The only other team that comes close is the 2023 Denver Nuggets, who had 53 wins on the dot. I think 16 four in the playoffs, plus eight. The Knicks are plus 15. It's absolutely outrageous and I do not want to hear. I don't want to hear, well, they didn't have to play Boston. Guess what? Boston got their asses exposed in the second round by Philly, who was healthy for a week. And it turned out that Nemi Esqueda was Nemi Esqueda and Luca Garza was Luka Garza and they didn't have enough sides. And now they're going to do some stuff in the off season to address that. They didn't have to play Detroit. Detroit lost to Cleveland. They didn't have to play Oklahoma City. Oklahoma City was injured and lost to the Spurs. The spurs hadn't lost more than three playoff games in a series. The Knicks just beat them four out of five. I'm sorry that they didn't have the. The ideal storybook path. The other thing they did was they beat the living shit out of everybody that they faced in the Eastern Conference. Embarrassed them, ran them off the floor. Announced to the Cavaliers, to the Sixers, and to the Hawks. After two 1 point losses, their losses were by 1 point, 1 point and 4. Announced to all those teams, you are not even in our universe. Get the fuck out of here. Talk to us next year. You don't belong on the core with us. So I don't like. Am I getting caught up in it? Yeah, I get caught up in it every year. One of the reasons I got caught up in it, and this is what I want to talk to you a little bit about, is I just love New York City. It's my favorite place in the world. I lived there for 20 years. I have a deep fondness for it. And so you're goddamn right I'm getting caught up in it. And I don't apologize.
- [37:58]
C
First of all, I just want to show you that I'm wearing my Philip Seymour Hoffman T shirt today.
- [38:02]
A
There you go.
- [38:03]
C
My favorite actor of all time. And that was a rant suitable for Gustavos.
- [38:07]
A
You know where my wedding song. Charlie Wilson's wore my wife. And my wedding song. We got married in Croatia and we forced a Croatian band, beautiful band, to play Empire State of Mind. That was our wedding song. That was our first dance for wedding song.
- [38:24]
C
What year did you get married? What year did you get married?
- [38:26]
A
2013.
- [38:27]
C
Okay. I was gonna say I got married in 2009. And we. There was a. There was pandemonium on our wedding dance floor when Empire State of Mind came on. So it's funny that you mentioned that.
- [38:36]
A
I mean, look, I spent. Yesterday we went. Okay, I'm just. Now I'm going, Sean, just go, man. I'm gonna. I'm gonna let you cook in a second.
- [38:44]
C
Go.
- [38:45]
A
New York City changed my life. It changed me as a person. It changed me in. I became a man. I became who I am. Living in New York City for 20 years. My first apartment was $550 a month. A basement apartment, a windowless room in a cat lady's apartment, where the cat lady's cat, Susan would come into my room every night and wake me up, and I would be like, get the fuck out of here, Susan. $550 on the upper east side per month. I paid my dues in New York City. I love it. It is beyond special to me. This was a home finals for me. I could have come home between games 2, 3, 4. I decided, you know what? I want the hotel in New York City all week because I want to feel it. I want to soak it up. My wife and daughter came in on an off day between the two games to have dinner with me on 85th Street. I walked from 25th to 85th because, A, it was beautiful, and B, I just wanted to see all the Knicks fans. I wanted to see all the decorations. The New York Historical Society has Abraham Lincoln wearing a Carl Anthony Towns jersey and Frederick Douglass wearing a Brunson jersey. There's stuff everywhere. I wanted to see it. And again, I grew up not only not a Knicks fan, hating the Knicks, and I wanted to see it and I wanted to feel it. And, you know, like, some people recognized me and would just shout, go, Knicks. One guy recognized me at dinner and said, never get. Never bet against Nova. Never bet against Nova. I just. And to see those videos last night, I just think there's. It's just. There's one city that's going to look like that when its basketball team wins a championship, and it's New York. And I apologize for nothing. I love New York City. I went in yesterday morning to a. A, A Croatia World cup kickoff event in Long Island City, a neighborhood where I used to live, at a bar called Annabelle's Basin, where I used to go all the time. And because I. My wife wanted to go, but also, like, I want to see it. I want to see what it's like day of, day of, the morning of them possibly winning the championship. And everyone at. There was a thousand people at the same hour. How many people were. There was wearing, like, a Croatia jersey and a Knicks hat or a Knicks jersey and a Croatia hat. It was just awesome. So I don't know. I don't know what the fuck I'm saying, man. I don't care if I'm going overboard. It's New York City.
- [41:06]
C
Listen, man, it's New York City. I lived there for 10 years as well. I was born in the state, I went to college in the state. I'll be a New York Knick fan until I die. I'm an extremely, extremely sad sports fan. I root for the Knicks, the Mets, and the Jets. The jets are the most historically unsuccessful team of the last 15 years in North America. The Mets, you and I have a niche, niche sports segment on your show talking about how painful it is to be a fan of this team. And the Knicks have been disastrous, give or take, three times this century. You can say that first Melo season, you can say that first Amari season, and you can say Linsanity. And aside from that, until Julius Randle and Tom Thibodeau arrived in New York, the franchise was depressing. It was painful to be a Knicks fan. And here's the thing for me, I'll try to put this in context personally. Four of my eight best friends are from Philly, and I watched, including Chris Ryan, who works at the Ringer, and a number of other people who people would know. And I watched them go through this with the Eagles when the Eagles won the Super Bowl. And I was so jealous. And I was happy for them. I was actually happy for them. The Eagles are not rivals of any team I root for. But all I could feel when they were going through that first championship run six years ago was like, I just really want this for myself one day. I just really want this monkey off my back. If you compound that with. I've been working for Bill Simmons for 14 years. I've known you for almost as long, and I've watched Bill get the moon and the stars.
- [42:45]
A
When it comes to sports fandom, it really has been unbelievable.
- [42:47]
C
I mean, what Boston has been able to experience as a sports city is just absolutely unbelievable. And, you know, if you're a Yankees fan or New York Giants fan, it's different. It's different. Like, you've tasted glory this century. But to be proximate to so many people and to care about so many people who have had this kind of happiness and this kind of joy, and to have not had this, it genuinely made me a different kind of person. Like, I was getting angrier. And I just don't feel angry. Like, I just don't feel. I do feel like I said this to my wife last night, and then I woke up again this morning and I said to her, I just feel like there's a piano off my back. This is. And I have an amazing life. I love my life. I have so many things that have gone my way, and I feel so lucky. But when I watch sports, I'm a different person. I'm pissed off and fearful and all of a sudden, poof, gone. And it doesn't mean that my teams will always win now and forevermore. And it doesn't mean that the character of New York City as a sports town will change forevermore. But we will always have this. And on the literally, I have three insanely active Knicks fan text threads and in every single one of them I just sent, we will always have this and they can never take this away from us. No matter what. We will always be able to talk about this team and what they did. And you provided all of those data points about the strength of their run and the way that they dominated teams through the first three rounds of the Eastern Conference path and the way that they took four out of five from the spurs and six of eight on the season. Let's not forget they dominated this team this season. The fact that they went up against one of the most bizarrely gifted players in NBA history and routinely made him look bad, put all that down. Like, forget about all that stuff. They can't. Nobody can ever take this away. We will always be able to talk about this and share this and have this. And so I think that it kind of dawned on everybody simultaneously. I think it actually dawned on us after game four, because after game four there was this collective like, wow, three, one. There's no way they're going to beat us three times in a row. Like, we really felt that way. But you couldn't say it. You couldn't enunciate that feeling because of how afraid we are of everything that's happened to us in the past as fans. But when the tip in went in, and I think it's right that you've circled back to it a couple times in this conversation, something happened where we were just like, oh my God, oh my God, this can happen for us.
- [45:08]
A
The tip in is such an important moment, for obvious reasons, but also because when I did my live show in New York in March, a segment that me and Jacoby and Howard Beck did, we're just like, let's draft the craziest moments of the last 30 years of Knicks history. And just going through that exercise, even though you cognitively know this to be the case, having lived, just hammers home how many of those moments are bad things. And great plays that happened to the Knicks, that happened at the expense of of the Knicks and the great moments for the Knicks. And there are some great basketball moments. Starks is dunk losing series, Ewing's put back. They don't end up finishing off the job in the Finals and all that, but a lot of them are just like Linsanity, which is just a regular season moment to end all regular season moments, but ends up yielding in terms of playoff equity, not all that much at all. And it just the endless list of Charles Smith and Reggie Miller and Tyrese Halliburton and double nickel and all this stuff that has happened to the Knicks. They have now in the post merger modern history of the NBA. They have a play that was their play. That happened to them, that happened by them, that was done by them. That is their moment. I think that is just like are there any. I asked you for frozen? Well, you have any other frozen? Like I want to. Yeah, just let's go list off your. Like I want these to be embedded in my brain forever.
- [46:36]
C
Sure. There were a couple of Landry Shammit plays and I'm citing this because in one of my text chains we were going back and forth about how the Knicks bench had been brutal for the previous two games. It was giving them nothing. Deuce McBride was a zero in this series and it was sad because Deuce is a really good knick and was a really valuable player this season. Mitchell Robinson had a broken hand, couldn't finish those lob dunks the way that he had all season even though he gave them good defense and good rebounding. We saw Jordan Clarkson mince. We saw hawk 40 minutes that were valuable yesterday. But I bring up Shamid because he hit a big three in the fourth quarter and then he hit a huge layup in the fourth quarter in which he got injured. And when he got injured and he. He slid on a wet spot underneath the basket after he hit a layup that I think maybe tied the game or put the game and maybe made it a two point game. And when he hit that layup, it was such a complicated feeling for me because on the one hand I was like good. Shamet got his moment, which I knew was gonna happen, which I texted people. I was like, I'm not giving up on Shamet. He was so good in game one and game two. He was not afraid and he was not afraid in that game. And when he got hurt, my here was my fear. Towns had five fouls at that point and shame it got hurt and I was like, if this game goes to ot, they don't have enough bodies. They cannot survive overtime without Shamet and without Cat. That's one moment. The second moment is the Mitch offensive rebound which we have not mentioned. Mitchell Robinson on a missed free throw. Literally just manning up on Wembanyama after Wembanyama got position on the inside and Mitch just big boyed him out of
- [48:07]
A
the way and Wemby turns to face him to make sure like I'm going to be. I'm going to make sure I see you and look you in the eye and I'm between you and the rim. And Mitch is like, it don't matter.
- [48:17]
C
It did not matter. He muscled him the same way that when Mitch got t got the technical foul, which got reversed. I think that was in game two, eventually rescinded by the league. It was the same thing where they were kind of having like a physical standoff and Wemby was using all of his might and he could not overpower Mitch because Mitch is a grown man. This is his eighth season. As he has been saying, Mitch not only gets the rebound, but immediately outlet passes it to the sideline and then the Knicks whip the ball around and he could have gotten fouled by Wembanyama in that moment. And that would have sent him to the line because they were in the bonus and he does not get fouled. And if he goes to the line, we know what happens.
- [48:52]
A
It's probably 0 of 2, but wouldn't it have been the all time greatest thing if he goes two of two?
- [49:00]
C
It would have. It would have. I mean, like Nick Stands from this decade. We love Mitchell Robinson because he plays so hard and he does things that most other players cannot do. And he's an athletic freak. I mean, he is truly. His skills are insane given how big he is. So I want to cite that one and then the one that is the most important one to me, which was not in the final moments of the game. There were six minutes to go, maybe six and a half minutes to go. And Brunson was at on the left side at the three point line. And Wemby once again came out to challenge him one on one. And Brunson takes him off the dribble and he gives him not two, not three, but four, stutter, step, hesitations and uses his body and then moves to opposite hand and lays it off the glass and they score. And that went cut the game from six to four. And that was really the time when you were like, oh, the Russian is cut. Like he can't. He's not leaving his feet. He does not know Brunson's timing. The interior defense did not collapse on Brunson in that moment in a way that is confusing. If you watch that play, it's hard to even understand what the defense is doing other than just saying, like, tip your cap to jb because he has moves that confound defenders. Especially in these big moments when everyone is nervous and afraid of fouling. And that clip, that moment, I have watched it over and over and over again today. I sat there with my daughter this morning holding my phone up, trying to explain to her the things he's doing with his footwork and his head work that confused this alien who's on the court. It's magical shit. And it is the perfect poetic, metaphorical moment for what the team is and what they were facing and how they won.
- [50:34]
A
I'm so glad you brought that up because it was high on my list and I've watched it a bunch of times. It is the culmination of, of all the videos you see of young Jalen Brunson on the playground with his dad honing his footwork and working on mid range jumpers and, you know, wrong foot takeoffs and all that. It's a switch. It's another play where we talked about earlier. They clear the side of the floor when Wembanyama is stuck on. I think it was Anunobi. And then, okay, you come set a screen, we're going to bring him up. And there's some confusion among the spurs. And then they switch and it's. It's literally David versus Goliath. Basically it's seven five versus six foot nothing. And he beats him right to his right. Like Victor kind of opens up a little bit and says, if you're going to beat me, it's going to be to the right. And he hits him as he gets in the paint with a shoulder into. I mean, it's probably not even Victor's chest. It's probably his gut and Victor. And it moves Victor back a half step. And against pretty much any other player in the NBA, that's enough. Jalen Brunson has enough space to finish that shot. But this is not any other player in the NBA. This is Victor Wembanyama. And it's not enough. And so he takes one more hard dribble, kind of hesitates, like a little hesitation, stops on a dime. Victor gets stood up a little bit and off balance and then all. Jalen Brunson is not only small for an NBA player, he doesn't have a big wingspan or long arms or anything. And he sticks that right arm out as far as it can possibly go and just says, God, I hope this is long enough, I hope this is far out enough and flicks that thing up. It's a 1000 out of 1000 on difficulty and creativity. And it does cut the lead, as you mentioned, to 4. It's an all time move by an all time New York Knick player at this point.
- [52:24]
C
It reminded Me a lot of playing high school basketball because I was not a great high school basketball player, but I played basketball in high school, and there would routinely be things that would happen to me when I would try to defend players that were clearly better than me. And they would just beat you in ways they could do things that you could not do. And there is a spirit breaking that happens when someone does that to you on a court. And even if you're the fiercest competitor in the world, when someone has a move in their bag that you don't understand. And look at Wembanyama's reaction. Look at his composure. Look at his disposition after that basketball. He is exhausted and he looks defeated. And this is probably the single most powerful defensive force in the sport. It was everything. I clocked it in the moment. I was like, oh, okay, that was crazy. That was crazy that he did that. But as soon as people started circling it and saying this, you can look at it over and over and over again, and you can see the whole series in that moment. It's amazing.
- [53:23]
A
He was never scared of Wembanyama. He made step back threes over him. He. He did. He led the dance his way on that drive, and I think that was emblemat. The Knicks did not ever play scared of Wembanyama. That's not to say that they did not have their healthy share of drive. Oh, kick it out. That's, as the spurs would ironically say, appropriate fear. But there was never any sense of like, well, we're just never going to go to the rim. We're never going to get in the paint. They played him like he was mortal. And I think that that's how you had to play him sometimes. You're going to have the Landry Shamit challenge that goes bad, but you're also going to have OG Anunoby dunking against him from the corner. You're going to have fouls, you're going to have other stuff. Kat went at him a bunch of times in the first two games of the series. They didn't play scared of him. And I think that Brunson drive is emblematic of that. All right, Sean, Fantasy. I got to bring it. Bring in Fred Katz, who is writing a book about this team and was there last night. But any parting thoughts? And the bets won eight to one to boot. Today they beat the Braves two out of three. They hated Braves. Like, what else could go right for you?
- [54:29]
C
I saw Toy Story 5 this morning with my daughter. It was an incredible movie that worked out well. Things are just I sat by the LA river with my family having brunch this morning and a blue heron landed in the middle of the LA river and we sat and watched it while enjoying our brunch and I was like, what is happening right now? This is unbelievable what this world can give us if it just turns in your direction for a short period of time. I'm feeling great. Listen, the Mets, I'm sure we'll talk about it more soon in the future. I'm simultaneously as rage filled as I've ever been as a fan. And yet I have not given up. And I will not give up.
- [55:07]
A
It's actually I'm so thrilled that I was wondering, could I sustain a subpar season? I'm like, I just watched the last three innings of the game with my daughter today. Like, I, I'm like, no one in the National League has run away. Lindor's coming back. Like, why not? Why not? What am I going to do? Give up? Like it? This is a fun time. All right, Sean Fenasi. We will do. We have some very good Mets corner content, Knock on wood coming up. We will do it soon. Go, enjoy. Luxuriate in the championship. That's what the whole point of this is. Thank you for your time.
- [55:43]
C
Thank you, Zach. I appreciate you.
- [55:45]
B
Did you know about 1 in 3 people with PLE psoriasis may also develop psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness and swelling? Does this sound like you listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away? Trymphy Gusocomab taken by injection is a prescription medicine for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis who may benefit from taking injections or pills or phototherapy. And for adults with active psoriatic arthritis, serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu like symptoms, or if you need a vaccine, imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about your trimfaia. Tap this ad to learn more about trimfia, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Buying something for dad usually goes the same way every year. Guessing, second guessing, ending up with something that collects dust on a shelf. Here's a better idea. WeatherTech. It's the kind of gift he'll actually use. WeatherTech offers unmatched vehicle protection, from floor liners and seat protectors to the cup phone and cargo liner. And no, a gift card isn't a cop out. It's Just practical like Weathertech. Skip the guesswork this year. Visit weathertech.com to get your Father's Day gift today.
- [57:16]
A
Fred Katz from the Athletic, fresh from San Antonio on no sleep, just witnessed the unthinkable. The New York Knicks, after 53 years, win the championship. What was the scene like last night? I mean, you wrote a wonderful story for the Athletic, highlighted by OGN and Obi trying tequila for the first time in his life. And it apparently not going so well. Really just like, not if you don't drink. You got to start somewhere else. Not the best place to start. But what are you going to remember some from sort of the scene? I mean, those clinching games are kind of chaotic because you can't get back out onto the court. You're just waiting and waiting and waiting and trying to find people as they come up. But like, what are you, what are you always going to remember?
- [57:56]
B
I don't know if it was the first time OG tried tequila. He definitely reacted as it was as if it was the first time he tried tequila. I will always remember the sound that he made after he tried to chug it, realizing that it was significantly more difficult to drink than water. And then making a sound that actually sounded a little like that. And then just complete and utter screeching as the guys around him started laughing. And then like two seconds later being like, you know what, screw it, one more try. And then having an even worse reaction after that. It was such a beautiful mix of jubilation, wholesomeness, and like genuine physical pain. Like, like I, I have to imagine he's just holed up somewhere for the next like six months after going through what he went through in those two
- [58:41]
A
seconds, in the two sips. I love the, I love the post championship celebration. Even though we are sort of isolated, away from a lot of it, we do get to see like when they're in the locker room and they open up the locker room, you get to see all the chaos. It's just wall to wall bodies. Your suit's going to get ruined, it's going to be soaked in champagne, all that. And I'm just like an unabashed lover of that moment because I'll hug the coaches, the front office guys, the players. I know because I just know. Neutrality aside, I don't really care that your team won versus this other team. I do care that you as a human being got to see the fruits of your labor and you worked so hard for so many years and so many people don't get to experience it. And this is what you did it all for. I just. I find it just like life affirming to be around in a lot of ways. And I'm sad I wasn't there last night.
- [59:33]
B
100%. It's a great vibe. Also, on top of that, with the way that the world is now, all these players have their brands and their images that they put out about themselves, right? And it's like we see these very sort of curated versions of what their personalities are, and these very sort of picked out versions of what their personalities are. And it's pretty rare that we get to see guys just like guard completely down. Just like, I'm grabbing this bottle of tequila and I'm going to take this shot. And it's pretty rare that you see guys like that and see a whole room of guys like that. And to be. To. For there to be so much like just an overpouring amount of happiness out of that room, it's. It's a. It's a really nice energy to be around and it's really great. Speaking just as a reporter, it's really cool to be able to see them be such natural, raw versions of themselves and be so comfortable in doing so without any fear of judgment or anything like that. Because that feeling is something that I can't really relate to. You must just feel completely and utterly invincible and on top of the world. And that's how everybody acts when they get there and is absolutely, positively how they should act.
- [60:54]
A
I went over with Sean Fenasey, just frozen moments that you either want to remember because they were pivotal moments in your mind from either last night's game or any other part of the finals, and you feel like they're going to be forgotten because of when they happened at the game or whatever. We did a lot of the end of game stuff or just frozen moments that you want to remember because you were there and you saw this incredible thing happen, like the Anunoby tip or whatever. What qualifies for you?
- [61:21]
B
I'll tell you what. A lot of my answers have nothing to do with anything that happened on the court.
- [61:25]
A
Great.
- [61:26]
B
A lot of my answers were stuff that happened after just like the really human moments. I witnessed, I think probably the most Karl Anthony Townes thing that I've ever seen. Townes is like this incredibly kind of sweet guy. Like, notoriously unbelievably sweet, famously sweet guy, right? And as he's walking off the court, there's this tunnel that goes to the back in San Antonio and the tunnel is completely clogged up. It's just there are a gazillion media members waiting for guys to leave the court after the championship ceremony. And there are a gazillion coaches and players who are trying to make their way through. And somehow there are fans who have gotten there and are clogging it up. And all of these Knicks fans in San Antonio stayed late to come cheer on their guys. And the guys are finally, after the ceremony, starting to come off the court and go to the locker room. And they are having to squeeze through to go to the locker room. It's like one tiny little lane for them to get through. And a security guard is clearing them out. There are these Knicks fans to the side who are just freaking out. It's the best moment of their lives, and they're just bugging. And Kat comes by, and he's going to the locker room, and he's holding the championship trophy. He's, like, clutching it to his chest. And there are these Knicks fans who just start screaming, just, like, cheering so loud. They're so excited. They're all decked out in Knicks gear. And Kat just turns to them in this almost like. Like, almost like the nicest kid in fifth grade when you bring in lunch and somebody looks at your lunch and you're like, that looks good. And the nicest kid in fifth grade is like, do you want to split it? So Cat looks at these guys and says, do you want to touch the trophy? And Cat leans into the stands and is holding out the trophy as these fans are touching the championship trophy. And I promise you, this was like three men. And I have never seen three men look so happy at one time in my entire life. Katt made these guys lives. And the hilarious part about it is, it's this unbelievably sweet moment where Cat's like, I'm in the greatest moment, at least of my career. And his inclination is like. He's thinking, you know, I'm at the greatest moment in my career. My inclination is I'm just gonna. I'm gonna share it with everybody around me instead of be here. But the result was that the line completely clogged up. And nobody knew why, because Kat's blocking the whole line. So everyone is in being like, can
- [63:48]
A
we get this fricking thing moving?
- [63:50]
B
And being such New Yorkers about it and being totally perturbed as Kat is just like, being the sweetest guy ever, holding out the trophies to let the fans touch it. It was this. It was. It was an amazing moment, and I will never, ever forget Watching that happen, it was. It was so beautiful.
- [64:06]
A
And you know better than most, it. It didn't. There are universes where it does not go this way for Cat. I mean, you wrote at the end of last season when the Knicks were eliminated, about some of the issues within the team, and I'm going to paraphrase, and you can tell me if I'm paraphrasing wrong. One of them was perhaps a sense from teammates that he didn't take defense and sticking to the scheme defensively seriously enough. And then this season, it felt like every time the team hit a trough, he was the lightning rod, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly. What's my fit in the offense defensively? Am I giving enough? Like, it did not. It did not have to go this way. And something clicked into place for him. This was the best stretch of defense he's ever played, ever. Totally outplayed Wembanyama in the first two games of the series. He obviously emerges as a passing hub in the playoffs in a sustained way that we've really never quite seen from him before. And just sort of buys into, like, yeah, I'll be the third or fourth leading scorer on the team. Like, cool, I'll do everything else. And even despite that, the nightmare scenario for the Knicks unfolds in the Finals three games in a row, which is our backup center has a broken hand. Our starting center is amazing, but he's going to get in foul trouble. That's our nightmare scenario. Our backup to the backup is Huck, Porty, and Sohan, and yet they find a way to win two of the three games. I thought some of the calls against Cat were bad. I don't want to relitigate that, but it's a tribute to all the other guys who had moments and stepped up. That. That was. That was the roadmap for the spurs to win the series or one big part of the roadmap. And it happened. And the Knicks still won two out of three games.
- [65:44]
C
But.
- [65:44]
A
But on Cat, like, it could have gone other ways in, like, even in the summer when Giannis was like, hey, I want to go to the Knicks. That's my one team. Like, who do you think was going to get traded in that. In that scenario?
- [65:57]
B
Yeah, 100%. And it was a complete and total turnaround of. I'm gonna say of reputation, because I think. And not character of reputation. If character is who you are, reputation is who people believe you to be. I must say, it was definitely a turnaround in reputation. It's amazing. What an incredible playoff run can do for you and what getting a ring can do for you. And I think people will look at him differently. I think also those things that we wrote about over the last two years, those all existed, those were all true, for sure. But the difference is between this and maybe other things that happen in a locker room is that people in that locker room liked Kat. There was never a sort of, oh, get this guy out of here sort of feeling from the team. I mean, maybe there were from certain fans or whatever, but that was never the case with the players. Those guys liked Cat. They appreciated Cat as a human being. And there were kind of natural frustrations that came along with, you know, being teammates and competing for a while and whatever else. And as they got to know each other better, I think they all kind of became a lot more comfortable with each other. They all started to speak a lot more honestly with each other about things they wanted to accomplish. And this team, not just Kat, everybody, this team found a connectivity that showed off so much. And my favorite thing about baseball, compared to other sports, I love, you know, I love baseball or basketball. Compared to other sports, I love, you know, I love baseball. But baseball, it's like, if you've got a team of all average players, you're probably 81 and 81. And basketball, if you've got a team of all average players, you might be 32 and 50, and you might be 50 and 32. And it really just depends on how all of those average players play with each other. And the Knicks are not a team of all average players. They're a team of tremendous talent, but they're also a team that is significantly better than whatever their aggregate talent is because they were able to create that connectivity. And Catwoman is a ginormous, Ginormous part of that, especially starting in game four, the Atlanta series, especially in the Philly series, especially in the Cleveland series, especially, like you say, those first two games against San Antonio. And Jaylen Brunson is not hitting shots. Like, not hitting shots. And Cat, the first half of Game 2 in San Antonio is. Is other than Brunson, Game 5 is. Is probably the best half anybody played in that entire series.
- [68:22]
A
I had John Chris, who covered him with the Wolves for many years, on, as my guest on my show right after that podcast. I ran after that game that night, and I said, I think it's maybe, given the stakes, is the best half Carl Anthony Towns has ever played. And he was like, I think you're right. That's how good it was. Just, I mean. And you Talked about the clicking into place. I've said it over and over again. You could see them find this place off and on in the regular season for a week here, a game here, and then it would escape them. And it's unquantifiable. It's ungraspable. It's not something you can see or touch, but. Well, you can see it, I guess. But they found it after Game 3 in Atlanta, and they never left it. And so everybody wants there to be this, like, dramatic team meeting between Games 3 and 4 of the Hawks series, or somebody talk to somebody, and this happened. Like, what. What happened is. Is it just like. Because their offense, you wrote about it right away, did look a little different starting in game four, but it's not as if they then built the entire offense out of cat playing that way, that that sort of cat as the hub faded in and out from that point forward. So it wasn't like a complete stylistic reinvention or anything like that. But something happened because, like, the Hawks were confident after game three, the Knicks were, like, down 2:1. This is a real trouble spot for them.
- [69:47]
B
Yeah, I don't know that something did or didn't happen. I have asked that question to so many guys in that locker room, and now they won the title. Maybe it'll be EAS to get a real answer out of it, because they're going to look back on this as just like every single thing was a step towards that got you towards greatness. And there's only going to be positive memories from this season for these guys. And so maybe they're more likely to talk about it. The answer that I've consistently gotten when I've asked just, like, what happened after Game 3 in Atlanta? Something had to happen. All of them say the same thing. All the players, everybody. They all say the same thing. They all say, we all just realized we're too good to be in this position. Like, we should not be down 2:1, we should not be losing in the way that we're losing this series. And this is the way that all of them have relayed it to me, just that this is not the spot that they should be in. And they kind of realized, all right, everybody, throw whatever sort of ego you've got to the side. Throw whatever sort of role you wanted to the side. You better cut as hard as you can cut. You better screen as hard as you can screen. Because one of the things that I did think was really interesting following Game 3 of the Atlanta series was, like, they totally made so many of those schematic adjustments. But the biggest air quotes adjustment they made was that everything they ran was so crisp, even once they started running the stuff they were running in the regular season, a lot more. It was like their screens were so on point. They were just holding their screens. Their cuts, they took off when they were supposed to take off.
- [71:25]
C
They.
- [71:26]
B
Their spacing. Their spacing is so good. People think of spacing as just like if you can shoot, you're going to pull people out. But it's so much more, it's so much different than that. Like their ability to notice. Okay. Landry Shamit's ability to notice. Okay, I'm going to shift 2 inches over this way. It's going to open up a pass. Or Jose Alvarado noticing in game four, you know what, if I cut in this direction, Wembley's not going to notice and they're going to have to switch off of me.
- [71:51]
A
So I talked with Ian Begley after that game about, I thought Alvarado and Anobi consistently cutting from the slot or the top of the arc down toward the rim at the exact right moment to confuse the spurs zone ish defense was like a really important part of the series. Anunoby was consistently excellent at it and Alvarado. Everybody's gotta have a moment for you to win the championship, for you to win 16 games. Clarkson had a moment. McBride had his moment against Philadelphia. Huck Porty had a moment in the closing game of the season. Mitchell Robinson had moments in the last two games of this series. Alvarado's moment was that game one of his moments that in game one. And like it was just massive.
- [72:30]
B
It was, it was, it was, it was huge. He was so big for them off the ball and just as like giving them a just secondary ball handler to be able to restable to restabilize Brunson and get him in better spots in that game four. And then you know, as you said, he was so good at those slot cuts, so good from the corner. And what was happening was like there was this one possession in game four when they have the huge comeback and he's in the the right corner and he almost, I actually talked about this with Jose after the game. He almost Grand Theft Alvaradoed Wemby on offense where like he's in the corner and Wemby's technically guarding him, but he's really doing that one man zone. And Alvarado kind of, you know, when he does the Grand Theft Alvarado, I don't know if he does this intentionally, I should ask him when he sneaks up on guys, actually sneaks as if he's cartoonishly sneaking.
- [73:23]
A
You know, he's like a caricature of a cat burglar in like the Pink Panther or something.
- [73:28]
B
Yeah, he like actually bends over and tiptoes as if they're going to be able to hear him on his first two or three strides. And. And he did that and. And kind of dipped out below the baseline behind Wemby and Wemby couldn't see him. And. And Wemby doesn't move and Alvarado gets all the way to the other side of the court. By the time Wemby notices, they have to switch a guy onto Alvarado. And that means Wemby has to go on to OG Anunoby, who ends up getting a corner three on that possession later because of that. And it's like just these unbelievably precise movements, these incredibly aware movements. They were so unbelievably locked in. There's a play that I've constantly referenced from the Philadelphia series where like they were trying to attack Embiid in pick and rolls and Huck Porty was in the game and Embiid was guarding him. And they call up Huck Porty so that he'll set a screen for Brunson and Philadelphia immediately pre switches Embiid off of Huckporty and immediately Huck Porty just turns around and goes back. And everybody on the court is calling out to everybody where to go, but everybody's already doing their assigned thing and it's like Porty never really plays. He shouldn't be able to immediately recognize, okay, Embiid got switched off of me. We're not running this for me. We're running this to go against Embiid. Let me run back. And then McBride in this case is going to go up and set the screen. But they're doing all of this in such coordination. The preparation and the communication and the intensity about each decision reached such a level that I had never seen, quite honestly, from any team that I had covered so closely. And that is why they're champs, because of that sort of level of execution.
- [75:09]
A
Well, another obviously big winner from the playoffs is Mike Brown, who was deemed, let's not forget, not good enough to be our coach by the Sacramento Kings and now is an NBA champion a year later. I've said it throughout the playoffs like they are. One of the signs of a well coached team is when the other team makes an adjustment, you adjust to it. Immediately. There's no three possessions of lag time before you kind of digest what's just happened, what assignment they change, what weak spot they opened up. You, you see it and it's predatory. It's right away. And the Knicks were on it. The Knicks were coaching from ahead in terms of mentality in a lot of these games. And boy, Mike Brown, I mean, I guarantee you everybody with the warriors is thrilled for Mike Brown. They all love him. Every, like he's, he's a really popular guy within the league. I'm going to give you a frozen moment for me and then you can take one. I think this is one that's going to be lost to history. The spurs are up 85, 83 last night with four minutes left in the game. Brunson isolates on the right baseline against Dylan Harper. I think misses a jump shot. No. Knick is in position to get a rebound. Wembanyama tips the rebound into Devin Vassell's chin. It bounces off his head, off his fingertips, onto his fingertips as his foot is on the baseline. And a surefire defensive rebound becomes a sort of bizarro turnover reset for the Knicks. That then becomes Brunson drawing a three shot foul on Devin Vassell and making all three free throws and putting the Knicks up 86, 85. That's an example of a play that like, that's going to be completely lost to history. And like I didn't even realize until I rewatched it today that Wembanyama had actually tipped the rebound. I just thought Vassel had mishandled it or was slipped out of his hands or something. Wemby tips it and it literally hits the sell in the face and bounces off his face. And it's just, these are the things that happen when you win a championship.
- [77:07]
B
Yep.
- [77:08]
A
Take one, you do one, you do one.
- [77:12]
B
A little, a little more obvious. But I just, I got to give OG an OBI his due, I guess. This didn't get scored as a block on, on Dylan harper with like 28 seconds left.
- [77:23]
A
It did not.
- [77:24]
B
Dylan Harper goes to the rim and OG Anunoby contests it. Dylan Harper is magical. Like, magical. Like, oh my goodness, how is that guy a rookie? Every time he rises at the rim, I'm like, okay, well this is, there's no way, this is not going in and there's no way it's not going to be some sort of fantastic type of finish that I've never seen. He's going to just like reach three and a half feet above the air. And then he's going to levitate another seven feet. That's just like what he does every time. And nobody can contest Dylan Harper at the rim. Except every single time Ochi Anunoby does it. And he had what will go down as one of the greatest blocks in NBA Finals history in Game four when he blocks Harper at the rim. Or blocks Fox.
- [78:11]
A
Fox. I was gonna say Fox.
- [78:12]
B
I should say blocks Fox at the rim. He had blocked Harper at the rim in transition earlier in the series. But he blocks Fox at the rim in transition and then it's not even his best play of the next 10 seconds. Cause he gets the tip in to win game four. And that will now be. There's nothing that OG Anunoby can do now for that not to be his legacy. There's literally nothing that will ever happen to him that like when you hear OG Anunoby's name now that tipping, that is the first thing that you're going to think of when you hear OG but 28 seconds left. Harper's coming at him. I believe it was a two point game. 90 to 88 should have tied it up. And OG just kind of slowly backs up. He times it perfectly. He goes right up with Harper. Harper's layup hits off the front of the rim. Because OG contests it perfectly when he goes straight up. I thought that he blocked it at the time. I thought he got a finger on it. I guess he didn't technically do that. It was just a tremendous contest. That guy. He didn't end up winning Finals mvp and I'm not saying he should have. Brunson was so unbelievable in Game five. I mean, just. Just absolutely insane in Game five. I think that could be a moment of its own. Just Brunson's entire game five performance. I'm gonna.
- [79:29]
A
I'm gonna give you one in a second, but. Go ahead.
- [79:31]
B
But. But OG with the way that he guarded in this series, his transition defense was outrageous. He ended up shooting 54% on corner threes in the playoffs. Just outrageous numbers and an outrageous playoff run. And I just thought the fact that inside the last 30 seconds that he could have a moment that could help them win the title. Even on a night when his shot wasn't falling in the way that it had for the previous two months. I just thought that was just one extra unbelievable defensive play by one of the best defensive players in the league.
- [80:11]
A
I'm going to give you one on Brunson and then we can do the Brunson discussion because of how Frenetic the last minute of the game was, and how many free throws and offensive rebounds on free throws and fouls and all that there were. I feel like the actual game winning basket, the basket that put the Knicks in the lead for good is. And it is kind of not being discussed very much. And it also, because it happened really, really fast. And I think it's indicative of a lot of things. And it's surprise, surprise, a Brunson floater. And it's a minute left in the game thereabouts. Castle is kind of pressing him at half court, and Brunson just beats him off the dribble. I mean, that's one of the risks you take when you're pressing, is that you're going to get beat off the dribble.
- [80:51]
B
You're.
- [80:52]
A
You're giving the guy angles and whatever, and you do it because Wemby's back there. And indeed Wemby is back there, and he's on Mitchell Robinson because Kat has fouled out of the game by that point. And Brunson just goes. He goes into the lane, and you can see Victor turn his head away from Brunson. I've watched this like 20 times. Turn his head away from Brunson to tell Vassell, who's on the wing near him, hey, I'm stepping up here. You got to go take Mitchell Robinson and protect me and get my back. And then he turns back, and I think he turns back to look at Brunson, and Brunson has arrived a little bit faster than he expected him to arrive. And Brunson gets off the floater and Wembanyama doesn't jump, and he doesn't really turn around to box out Mitchell Robinson. He's just kind of stuck in no man's land. And I look at that play, and I think it's a mix of everything. I think Brunson got there faster than Wembanyama expected. I think Wembanyama was justifiably worried about Mitchell Robinson's offensive rebounding, which I. Which was an X factor all series. And in fact, the last basket of the third quarter was a Mitchell Robinson tipping, I believe, his only basket of the game on a Jalen Brunson floater that Wembanyama challenged. I think also I talked about this with Sean. I think Wembanyama was tired at the end of these games and worn out. And one of the ways that can manifest itself is your processing speed is just 5% slower. And that's all Jalen Brunson needed. And like you will just not see very many high stakes shots at the basket that Victor Wembanyama is glued to the floor and doesn't contest and doesn't contest the rebound. It's a great move by Brunson. It's a classic Brunson shot. And I think it wraps up a lot of stuff that happened at the end of these games that went the Knicks way over and over again. And it put the Knicks up 90, 88. And they never trailed again, the spurs never tied it again. And it's like second to get lost to history. It's going to get slow mo replay and all that. But it's kind of in a. In a pile of stuff that happened at the end.
- [82:57]
B
That was a great example of Jalen Brunson's brilliance. And I mean that with his mind, not like his basketball brilliance. And I say that because I think that shot was made in the second quarter, you know, throughout.
- [83:11]
A
It's funny cause I thought about the third quarter. Mitchell Robinson tippin. So you're go. You're going back further.
- [83:16]
B
Yeah. So I think, I mean, I think you're totally right on the tip end where he was, he was glued. I know the exact player you're talking about. He was kind of glued to Mitch there. And having him there as a lob threat is. That's the type of spacing that Mitchell Robinson provides. But early in the game, the first, like, what would it have been, 19 minutes of the game? The Knicks have zero points in the paint.
- [83:42]
A
They started bench points for a lot longer than this.
- [83:44]
B
Yeah, they started the game, I think over 13 on shots in the paint. And part of the reason why Brunson is so good in the playoffs is because he is so keen on detail and figures out these little ways that teams are guarding him and then figures out how to exploit them throughout the course of a series. So we'll have a bad shooting night the first couple of games like he did in this series, and then he'll start to figure it out. The Knicks cannot get to the rim. Victor went beyond with the first quarter and a half of this. I mean, he was great defensively.
- [84:13]
A
He was like Godzilla. It was, he was like Godzilla had played, was playing for the Spurs.
- [84:17]
B
I mean, the first quarter and a half, two quarters of this game, by Wemby standards, the defensive performance was completely and utterly outrageous. It was just like, oh my goodness, how are you supposed to do anything here? With about five minutes or so left in the second quarter, Knicks are on a little bit of a run. This is when Brunson started to get a little hot. They're on, like a tiny little run. They were down 13, and I think it was Josh Hart hits a three, and then Brunson ends up hitting a three off of an. Off of an offensive rebound. And on the next possession, with about five minutes left in the quarter, Brunson drives on. I think it was Fox, and he goes left to that same spot on Fox. Brunson loves to release his floater at around 8ft or so. Instead of doing that, he gets to basically the nail and he kind of pulls up on Fox a little bit early. And I think it caught Fox a little bit by surprise where he pulled up. His feet were technically in the paint, just barely. It was the Knicks first paint points of the night. And I think that was right around when Brunson decided, you know what? No one's getting all the way to the paint tonight. All these floaters that I do normally from 6 to 8ft, I got to do them from 10 to 13. And the rest of the night, we saw him roast from that, like, shallow paint area instead of the deeper mid paint area. And I didn't really see the spurs adjust to him on that because he was getting to those areas so quickly and with so much ease and because he's so skilled and so crafty and so quick that it's just hard to pick up on that. It's just really hard to pick up on that when it's happening in real time. And so when Brunson releases that floater that you're talking about with a minute left, like he's barely in front of the free throw line, that's a. That's a far. It's a floater, fundamentally, but that's a far out floater. That's a tough floater to make when you're on the run. It was a difficult shot, even with him by Castle. And just another example of him having this, quite frankly, basketball genius understanding of the geography of the court and how to exploit every single area of it to his advantage. And that's what makes him as great of a player as he is.
- [86:38]
A
Let's talk about Jalen Brunson, because Bill said. Bill and I did our instant reaction show on his pod last night. Said, I'm not ready to have the Brunson. Is he the greatest Nick of all time conversation yet? I said, well, why not? And just. Just kind of to play devil's advocate, obviously, you know, Patrick Ewing has 23,000 career points as a New York Nick. Jalen Brunson has something like 7,000. So like whatever. And I said like at 45 points in a serious closeout game, when the rest of your team at 49 and you're just trying to limp across the finish line one last time on what is he, 15 to 27? Some efficient kind of shooting line. Finals MVP. Only the second Knick ever to win Finals MVP. Clyde Frazier never did. Willis Reed won it twice. He's now averaging 29.4 points per game in the playoffs. As a Knick, that's number one all time for the Knicks. He is already third all time in postseason scoring just raw points for the Knicks. And he's one medium sized playoff run from passing Walt Frazier and moving into second. And if he stays with the Knicks, he'll pass Ewing and be first. He's only ninth all time in franchise scoring regular season. But if he stays with the Knicks his whole career and stays relatively healthy, he'll definitely pass everybody but ewing and be second. And this is just, I said last night, 45 points in a closeout game. Finals MVP. I don't know, is that worth 12,000 regular season points for a team, a franchise that hasn't won the title in 53 years? It's worth some unquantifiable amount of regular season success. Whether he's the greatest Knick now or not, I think he's going to go down as the greatest Knick of all time. And if you wanted to really vociferously argue it because of what he's meant to the franchise, because of how this entire thing started with his contract from Dallas with the Knicks, with him not getting an extension in Dallas and then signing with the Knicks with him taking less money. He's the third highest paid player on the Knicks now and next year, enabling all this. And by the way, they're going to have to do this dance with the second apron now. Mitchell Robinson's a free agent. Landry Shamit's a free agent. They're only 13, $14 million under the second apron. I have no idea what they're going to do. Maybe they'll just go over the second apron and say, fuck it, we just won the title. God knows how much money we made. But if I met a fan and they were like, zach, Darren Brunson is the greatest Nick of all time. Never watched Walt. I'm 30 years old in there. I don't know who Walt Frazier is other than the fancy suits and Willis Reed and this and that. Like, look, man, I can't really argue with you. Like, like, if you want to say that, that's completely fine. He's going to be. He's going to be. Whether he is now is up, is up for debate. But he will be.
- [89:13]
B
Yeah, I think the way that I would phrase it is he's on track to do it, but I think longevity matters. You know, Ewing did it for a decade and a half and Clyde did it for a long time. Willis Reed did it for a long time. He's been a Nick for four years. And I think I could make a very good argument that this is the best four year stretch that any player has had.
- [89:33]
A
Let's just round up and be fun. 29.4 points per game in the playoffs and 61 playoff games. You know what sounds nicer? He's averaging 30 a game in the playoffs for the New York Knicks. Yeah, it's crazy. It's fucking crazy.
- [89:46]
B
It's crazy. It's incredible. Which is why I say he's very much on track. Like, look, he's going to be a neck for a very long time. I don't know if there is a player in the NBA who I feel more confident will end up forever on the team that he's currently on. Right? Like, can you.
- [90:05]
A
Is there one guy. It's literal family. Like they, they, they, they. It hurt them to trade Divincenzo emotionally because he's part of the Villanova extended family. This is literal family.
- [90:20]
B
Like Divenzo was there one year too. It was one year. It's a great year and he was tremendously important. He had a fantastic year, but it was one year. Jalen Brunson is probably. And also just from the reaction of, of the fan base, like it would be like the Yankees trading Jeter. You know, it's just like he is going to be a Knick for an incredibly long time, if not for the entire rest of his time in the NBA. And so he's going to have a long time of putting up numbers and leading them on playoff runs and he's going to be the all time leading playoff scorer and he's probably going to have other crazy playoff moments and he's only 29 years old and there is a chance that he could do this for a long time coming and this team is well positioned. I mean, you say they've got some second apron worries next year. It's like they could find a way to avoid the second apron if they wanted to next year and if they didn't and they went into the second apron next year they have, they Have a pretty realistic way of just being in there for one year and then ducking it the next year and getting back down.
- [91:33]
A
Like how much money did they just make, you know, with all these home playoff games and everything? Yeah. What do you think is going to happen is Mitchell Robinson. I mean, Mitchell Robinson is going to have suitors at the mid level or maybe a little south of that because of his injury history and his minute stuff. But the league knows like this is a prototypical player you want if you run into Wembanyama specifically. But do we expect him and shame it to be. I mean, Shambha's a freaking hero now in New York.
- [91:59]
B
Yeah, I mean, I, I'm not sure what to expect on those guys, to be honest. When I talk to people with the Knicks about it, they are just so giddy about everything that's happened with this group. They're just like, keep everyone together, keep everything the same. We're not even thinking about any of that stuff. We just want this group to be together for the rest of time. They're all so happy and the vibes with this group were so incredible to end the year that they just want
- [92:23]
A
everybody to be a front office guy from another team. Texted me this afternoon, hey, what are you hearing about Miami's offer for Giannis? And like, you know, should we jump in? And what, what is Boston? I'm like, can you just, like, can you just let me bathe in the championship? Because again, I, I don't, I just, this is me every year. I love, I love the culmination of a season. And he texted back, man, that's yesterday's news. The draft is in nine days. I was like, all right, you want to talk about Giannis, you know, Miami, Boston, you know, is there a wild card team? Is there a three team trade? I don't think it's Houston. I think Houston seems to be out. You know, Portland, I don't really buy Brooklyn. I don't see it. The spurs, the Thunder, the Knicks would appear to be out, Fred, like the three teams that made it very far in the finals would appear to be out. You know, Toronto's got some assets. I don't really see a non scardy. But you know, if Toronto put in Murray Boyles and four firsts and four swaps and, and filler, maybe they, I don't see that happening though. Maybe.
- [93:21]
B
I don't know.
- [93:22]
A
I don't. I think that may be too rich for their blood. But the Bucks want Scotty. I don't know. I don't know, I want to luxuriate and I'm glad that the Knicks fan, the Knicks people are like, ask, give us a few days.
- [93:32]
B
Yes, totally. I brought up, they're like, just, no, no, leave, leave me alone on this, at least for a little while. So that's 100% the vibe that I got on it. I think they would love to bring back as many of those guys as they can. Mitchell Robinson is the longest tenured Nick. He's been with this organization for eight years and I could definitely see a world where he is elsewhere next year because of all those cap concerns that we talked. For what it's worth, if they didn't go into the second apron next year, I don't think it, I mean, we talk about them making a lot of money. If they didn't go into the second apron next year, I don't think it would be because of luxury tax payments. I think it would be because they thought their cap department thought it was this strategically wrong move to go into the second apron at this time. And it's because when you go into the second apron, you lose all of these resources for team building. You lose the ability to make most kinds of trades, you lose the ability to make most kinds of free agency, sign ins, et cetera. If there's one thing James Olin will do, especially after winning a championship, he's going to pay. He's always paid and he will, he will, he will pay. I've gotten exactly zero concerns about how much they're willing to pay if they avoid the second apron. I think that would be on their, their front office, which is one of the most measured and kind of notoriously really good cap departments in the NBA, deciding that this is not worth it from the actual roster building strategic standpoint. That being said, like my opinion, if you're not going to do it with a team that just won the title and it's not like it was some flukish sort of group, and it's not like it's a group with a bunch of guys who are past their prime. I mean, all of your rotation players, say for Jordan Clarkson, are 30 or younger. If you're not going to do it in that circumstance with a group that likes playing together, that had no drama whatsoever that was anything of consequence. If you're not going to do it for that, when are you going into it? And maybe the argument is, maybe a smarter cap person than me would argue you should literally never go into it. It is literally never worth going into. Maybe that's what somebody would make an argument for and I would hear them out on that. But like, if you're not going to go into it after you win the title and when you have a chance to do it again, I'm not saying they will do it again. It's really, really hard to repeat and everything went right for them. They stayed healthy, whatever else. But like it's not like there's some old decrepit team that's about to fall apart next year. They've still got guys in their prime and guys who are probably going to be as good players next year as they were this year. And if you're not going to do
- [96:11]
A
it now, I don't know when can I do 45 seconds of rapid fire off season takes just to just to say I did it. I did Giannis already. I did Giannis already. Teams have definitely asked Oklahoma City about Chad Holmgren in the wake of the chat collapse and have been rebuffed. The Sabona Charlotte thing. It's definitely true that there were talks and it's definitely true that Charlotte was like, no, thank you. If you want picks, you're not getting picks. Let's see what else Giannis I did, but I would be shocked if you weren't traded. At this point. I'm not sure what else I wanted to talk about. I don't want to talk about that much offseason stuff. That's maybe all I had on my real oh, Fox. Obviously a complete disaster series for Darren Fox in a really underwhelming playoffs already. The calls to trade him are like, got to get rid of this guy. Harper's ready. Harper's ready. Put him in the starting five. I don't care what you got to do, you probably can't start all three of the guards together. That didn't go very well this year. Is Fox going to end up being the most expensive six man in the history of the league? I don't know. I said earlier in the week that I think we're already at the point that if somebody offered me, if I were Brian Wright and somebody offered me like a neutral ish deal for Fox, like a deal where I'm not paying you to get off the contract, which hasn't even kicked in until July 1, four years, 220 or something like that, I'm like, I think we might just have to take this and get out ahead of this now because it's not going to get any easier and I just don't know who the team is. I mean, Bill threw out Minnesota at Me, who knows? I mean, I threw out the possibility of a team that gets Giannis and just has left the cupboard bare. Just takes a shot, something always shakes loose. But I don't know what the team is. But that was. There's just no sugarcoating that Fox was bad and Castle was bad in Game 5, but Fox was bad the whole Finals. That's the end of our off season. Talk, talk. Can I do one more fun thing for you about OG and Anobi?
- [98:08]
B
Please?
- [98:09]
A
My friend Doug, I mentioned this with Bill last night. A genius, like a literal genius texted me after game four and said, I think Anunobi's tippin had the single biggest impact on finals odds of any play outside of game seven in the history of basketball. Maybe excluding, like the series clinching shots by Steve Kerr and John Paxton and things like that, but maybe not even those. And then he did the math. He did the math in like a very mathy way, being like, here were the odds of the Knicks winning that game before the tip and what that would have done with the odd series. And here's the Delta, and here's the. And it made me think, like, let's put together a list of other candidates for this. Here's my list. You ready? And I sent him the list and he did the math on the list because he's just. This is what he does. Draymond Green punching LeBron in the balls. The Bill Lambert phantom foul on Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Game 6, 1988, tie game, some time left on the clock. The Magic Johnson Jr. Skyhook, 1987, game four. Hakeem Olajuwon blocking John Stark's three pointer at the buzzer of game six in 94 with the Knicks up three two. A low probability. And this is the kind of thing he factors in a low probability shot to begin with. But, you know, whatever the Ray Allen shot in in Miami, San Antonio, Game six was his, was his initial. His initial baseline was. That's the one. But then he started talking about like, well, there's still overtime, there's still another game to be played, blah, blah, blah. And the one, the only one he thought maybe Trump did was Robert Ori's three at the end of game five in the 2005 finals. That turned a one point in a two, two series. Spurs down two spurs, then up one. Win the game, win game five, have two games coming at home, lose game six. But like, that's how. I just thought. That was a fun exercise. I couldn't. I didn't go back pre merger, but post merger those were the only candidates for most consequential non game seven final swinging shot. He did the math and he said the ORI one is the only one that compares and maybe exceeds the OGN and OBI Tippin.
- [100:24]
B
It's a great exercise.
- [100:26]
A
It's really fun.
- [100:28]
B
That is crazy. You know who would love that? A guy who has a very mathematical brain. OG Anunoby. Yeah, he would love that.
- [100:35]
A
As long as he's not drunk off tequila today.
- [100:37]
B
You know, I don't think he was drunk. He's spat it all back up.
- [100:41]
A
Here's another in an OB Brunson stat for you. You probably already know this. The Knicks had 131 points in the fourth quarter. In this series, 91 of the 131 were scored by Brunson in an OBI. 56 of the 131 were Brunson alone. Fred Katz for $100,000 in the bonus round, who was the third leading scorer for the Knicks in the fourth quarter of the finals?
- [101:05]
B
Oh man, it wasn't Cat. I don't think it would have been Bridges. Could it have been Landry Shamit?
- [101:19]
A
Fred Katz, you're going home with $100,000. It is Landry Shamit with 13 points. Fred Katz for a bonus bonus round. Now that you've gotten that one, 75 million more dollars, can you name the fourth leading scorer for the New York Knicks in the 2026 NBA Finals fourth quarters.
- [101:39]
B
Oh, was it just when Jose Alvarado went off?
- [101:42]
A
Fred, cats, you have $75,100,000. Jose Alvarado with eight fourth quarter points is the fourth leading scorer in the fourth quarter for the Knicks in the finals. Fred, you don't have to write the book you're writing on the Knicks anymore. You can retire. Congratulations. Thanks for coming on my game show. Fifth Towns, Bridges and A Heart. Three starters who all played varying degrees of well in the series for whatever reason, combined for 14 fourth quarter points between them. Five for Towns, five for Bridges, four for Hart, three for McBride, two for Mitchell Robinson. I don't remember the two. Do you remember Mitchell Robinson's two fourth quarter points? A lob dunk.
- [102:26]
B
He had a tip in and then
- [102:28]
A
zero for everybody else. It just crazy. I just think that's a crazy set.
- [102:34]
B
I don't know.
- [102:34]
A
Any parting thoughts? Anything we didn't get to. I'm out. I'm ready for the off season. I'm getting ready. I'm getting locked in. Ready for Giannis to get traded at any moment I'm ready for the top of the draft. I'm watching YouTube. What do you got for me, Fred?
- [102:47]
B
No, I will, I will just say that's a reflection of the fact that part of the reason this team is so good or was so good was I think because they had such clear role definition. They knew who was the number one, they knew who was the number two. They knew what all of them were supposed to do. They understood how they were supposed to play, they understood what they were supposed to do that affected winning and they understood what they weren't supposed to. To do that if they did it would affect losing. And I think that's. That honestly is a pretty good indication of that whole thing where it's like when it comes to nut cutting time, it is the Jalen Brunson show. And they, you know what? I never, I have never for a second sensed any sort of like we've seen it in any work environment, honestly, where it's like there could be some amount of resentment or something like that, that it's the Jalen Brunson show in crunch time. I have never sensed any amount of resentment from anybody there that it becomes the Jalen Brunson show on clutch time. And honestly the only sense that I've gotten is kind of the opposite. I was talking to Dylan Jones, who's a two way guy for them, who wasn't active during the playoffs, but great guy to talk hoops with, very smart basketball mind. And we were talking and it was after they were down 14 in game one against San Antonio. And I was like, you guys just stay so composed. And he was like, we just know Jalen's got us. And I was like, that's a crazy thing to say and really, truly mean. And he wasn't speaking for himself, he was speaking for the team. And I think everyone on the team would have agreed with him. It's a crazy thing to say and to truly mean about an NBA player. And I was talking to a head coach the other day who was telling me, who was saying to me, like, you don't understand that the most valuable thing, like people don't realize the most valuable thing is to just have a guy who you can say, here you go, just please go win it, just please go win the game. You don't have to do anything, just please go win the game. He's like, people don't talk about it that simplistically. They talk about it more schematically and more analytically. And he's like, the reason why is. Because those kinds of guys don't exist. They're MJ and they're Kobe and that's about it. I'm not saying that Jalen Brownson's as good as MJ and Kobe. I'm not saying that. But I am saying that like, of everybody in the league right now, I don't know how many other people who you can just say, just give them the ball and tell them, go win the game and then they go do that thing. I don't know how many people are on the list ahead of Jalen Brownson in terms of like, it's crunch time, you need a bucket, go get 45 in a closeout game. Go figure it out. And that's why that team is as good as it is, because they have that element. And that's why they outlasted the spurs at the ends of all of these games that were close, that could have gone either way. And it's why they came back against Cleveland in Game 1. And it's why they came back from five 20 point deficits in the playoffs over the last two years. And it just, it all starts with that guy.
- [105:56]
A
And the spurs will be back, maybe not in the finals next year. They're, I think, the odds, the betting favorite to win the title next year. So maybe may well be in the finals next year. They'll be back one way or another. Wemby's not going anywhere. He's just going to get better. They've got young guys, they've got cap flexibility, they've got draft assets. They're going to be absolutely fine. But this was the Knicks year and it was just an astonishing playoff transformation, an incredibly dominant playoff run. And it just so happens that Fred Katz from the Athletic is writing a book about it that you can already pre order. Fred, the floor is yours. Yeah. Yeah.
- [106:32]
B
It's called under the Bright Lights. The Revival of the New York Knicks. I have been working on it for, I've been saying a year and a half, but it's really almost two years, really since September of 2024. And when I started it, it was just gonna be the story of the revival of the Knicks, of this organization that was in the cellar for some 20 years and then found its way back to relevance with the leadership of Leon Rose and Tom Thibodeau and the rise of Jalen Brunson and all of that kind of stuff. And then they trade for Karl Anthony Towns and then they have a run to the Eastern Conference finals and then they fire Tibbs and They bring in Mike Brown and they go on this run this year. And we're like, the book is gonna be due in October no matter what. And they go on this run. And now it is the story of how the New York Knicks returned to becoming champions for the first time in 53 years. And sometimes things just get lucky for you when you're telling a story. And so now I have the privilege of getting to tell the story of how this organization returned to becoming champions for the first time in 53 years. And it's a project I've been working on for, like I said, since September of 2024. And I got the rest of the summer to write the ending of it. So it will properly include everything from the playoff run and the title run and everything else. And we'll have a lot of details on who these guys are and a gazillion different anecdotes and a gazillion different behind the scenes stories. And I want it to be funny. And I've got some really great, I hope a lot of really great stuff already and have a lot of it written already, which I'm excited about. And you can pre order it. You can go anywhere where you buy your books. You can go to Amazon.com, you can go to Barnes and Noble anywhere you buy your books. You can pre order it.
- [108:17]
C
It.
- [108:17]
B
It's under the Bright Lights, the revival of the New York Knicks.
- [108:20]
A
I'm going to pre order it, Fred Katz, because here's one thing I know and I want listeners to really internalize this. Books are. Books are a tough business and book reading is probably declining and all that. It's a heavy lift to get some people to actually read a whole book. And even I don't have time to read as many books as I would like. Everyone's busy. The barrier to entry for people is hard. And I will say this, no one is going to outwork Fred. Whatever good stories and details and funny anecdotes and behind the scenes revelations are there to actually be had by a reporter writing a book. Fred is going to get them. This book is going to be worth your time and your money because no one is going to outwork Fred. I can't wait to read it. We will have you on. I owe you $75.1 million for your game show performance tonight. Fred Katz, under the Bright Lights. Read him at the Athletic. Read a great story, we didn't even get into it about Fred's dad in the New York Knicks and urinating habits and read that on the Athletic. Fred, get some rest. Have a beer. The off season is here. Extensions can be signed with their own teams can sign their own players starting now. So who the hell knows, but try to get some rest.
- [109:35]
B
Fred, that was very nice of you to say. Thank you, Zach. Thank you for having me.
- [109:41]
A
All right, that's it for today's Zach Lowe Show. Not sure exactly when we'll be back, but we'll let you know. Thank you as always to Jonathan, Mike and Billy on production and thanks to the incomparable Sean Fennessy and Fred Katz for their time and insight. Thanks to you all for listening to and or watching the Zach Lowe Show. I will see you next time. 21 are over and President select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino or 18 and over in President, D.C. kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling Problem Call 1-800-Gambler or 1-800-My Reset, call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org chatincut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org In Maryland, Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-8Hope NY or text Hopeny in New York. For Louisiana, call 1-877-770-7867. You can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried.
- [110:43]
B
This summer, it's time to put that
- [110:45]
A
angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer@columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome, Columbia. Engineered for whatever
- [111:09]
B
the right window treatments change everything. Your sleep, your privacy, the way every room looks and feels. @blinds.com, we've spent 30 years making it surprisingly simple to get exactly what your home needs. We've covered over 25 million Windows windows and have 50,000 five star reviews to prove we deliver. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, we have you covered. Real design professionals, free samples, zero pressure right now. Get up to 45% off site wide plus get a free professional measure at blinds. Com. Rules and restrictions apply.