Knicks Comeback, Towns Comes Up Huge, and Both Conference Finals Inch Closer With Rob Mahoney

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All right, coming up on a Memorial Day, Zach Lowe's show.

We got Rob Bahoney.

It's a Bahoney Monday talking about, yeah, another wild Knicks Pacers game.

And we got a series.

Maybe we got a series in the East.

We got a series in the West.

We're going to dive deep into both series.

What comes next, especially in game four, Indiana, New York might have a little nostalgic, heartfelt baseball interlude.

I'm not sure.

That's all coming up on the Zach Low Show.

Welcome to the Zach Low Show.

Happy Memorial Day and happy we got some series day because it didn't look like we were going to get any series and instead we got two series.

Minnesota blows the doors off to Oklahoma City Thunder in game three.

I don't know what the hell happened in that game.

Suddenly they were up by 40 points.

And I was like, okay, I guess we're going to get some garbage time.

Let's go, baby.

And then last night, Rob Mahoney, it's all going bad for the Knicks.

Starting lineup change reeks of a little panic, reeks of a little searching.

Josh Hart, maybe it was his idea.

Maybe it was his idea in retrospect.

Maybe it really was his idea.

I don't know.

It's not working.

Down 20.

Throwing the ball all over the gym.

Crowds going crazy.

Tyrese Halliburton is strutting.

Jalen Brunson's in foul trouble.

Katz in foul trouble.

Permanent state of affairs for Kat, although less so than usual.

Jalen Brunson, new addition to foul trouble.

Katz in foul trouble in part because of one of the all-time great challenge outcomes for a coach, Rick Carlisle, in the second quarter.

It's all coming apart.

It's still a 15-point game late in the third quarter.

It's still 15.

It feels like it got closer, faster than it was.

And then Indiana kind of lost the plot.

Adeuce McBride, mini explosion happened.

And then Carl Anthony Towns.

Maybe,

honestly, Rob, I'd have to go back into the archives of Carl Anthony Towns games.

It's certainly not the most explosive game he's ever played.

It's certainly never artistic when that big body starts moving from the arc to the rim.

Limbs are flailing.

Mouths are agape.

Screams are happening in different tones of voices.

Sometimes it's low, sometimes it's high.

You never know how cat's voice is going to sound in an interview or during a game.

And yet, it might be my favorite Carl Anthony Towns game of all time.

It certainly is the grittiest and the toughest circumstances,

considering the circumstances.

I mean, the fourth quarter, 20 points, and it had everything.

It had a kickout three off of yet another Josh Hart rebound.

Josh Hart, the unsung hero of the game.

We'll get to that.

It had multiple drives against Miles Turner and Tony Bradley.

Tony Bradley, hello.

Kind of forgot he was on the pacers, if I'm being completely honest, until

game two.

And one of the drives, just the most classic cat drive where he's got the ball up top, some fluff is happening on the right side, like a pin down, a flare screen, and Kat stares over there in the most over-theatrical, exaggerated way, like, yes, I am going to pass the ball over there.

Tony Bradley, will you look over there?

Tony Bradley's like, no, you're not.

But and then he drives by him anyway, draws a foul.

He had a back cut for a dunk.

He had the dunk all over Andrew Nemhard's face.

Just like the full variety.

And he had one post-up where he drew a foul on Pascal Siakam.

And that was notable to me, Rob Mahoney, because it was the only possession of the game and maybe of the series in which Indiana intentionally cross-matched and put Miles Turner on Josh Hart.

and somebody else on Kat.

It's clear they don't want to do that.

I'm not sure it's clear that not wanting to do do that is the correct decision by Rick Carlisle, who makes almost only correct decisions.

And the Knicks take the lead.

Jalen Brunson picks up a fifth foul, yet another moment where you're like, oh my God, it's over.

It's going to spiral out of control.

And the Knicks hold steady and hold steady.

And then Miles Turner misses a three, which we'll talk about with like 23 seconds left in the game.

The Knicks make their goddamn free throws.

They made their goddamn free throws, and it's 2-1.

And we got a series of Rob Mahoney, all my Knicks fans, friends in Connecticut.

You got to back me up on this they're all asking me in the last two days is it over is it just done we're going to trade cat is tibbs awake like what's happening and i said look

game one they should have won obviously the home court like i guess doesn't exist anymore this team is completely capable of winning two games on the road in indiana it's like if unless they're mentally broken it looked like they might have been mentally broken and then they weren't rob mahoney what a fun weekend of hoops where do you want to start on this um

eastern Conference semifinal 90s throwback series?

What is the most important place to start as we head into the

proverbial pivotal game four?

I think the reason we have a series at all, the reason any of that stuff happened that you described to me is because in the second quarter, in the midst of that enormous Pacers run, I want to give the Knicks credit for not folding there.

for coming back and playing with incredible resilience in part because you know we give tibbs a lot of grief about the ways in which he is inflexible about the ways in which he is stuck in his own in his own ways as far as who he wants to be as a coach and how he wants his teams to play if we're gonna do that we have to also give the knicks credit when they are stubborn motherfuckers and they are resilient and they just run straight through the wall in the second half as far as yeah there's some tactical changes there's some lineup changes there's stuff happening but the knicks staying in this game after that downpour, I find to be incredibly impressive for a team that, as we talked about all throughout the regular season, had been a little rocky, had been a little uneven, didn't always seem like they were on the same page.

Josh Hart was calling people out in the media.

Mikhail Bridge is calling people out in public about the varying agendas within this team during the regular season.

You didn't see any of that in the second half.

You didn't see any of that when all of a sudden, the defensive miscues, the defensive miscommunications that were there in game two, that were such a glaring problem.

All of a sudden, a lot of that stuff got cleaned up.

A lot of that stuff got really ironed out in just the most impressive fashion possible to basically save New York's season at this stage.

And save the East playoffs and save, you know, the next 48 hours of fun talking about the series.

You mentioned the defense.

My God, did they ratchet it up

in the second half?

Just simple things like Stan Ban Gundy on the broadcast mentioned a couple of times great transition defense by the Knicks.

And it was obvious when there were circumstances.

when it looked like a jailbreak and then it wasn't.

But as he was saying that, I flashed back to the first half, I think it was the second quarter.

Kat missed a three, and there was a long rebound, but it was clear it was going to go to the Pacers.

But Kat kind of like lurched for it.

And then when he didn't get it, he did the thing where it's like, can I just keep lurching and maybe get in somebody's way or deflect the ball?

And Siakam just outran everybody and got a layup.

And it's like, that's the stuff you just can't give.

Indiana.

And the Knicks didn't do any of that.

There was no lurching.

There was no wrong step forward.

There was nothing.

And,

you know, we can talk about like what, if anything, happened to the Pacers' offense for it to get bogged down a little bit.

Um, I give a lot of credit to the Knicks defense.

They were just flying around, flying around.

Um, but I think a key stat that I haven't read all the post-game coverage.

I don't know if it's gotten enough play.

Um, first half, um,

uh, New York commits six turnovers, three of them are Indiana Steals.

Third quarter, New York commits six more turnovers.

All six are Indiana Steals.

And Indiana forced those plays, forced those steals.

Josh Hart's bringing the ball up because Brunson doesn't want to do it.

That's kind of a disaster.

There's pressure.

There's bald and out.

Credit to Indiana.

Fourth quarter, New York, two turnovers.

None of them are steals.

And I think that as much as anything, as much as Cat, as much as the Deuce McBride run, as much as Jalen Brunson coming back and making a clutch bucket, whatever, that to me was maybe the defining stat of the comeback.

They just took away.

all the easy points.

They took care of the ball.

They made sure to get a shot up.

And by the way, Indiana's superpower and Tyrese Hallerburton's superpower is they don't turn the ball over.

They are able to play fast and loose and unpredictable and random without the usual consequence of high turnovers.

They get a shot almost every time.

It's so stupid.

It's so fundamental.

And yet it's such a powerful thing.

And the Knicks were not doing that.

And then they were doing that.

And in the process, taking away, let's say, eight to 10 easy points in transition.

And that was, if you want to talk about like why the Pacers got bogged down, some of that is on the pacers.

A lot of that is like those easy points got vaporized.

For sure.

And, you know, we talk about both sides of the ball often as if they're discrete things.

I thought this game was a great reminder of the ways that offense influenced defense and vice versa.

The only reason those Knicks lineups survived that had Landry Shammond and Delon Wright and Mitchell Robinson on the floor together is because those lineups are forcing turnovers.

Like they were creating offense for groups that would not be able to score otherwise or would be incredibly reliant on like cat bailouts in some of those situations.

I think the Indiana part of that is huge in terms of their turnovers.

Like you mentioned it, they are not a team that turns the ball over.

Basically, no defense throughout these playoffs has been able to turn them over to this point, including the Knicks, until the second half of this game.

Indiana turning the ball over on 19% of its possessions in the second half.

That is higher than any of their games, any of their playoff games this year, higher than any of their games this year, other than two.

This is not something that happens to the Pacers.

I think we, again, we can get into the minutiaes, like why New York's defense was successful in doing that.

Ultimately, I think they were able to just jam them so much in terms of their normal routine ball movement.

They were navigating screens so much more effectively.

They were doing so many of the basic things at such a high level, at a real...

genuine championship level, which has not been the case for the Knicks often enough, which certainly had not been the case for them in the series.

And the Pacers are hard to play against.

And maybe the reality is it just takes you a little bit of time at minimum, to the extent that that is repeatable, to even figure out how to do it in the first place.

I did enjoy Rick Carlisle's post-game answer about, you know, why it was harder to score in the second, in the fourth quarter.

He's like, well, you know, they had more of their good defensive players or their, I think you said their best defensive players on the floor.

The flip side of that is the unsaid flip side of that is obviously like they didn't have some of their bad defensive players on the floor.

Yes.

Then you look back and like, who wasn't on the floor?

Well, Cat was on the floor the entire fourth quarter.

Brunson was not on the floor for most of the fourth quarter and you just know that there's part of it carla that's like i just

plant a little seed like i know i know brunson's playing 45 minutes if he's not in foul trouble regardless but just plant a little seed like were they harder to play against without without that sort of thing to pick at with deuce mcbride and well three good wing defenders and cat were they a little harder just just plant that little seed it's both ways too it's like Tom Thibodeau, are you sure you don't want to play Landry Sham at 42 minutes?

You know, like this was a really tough defensive front with all due credit to him.

But genuine question zach do the knicks win this game if jalen brunson is not in foul trouble because finding those minutes for those random ass defensive oriented lineups it swung the game like it changed the energy of the entire thing and if jalen brunson is out there for his normal allotment playing his normal way which is very effective on balance but not defense first as rick carlisle alluded to Do the Knicks win this?

Well, let's even broaden it out and say,

did the lineup change make a difference?

Did starting Mitchell Robinson make any difference to you?

I honestly don't know that it did.

I think it may be a subtle one and repositioning, you know, the previous starters had been bleeding points all throughout the postseason.

Everyone's been talking about it.

Repositioning their minutes to a different portion of the game, I thought, served that lineup pretty well.

Were the new starters with Mitchell Robinson like world beaters?

I thought they were good.

They were better, you know, better on balance, ultimately more effective defensively.

In the end, I thought it kind of came out in the wash, and I'm not sure it changes a huge amount about this series.

And if, you know, I'm sure once the Pacers get used to that look too with even greater frequency, they're going to find new things to attack within it.

But ultimately, like, I thought this game changed with the foul trouble for Kat and Fort Brunson.

As you said, Kat rebounded in such a huge way in the fourth quarter.

A monster, monster performance.

It's not as most explosive game as you alluded to, but just in terms of holy shit plays that Kat has made throughout his career, I thought this was just an astronomical high concentration of those plays within that stretch of time at a point when the Knicks absolutely needed it.

And he held up defensively

minus one or two hiccups where they got lucky.

And I'm thinking of Miles Turner pick and pop three that was wide open.

The Knicks are not going to send an extra defender flying at him.

And Kat kind of, he dropped on the pick and roll.

kind of took a false step backwards, lost his balance a little bit, and was super late recovering.

But other than that, and I'm thinking of the possession, I think it's all the same possession when Ananobi swats.

I think, is it Neesmith, where he just like the ball barely gets out of Niesmith's hands and he swats it into the floor?

Not a good sign for the health of your offense at that moment in time that Aaron Nismith's like, I got to go one-on-one against OG Ananobi on the block because there's six seconds left on the clock and we got nothing going on.

Well, look, I mean, I think part of what happened to the Pacers' offense, and this is what happens to offenses when they are faced with suddenly more intense and dialed-in defenses.

They lost a little bit of their zip for parts of this game.

They lost a little bit of the random.

It's like a focused randomness.

It's random.

Like guys are just going to start setting crazy screens.

And when you think the possession has reached its end point, like cat on Halliburton on a switch, no, here comes Siakam.

Screen slips out of it.

And you're like, what are we doing?

What's happening?

They lost a little bit of that.

And you mentioned Neesmith.

You know, down two points, people are going to forget about this possession.

Down two points, Brunson comes right back in the game, scores to put the Knicks up 100 to 98.

I'm looking at the play-by-play now.

Next possession, a minute to go.

Tyrese Halliburton runs a staggered pick and roll, I think, gets cat on him.

Okay, that's good.

Seems like a good place to start.

There's like 13 on the shot clock.

Kicks it out, doesn't get it back.

And the play ends with Neesmith.

taking a runner against Jalen Brunson from the corner.

And you're like, there were a few possessions like that.

And in particular, late in the third quarter when the Knicks scratched back into the game, where it was like Pacers kind of lost the plot a little bit on offense.

And in that late third quarter, now I'm getting scattered, but in that late third quarter, there's about a minute where Halliburton and Siakam sit at the same time.

And I'm watching the game.

I'm like, that's just a red alert.

No, it's just a no, you can't do it.

And immediately the offense stalls out.

There's like an illegal screen.

There's a top in back down against Shamet that goes, it's an offensive foul.

And then they bring Siakam back into the game like a minute later.

Like, okay, we obviously need one of these guys in the game.

And TJ McConnell, who admitted kind of in that between quarters interview, like I kind of rushed it a little bit, just kind of played as if Siakam was still not on the floor and was just running around taking crazy shots.

Mitchell Robinson blocked him at the rim.

It's like,

settle it down.

But that you mentioned the Neesmith floor.

But anyway,

on that same play where Ananobi stuffs Niesmith, it starts with back-to-back Halliburton Turner picking rolls.

And Kat

navigates both of them okay.

And the second one in particular, he drops back.

Miles Turner short rolls.

And Kat,

this is all you got to do.

Don't get out of position and get big with your arms.

And the pocket pass isn't there.

And they have to reset.

And it ends in that.

And that's all I'm asking out of Kat.

Just like you're not a great defensive player.

You're never going to be.

But get big and don't lurch.

And he did enough of that in the fourth quarter.

Great fourth.

Obviously, it's a great fourth quarter for Kat.

Phenomenal.

And to your point, to the point about the Robinson adjustment, he plays no minutes in the fourth quarter.

No.

None.

And that's sort of the push and pull of Kat in one game.

Like we start Mitchell Robinson over Josh Hart, and Kat now shifts to the four.

And he's kind of a spacer in a lot of possessions.

We're going to screen and roll with Robinson.

That's worked.

Kat's a little bit marginalized on offense, but you take the trade-off for what it does to your defense.

And you take the, a lot of it is also just about separating Hart and Robinson for spacing purposes.

But a lot of it, some of it is Kat shifts to the four, and that's better for your defense.

It's also worse for his offense.

In the long run, probably worse for your offense.

Season on the line, we go back to Kat at the five, and it works.

And maybe one of the reasons it survives defensively is that Brunson, to your point, is also not on the four.

But that's like, that's the push and pull of Kat that we've been dealing with his entire career.

It's why the Wolves traded for Rudy Gobert.

He's just such a fascinating player.

And credit to him, they put him back at the five.

He, he figured it out.

He usually figures out how to score at the four.

He didn't really in this game, but it's, I don't really know what the, who would you start?

Like, who, I guess they're going to start.

Usually you win and you just say, we're going to start the lineup that we won with.

I guess they'll start with that again.

I think I would start it again.

I think one change I would make was, I don't understand why Tibbs is stretching.

Mitchell Robinson's stints to the degree that they are.

Like Cat went out first in the first quarter.

Mitchell Robinson stays in the game.

This is a player whose entire value is based on balls to the wall energy, like high energy rebounding style.

If you give Mitchell Robinson shorter bursts, I think he's all the more effective.

And this is one of the ways in which this game, while undeniably impressive, there's some factors that have some diminishing returns I'm a little concerned about from New York's perspective.

Like this is just too much, a little too much Mitchell Robinson, I think overall.

Like you're really stretching him to his limit.

I think you saw in the second half, like some of the diminishing returns with his defense specifically, I was blown away by the Landry Shamut, Delon Wright minutes.

How reliable is that going to be going forward?

Is that the kind of thing that wins you the one crucial playoff game and swings it in a way you need to?

Or is one of those like actual rotation ballast in a way that New York needs?

And overall, like with that starting five,

are you repositioning their minutes within the game?

Are they still going to play minutes?

Like I would say they played with some of their best concentrated minutes in this game, probably throughout the playoffs.

It was about four minutes, right?

Like, are those guys going to play together or continue to in any meaningful capacity?

Those are some things for New York I'm kind of of like have my eye on, but there's so much to work with defensively in terms of the energy and communication they played with.

That's kind of what you have to hang your hat on for them.

So the Wright Shamut minutes are super interesting to me because I know there was like a subset of New York fans that were clamoring for this.

And it felt to me like

sometimes it sounds smart when you just say like, play the guy who's not playing.

Like it's a very obvious adjustment to suggest.

I'm not really sure either.

I mean, Shamett made one big three, and that's what he's on the floor to do.

I don't think the Pacers were really focused enough on targeting him on defense, and that would change if he plays again.

Well, he did.

Like, he's a decent lock and trail type defender.

And so, when we're, when we're, I think one of the crucial parts of the Knicks staying so connected defensively and being so disruptive to the Pacers' offense was they didn't give up easy switches.

They made the Pacers earn those switches, and they did it by strategically going under against guys like McConnell, for example.

But also finally, I mean,

it's been right there in front of you the whole time.

I want to say this now before I forget.

Please.

They lost game two in the McConnell minutes.

I mean, you can figure out whether you can criticize the Brunson three at the end of the game.

I'm going to talk about that shot later.

If you want to boil down to me, where did that game get away from the Knicks?

It's not knowing how to guard McConnell.

And it's like you should go under screens against McConnell.

To his credit, he makes that more difficult than it should be.

And he makes little short jumpers and he beats you to the spot last night.

He played well again when they were going under.

But there is no need to blitz TJ McConnell, which is what they did over and over again.

I think late in the third, early in the fourth, game two.

Maybe it's late in the second, early.

I think it's late in the third, early in the fourth.

And their whole defense, and they had Mitchell Robinson and Kat on the floor at the same time for a lot of this.

When you do that, you're asking big guys to rotate around the floor.

And the Pacers are like, you can't keep up.

Ben Shepard, random cut, Siakam three.

Siakam, random cut, Ben Shepard three.

And I'm sitting there watching.

It's like, why are you treating him TJ McConnell like Steph Curry?

Just play a softer, calmer defense.

And honestly, look, the Knicks fans will sit here and say, we should be up 3-0.

You could do the should be, would-be, any direction you want.

Of course.

Absolutely should have won game one.

Like, that's just an literally, it was a one.

It broke win probability skills.

It was a 100% win probability game they lost.

Game two,

they kind of, you know, they got back into it at the end, but the Pacers built a 9-10 point lead.

To me, me, they lost that game in those minutes.

And that's why the playoffs are so interesting because every rotation decision is important and every rotation decision is magnified.

Every three-minute stretch,

even the ones you don't remember, like that to me is where they lost that game.

Sorry, TJ, you were talking about TJ McConnell and I got mad because I couldn't believe how they were guarding that stuff.

No, rightly so.

And they almost lost it again.

Like McConnell had a really productive first stint.

And then by the end of it and into the second stint, you're not quite getting the same results from TJ McConnell because the Knicks have changed the way they're guarding it.

They've changed the way they're guarding, period.

I think going under selectively, I mean, they even got away with it on guys like Halliburton or Nemhart here and there, just like very selective.

We don't think you're taking the pull-up in this exact moment.

We're going to shoot the under and try to get on the other side.

And they got away with it.

But also kind of with those switches, trying to get through it and switching if they have to.

And that's like, that's a really high wire act in terms of the execution of that.

We saw in game two, the ways it doesn't work.

I thought the switching in game two was almost like conflict avoidant.

They were just like, I'm going to pass this off because because this is what we've agreed we're going to do, but we don't switch enough to actually communicate this effectively.

Oh, wait, Miles Turner's open for a dunk disaster.

In this game, there's a lot more fight, trying to fight through it, stall it out, string out the possession.

At least it's kind of forcing the Knicks to stay connected on the perimeter.

Like they're having to step up into the switch rather than step back into the switch.

And that kind of thing, I think, honestly helps a lot.

Helps.

stall the possessions out for the pacers a little bit, helps keep them engaged defensively on the perimeter.

It also, if you can fight through through that stuff and avoid all of the random switches that indiana's like movement will put you through it keeps your defense intact like it keeps it in the shape it's supposed to be in and so then when you look at oh why are the knicks rotating so effectively why are they closing out so effectively it's because everyone's where they're supposed to be and mitchell robinson isn't out 25 feet from the basket all of a sudden like those layering changes i think have a real impact on like overall the knicks ability to execute the defensive game plan that they wanted to and even when they weren't where they where they were supposed to be be, their effort was just outrageous.

And I'm thinking particularly of, I think it was like 220 left in the game.

A possession that ends with Miles Turner missing like a 30-foot three.

It's a Halliburton-Turner pick and roll, and Turner pops open.

And both Bridges, who is guarding Halliburton, and I think Kat, who is on Turner, sprint to Miles Turner.

That's a breakdown.

That's a mistake.

That's two guys rotating in one place.

And you're like, well, that's death.

I mean, that's what Indiana does.

They break you down.

They make you panic.

They make, they make with their speed, they make you uncertain and they make you second guess what you think you should do.

And two guys go to Turner.

Well, that's bad.

And they rotated out of it with such precision and urgency.

Like Kat went all the way back and found Siakam.

Siakum's guy went one up one spot and found Nemhart.

Nemhard's guy went up one spot and found Halliburton.

And the possession died.

And it's like, even when they weren't where they were supposed to be,

they ended up in good enough position to get stops.

You mentioned Robinson diminishing returns.

What did you mean by that?

I think the longer you play him, the harder it is for him to be at his utmost effectiveness, like any player, but especially with him.

Like he's, for one, I think getting into better condition as the playoffs go on clearly.

But this isn't a guy who had a full regular season of conditioning.

This is somebody who's been thrown into the mix late in the game.

And you can see the longer he plays individual stints, I think his effectiveness tapers off a little bit.

And overall, the deeper you get into some of these games, his effectiveness tapers off a little bit.

And so I just, I worry a little bit about 28, 29-minute Mitchell Robinson versus 18 to 22-minute Mitchell Robinson.

And a lot of that depends on how good Kat is.

A lot of that depends on, as we said, the push and pull of his foul trouble, his defense, his shot making, whether he's driving as effectively as he did in this game against Turner specifically.

And that, that honestly might have been the big lever for Rick Carlisle as far as finally getting that cross match you were talking about up top.

It's like Kat driving against Miles Turner was so effective and finishing through contact.

That's such a huge thing.

If Kat's doing all that stuff, I don't know that you need as much Mitchell Robinson, but clearly they need to fill out the rotation in some way.

He's going to have to play big minutes in this series.

I'm not saying he shouldn't.

I'm just wary of pushing those minutes a little bit too far.

Well, there was one, I mean, I'd have to go re-watch the whole game, but there was one like late in his stint in the first quarter.

I think he plays like the first 11 minutes of the first quarter or something like that.

There was one possession getting back on defense where you could see Huffing and Puffin.

He could not get back.

And the Pacers, someone got a dunk out of it.

And it's like, he's gassed.

He's gassed 10 minutes.

And he should like,

he's going from zero to like a thousand

in this series.

Josh Hart,

you mentioned, you know, who's going to play when, how much of this,

how much rearranging are you really doing?

He comes off the bench and ends up playing 34 minutes in all the most important minutes of the game.

Yep.

Everyone has focused on the rebound he got at the end of the game on the Miles Turner potential go-ahead three, where he stores in and snags a contested rebound.

And that's just like what, in real time, I was like, that's a good rebound.

It's just like a Josh Hart play.

And I mentioned the off anytime what Josh Hart has to do in this series, and he did it to a T in this game, is when they help off of him and they're going to.

He has to get offensive rebounds.

And they got two major kickout threes on Josh Hart being ignored.

One was Ananobi, who quietly four of six from three, and every single one of them felt like a a life raft when they went in.

And then Towns got one late in the game.

And I just like, and he had another play.

He just puts out these little fires.

Like the Pacers ran this floppy action on the baseline where like shooters were intersecting.

It was Matherin.

Oh my God, Matherin.

Oh, he's minus 30, I think, in 41 minutes in the series.

Yeah,

minus 31 in 40 minutes, I transpose it.

And getting played off the floor.

Yeah.

He's playing January basketball right now, like just completely out of his mind.

And they went super big for for a couple stretches in the last two games.

I wonder if we'll see Jaris Walker.

But anyway, so they're dancing around the baseline, and the Knicks screw up.

And someone's, I think Matherin's coming open.

Josh Hart's on Siakam.

Josh Hart darts off Siakam to like put out the Matherin fire for just a second.

Ben Shepard has the ball and he's like, oh, Siakum's open underneath.

I'm going to enter the ball to him.

Josh Hart flies back, deflects the entry pass in the air, steal, and I think Kat gets a trail dunk out of it.

Did you make a noise when Kat hit the inverted pick and roll three where he kicked his leg out and it was like that went in?

What happened?

Like, I like that was that was, I mean, it's cat.

That's the all-cat, the whole full cat experience.

That one rolled in, too.

It was, it was like the ball wasn't even sure and wanted to exactly corkscrew down on that.

But

the audacity of Kat's shots, and I think his assertiveness inside and out, again, is really one of the central reasons why the Knicks won this game.

His ability to carry some of those lineups with Brunson out,

even when Brunson was in, to act as like a really effective counterpoint.

You mentioned those two Josh Hart kickouts.

The one for me was the Cat kick out specifically.

That was the first possession of the fourth quarter.

Josh Hart pulled down that board among like three different pacers.

And rather than go straight up as many players would do, he finds cat for that three, cuts the game to single digits.

I don't think it's ever quite the same after that.

Like you saw the slow deterioration in the fourth quarter of kind of the pacers' offense and their flow and their rhythm.

But a lot of that transition play is undercut by guys like Josh Hart crashing the offensive glass.

Obviously, it's one of the best deterrents to getting teams out and running.

I think to look at Josh Hart's box score contributions, eight points, 10 rebounds, four assists does not tell the half of what he did.

And I mean, for one, four of those eight points were game-sealing free throws, as you mentioned up top, the kind that the Nick Nation has not been.

I think Knicks Nation must have been, not just for just any Nick.

It wouldn't have mattered who was at the line, except maybe Brunson, who also makes two.

I don't know how you even watch the screen if you're a Knicks fan after what happened in game one.

A lot of activated trauma, but you know, he's helping people to heal.

Uh, and so to have those points be as crucial as they were, and all 10 of those rebounds, not just that one spectacular grab, are high-leverage, crucial rebounds.

Like what Josh Hart does, it's absolutely what he does.

It's the reason why you deal with the fact that he's not being guarded, while you deal with some of the quirks of his game, while you try to make time and make a place for a player like that.

Because when it comes down to it, you want him on the floor.

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Going forward,

let's start here.

When the Knicks are quote, small/slash normal, when Kat's the only big on the floor,

and Hart is on the floor, if you're the Pacers coaching staff,

do you make an adjustment and put Turner on Hart and someone else on Kat, Siakam probably on Kat to try to take away the drives, the pick and pop threes?

Which is not really getting a lot of those, but you know, that's been the smart team counter to Kat all season, and the Pacers have been resistant to doing it.

I think because of what, in part, the first time they did it, Kat bowled over Siakam and drew a foul.

I think Siakam can hang in that matchup.

I think I would dabble in it a little bit more.

Would you?

I would too.

I think for as plausible as it is that Siakam might foul Kat on one of those drives, what you're trying to not give up is what Turner gave up, which is the first step turned the corner momentum.

And I thought Miles is a really good defender.

He's done well in this series overall.

He's had an amazing playoff run.

I think there's a lot to commend about the way he's been playing.

Guarding up to the three-point line in the face of a guy like Kat is not his strongest suit.

And you can see him be out of his depth a little bit on that first step.

And Kat is then getting the momentum that's allowing him to make these other plays.

Siakam is going to give up some strength.

He's going to give up some size.

There's going to be plays where Towns makes it look really easy.

There's also going to be the other Towns plays where he makes everything look very, very hard and elbows Pascal Siakim in the face and it's a turnover going the other way.

Jalen Brunson is the best player on this team, but Towns is such a great avatar for the chaos incarnate New York Knicks.

Like everything is a double-edged sword.

Everything is dramatic.

Like it's always going to be riding on the edge of something.

And I think you want to lean into that by putting Pascal on him more.

It's amazing that within games,

my brain, my irrational, like emotionally into the game brain is swinging from like, well, they got to look at trading cat this offseason too.

Kat's the most important player on the team and they're dead in the water without him.

Just for the record, I don't care about the officiating stuff generally.

I do want to say I thought I mentioned the challenge that Carlisle took in the second quarter that turned a cat and one over Halliburton, where he drove him from the corner.

And this is what I mentioned: the grittiness of cat.

Twice in this game, you could see him tempted to do the jab step three-pointer from the corner, once with Halliburton, once with Turner.

And both times he was like, you know what?

It's the freaking playoffs, man.

We just need some buckets.

We need some points.

I'm going to power through these guys.

And he powers through Halliburton, dunks, and one.

They take forever to shoot a free throw and give the Pacers enough time to challenge the play.

And it turns into a nullified and one and Kat's third foul for hooking Halliburton.

I thought that should have stood.

I thought Halliburton fouled him first.

I just want to say for the record, I thought Halliburton fouled him first.

Kat's arm might be coming up.

It also might be coming up in response to the fact that Halliburton's already grabbing it.

I thought that was a bad overturn and screwed the Knicks.

I thought Brunson's fifth foul should have been a charge on Nemhart.

Agree on that one one for sure.

And I couldn't believe they lost that challenge.

So I do think the Knicks, a little bit of a tough whistle from the replay perspective last night.

That fifth foul on Brunson, obviously a huge swing play.

Takes him out of the game.

I also want to say, as far as like the rebounding and rebounding within this game goes, Cat obviously had the early foul treble, bounced back in such a huge way in the fourth quarter.

Deuce McBride came in this game in the first half and committed three fouls in like 90 seconds.

It's like, okay, you're done.

You're out of here.

Get out of Deuce McBride.

Him coming back and having such a huge impact on this game, just a phenomenal story within the larger story.

Like the reason that Jalen Brunson played two minutes and 45 seconds of the fourth quarter and the Knicks fucking won.

Like that just does not happen.

Obviously, it just has not happened very often because why would you ever take Jalen Brunson off the floor?

But part of the reason why he didn't come back until I think it was 137 left is because the Deuce lineups were working.

Like you're trying to protect Jalen Brunson's voucher trouble, but also there's the Tom Thibodeauian urge to just like, let's let's just ride this thing out.

And why would you mess with something as effective as the Deuce McBride lineups that were carrying the Knicks home in the fourth quarter?

And it was mostly defense for him, other than the third quarter, late third quarter, where he hits a step back three, a baseline two, draws a foul.

It's like, okay, Deuce McBride, 7-0 run.

Just completely changed the game with Indiana's offense again, losing the plot just enough.

to give the Knicks some life.

I want to go back to the Turner on Hart thing.

Yeah, please.

Because

one of the reasons that i would make that adjustment at least part of the time is you know they're toggling halliburton between heart and bridges and i'm trying to find a common through line of like why he's guarding bridges sometimes and heart sometimes and i haven't found out what the coaching staff is thinking maybe it's random i don't know but if he's going to be guarding bridges like if you're not hiding halliburton on heart i don't see any reason why you wouldn't put Turner on Hart.

Now, if you have to, if you decide I've got to hide Halliburton on Hart all the time, that obviously takes away that card.

And Siakamontowns also means I can keep Neesmith on Brunson, which is like Brunson.

Nemhart's great.

He's a great defender.

He's a great help defender.

Brunson just, it's like he's not even there.

I don't know what it is about that matchup, but Nemhart is awesome against most of the league and against Brunson.

He just, he can't do it.

So I'm leaning into that.

By the way, for the record,

for the playoffs, the Knicks with the two bigs on the floor are plus 28 and 120 minutes.

And this series, just plus four in 30 minutes.

What else are you watching for in game four?

Adjustment-wise, counter-wise, anything-wise?

One, this is a crackpot idea.

I'm just throwing it out there.

I love crackpot ideas.

As far as the question of where to put Tyrese Halliburton on the floor, I think we've seen with Mikhail Bridges too, and this may be part of the reason they've been yo-yoing that matchup a little bit, is the Knicks have been pretty good about finding Mikhail for like little post-ups against Halliburton, specifically when they're playing smaller, like when Cat is the five.

If the Knicks are going to start big again, Mitchell Robinson Robinson and Cat on the floor, I don't think putting Halliburton on OG Ananobi is the craziest thing I've ever heard because OG is going to be glued to that corner.

Like he is going to be on the perimeter.

Now, are the Knicks willing to reroute their entire offense to feed OG Ananobi on the block against Halliburton?

Maybe, but maybe that's the kind of rerouting you might want if you're the Pacers.

And like, I'm not saying they should do it.

I'm saying it's worth throwing up on the wall and investigating and having a conversation about.

I think it's a great call.

It's because he was on OG Ananobi early early in the game in that alignment.

And I wrote down immediately, or I typed out immediately, like they got to find a way to exploit that.

And maybe you're right.

Maybe that's actually the wrong answer.

Maybe that's the low-hanging fruit the Pacers want you to take.

But I don't even think it needs to be post-ups.

And it's harder to post anybody up when Mitchell Robinson's on the floor because they're helped defenders there.

Could be running him off pin downs.

It's just like I'm making him work.

Somehow I'm making him work and I'm using that size advantage

as much as I can.

For the Pacers,

you know the how the the non-halliburton minutes are getting dicey um

they're plus 10 with plus 12 rather with haliburton minus 10 without him which is not bad but um i do think i don't know where the line is right now it's like i kind of want

the way matherin's playing um

i like they have these lineups where it's like haliburton and four bench guys and i'm like that's just not enough juice around haliburton and ditto for like siakum and even if it's three bench guys and one other starter, like I think it's funny because the Pacers are such an egalitarian team.

Like last year, the takeaway was they're so deep, there's not as much difference between their starters and their bench, which is both good and bad.

Like it spoke to maybe they need one more high-end talent in the door to truly, truly contend, but also depth is good.

It feels like the gap between the starters and the bench is a little wider this year than it was last year.

And as a result, like I, the line for me is like over under two and a half starters on the floor at all times.

And I kind of want it to be over.

Especially in the conference finals.

Like you can get away with that stuff in the earlier rounds.

You can obviously get away with it in the regular season, but you've got to button up those minutes and you have to protect these guys ultimately.

Like I think, frankly, the minutes in which Tony Bradley and TJ McConnell on the floor are on the floor together, just get them out.

Like Tyrese Halliburton needs to be the point guard on the floor in those minutes.

Ideally, you want Siakam out there too.

Like Tony Bradley is a huge concession to put out there.

If you're going to do that, you need to have offsetting offense.

So I think there's a lot of like small ways they can sort of rejigger the rotation to make things like that happen.

They are harder within this game when Aaron Niesmith leaves in the third quarter with the ankle sprain.

Yeah.

And when Andrew M.

Parker,

thank God he came back.

Because by the way, the fact that in the year of our Basketball Gods 2025, the Indiana Pacers crowd is chanting Aaron Neesmith to like lift his spirits.

Yeah.

It's just what a nice playoff moment that was.

Despite that, I mean, he was injured, so it's not nice, but like that he has become worthy of such love from a great fan base is awesome.

It's absolutely awesome.

And this is the conundrum of the Pacers, though.

You know, the Knicks have their own relative identity crises at times that they have to deal with with Jalen Brunson and Kat not being the defenders you might want them to be.

And like, do you want them on the floor here?

Do you, how do you use them here?

How do you protect them?

For the Pacers, it's kind of the opposite problem, which is what makes them so good is that they don't really have specialists.

They just have good role players who can do lots of different stuff.

And you neutralize that when you nuke their momentum, right?

The movement, the playmaking, that collective

overall sense of dynamicism that they bring.

And really what the Knicks did in the fourth quarter and down the stretch of this game was they stalled out all of that stuff to a degree that it just became Pascal Siakim attacking mismatches and Tyrese Halliburton occasionally getting some jumpers against the drop.

That was really the entire Pacer offense.

And then desperation shots that were late in the clock.

Like those were the three categories.

And if that's the case, the Knicks are going to win because Jalen Brunson and Kat are better at doing those exact things than Pascal, Siaka, and Tyrese Halliburton are.

You need the collective movement.

Like you need the collective juice to make it all work.

And Halliburton is the best player in the league at creating that and engendering that among a team.

But it's, you know, you take away the transition play, you guard the screens a little bit more effectively, you make your defense a little bit more watertight.

And then all of a sudden, it's Aaron Neesmith bailouts against OGN and Obi, and your possessions are going nowhere.

You mentioned Halliburton against the drop.

And it's so interesting the contrast between

two of the star point guards in this round, Shea Gildis-Alexander and Halliburton.

Shea Gildis-Alexander versus the drop is like,

we're going to talk about this series briefly, but like Minnesota's entire defense is geared around take mid-range shots.

And Oklahoma City is like, cool, we have the best mid-range shooter in the NBA.

You're going to have to tweak that a little bit or you're dead.

The Knicks, both last playoffs and this playoffs, they want to turn Tyrese Halliburt into a dribbler.

That's what they want.

Like you will never see them or almost any other team blitz Tyrese Halliburton because that is just going to get the machine moving and the passes moving.

And that's what you don't want.

They want Tyrese Halliburton dribbling, like trying to get a guy on his hip, doing the kinds of stuff that...

other point guards like you're that's where they're most dangerous that and tyrese haliburton is still dangerous made a couple floaters last night he made a step step back two.

He hit one off the glass.

But they want to turn him into a dribbler in traffic and make him almost go against his nature as a scorer.

And

it's interesting to watch.

Can we do a segment about

old men yelling at clouds?

I mean, I would love nothing more.

Okay, this is presented by Abe Simpson, Old Man Yelling at Clouds.

Present sponsored by The Simpsons.

Miles Turner attempts a three with 23 seconds left.

I think the Pacers are down two last night at that moment, right?

Is that right?

Am I, yes?

No.

Yeah.

Yeah,

they're down by two points.

The possession starts with Tyrese Halliburton drawing a switch of Mitchell Robinson, driving Mitchell Robinson, and then U-turning, doing the, we're going to have to call this like the Tyrese turn.

And then it ends up in Miles Turner missing a three.

And I saw some, after the game, I like to check a box score, sip a glass of wine, look at my notes, look at what the world is saying about the game, smart people that I like to follow.

And there was some angst about, once again, a team down two, a shoes, a layup for a three.

Did you have any problems with that shot by Miles Turner and that process of that possession?

That U-turn, you're talking about the U-turn in this game, right?

Not the game two U-turn.

The crazy one where I almost, I think, died and then was resurrected.

Yeah,

the game two U-turn is almost a separate thing because once you saw the different camera angles, Tyrese actually like loses control of the ball on his drive, which makes sense why he would then U-turn.

This one did bug me a little bit.

And

I don't hate it because we've seen what happens when other guards drive on Mitchell Robinson.

Like it doesn't always go great for them.

And frankly, he's blocked Tyrese Halliburton on drives in this series.

It's not something that's out of Tyrese's mind.

I'm cool with it within the flow of the offense.

I think the reason it bugged me was within the greater complexion of this game.

I thought Halliburton was a little too passive.

I thought there were moments where he should have been taking shots overall.

And so then when you're stacking on top of that, doing a physical U-turn to take yourself out of the lane, conceptually, I understand it.

Like you're pulling Mitchell Robinson out.

You're throwing the Knicks defense for a loop.

You're doing all the things that the pacers usually do so effectively.

But instinctively, in the moment, I have to admit, it did bother me a little bit.

Interesting.

It didn't bother me in the moment.

And it still doesn't really bother me now.

Tell me about him.

So I rewatched it a couple of times this morning.

So he beats Mitchell Robinson off the dribble.

Now, as you mentioned, Mitchell Robinson is very tall and very fast.

Yes.

He gets into the lane, and Siakam is cutting across the paint, and he's in the paint, which means OG Ananobi is now in the way.

OG Ananobi steps up into Tyrese Halliburton's driving path.

Yeah.

And that's why the U-turn happens, I think.

And OG Ananobi is like a big, scary guy.

And if you slow down a little bit, well, the other big, scary guy is coming from behind.

Now, is there a moment where maybe there's a drop-off to Siakam underneath the rim for a layup?

You freeze it at the right moment, and it looks like there is.

But if that pass is made, Mitchell Robinson is veering over to Pascal Siakam.

It is going to be a pain.

I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it.

If it goes in, I don't think obviously no one is complaining about it at all.

It did not go in.

So we disagree a little bit there.

That's okay.

I'm not yelling at the cloud.

You can still yell at the cloud.

I will stand on the cloud and you can yell at me from down below.

I'm not sure.

Normally,

like with the Celtics in those Knicks games where they're, hey, we're up 25.

Let's take a three with 18 on the shot clock and like no one under the basket.

It's like, actually, maybe you should take a two.

Maybe you should take a one.

Just get fouled and take a one.

That's good enough.

There was even more.

Like I had Nick fan.

This is the best part about living in the New York metro area when the Knicks are finally good.

All my buddies.

who don't really follow the NBA very closely are texting me just scorching takes throughout the game.

And like, so I pick up my phone after the game, and it's just

scorcher after scorcher.

Like, Tibbs is done.

Like, they're just awesome takes.

They all hated the Brunson shot.

Um,

down to they're down two in that, in that circumstance, right in game two.

I didn't down two.

The quick, long three you're talking about.

The quick, long three, which I rewatched this morning.

Uh, I want to get the timestamp exactly right, so bear with me.

Uh, that that that I here it is.

Uh, Neesmith makes, oh, they're, you know, I kneesmith makes two free throws to put them up three.

So the Pacers are up three.

Brunson runs up the court and launches a three with 9.9 seconds left over a decent contest from Neesmith.

It misses.

Turner fouled on the rebound.

Game over.

Did you have a problem with, and I got like terrible shot, awful shot.

What are they thinking?

What did you think of that shot?

This one did not bother me so much.

I get the time.

complaint.

Like you have some to work with here.

I would say for the New York Knicks offense, more time is not always good.

This is a team that we've seen Jalen Brunson in some of these situations included, get trapped at the wrong time, have a huge defender in his face and be unable to get off, especially when you need a three specifically.

I was okay with it.

It's a clean enough shot in a crucial situation for a great pull-up shooter.

And so I'm okay with that.

I don't think you're ever going to get a great look under those circumstances.

Could he have taken a little more time to try to find something sure, but I'm just not sold that that would have been a better outcome.

My friends are wrong.

That was a fine shot.

There's nothing wrong with that shot.

Down two, that would have been a questionable shot.

Down three, like you may not,

what is the thing?

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Like you don't have time to search for perfect.

Like that's a good shot down three.

They've clearly made a decision.

They're not going to foul you.

You might not get a better shot than that.

The previous possession, which ends in a Josh Hart layup to cut the lead to one with 14 seconds left.

They dribbled the air out of the ball for damn near the entire shot clock in that possession down by three.

I had actually more, even though they scored, I had much more of a problem with the process of that possession than I did Brunson taking that three.

That concludes old man yelling at Cloud.

We had a lot of big picture topics teed up for this in the event of a Pacers win.

The Pacers did not win.

I think we're going to table those for another day.

Any parting thoughts on this series as we move to a...

Super exciting game four in Indiana.

I mean, I fucking love it.

I love the chaos that this series has now presented.

I love that we have, you know, there's no such thing as a normal Knicks game.

There's no such thing as a normal Pacers game.

There's certainly no such thing as a normal Knicks Pacers game.

Like, this is just what it's going to be, and I'm here for it.

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was queer.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's going to tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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All right, time for a little MLB interlude.

One of the very last things I wrote at Grantland, and I didn't want to write it, and thank God I did, was what it felt like in 2015 living.

in Queens as a lapsed Mets fan, as the Mets with what Mike Francesa, I'll never forget, driving in the car, called the best young pitching staff he's ever seen in his life, made the World Series and then lost to the Kansas City Royals.

Can't get mad at that.

One of my best friends from college, shout out Kevin, is a big Royals fan.

Can't get mad at a small market team ever winning the World Series in baseball.

And just what it felt like being out after

the Mets.

I mean, most people who listen to this probably know I was an absolutely insane Mets fan my entire life until maybe age 25, 26,

when life just kind of got in the way.

I became an NBA writer.

And when you're fully invested in one sport, just becomes a little harder to

put your emotional frame of mind into another sport.

It becomes a harder sell to your family.

Like, hey, I watch basketball 10 months a year all the time.

I'm going to watch baseball now.

Then you have like a marriage and a kid and all your time just disappears.

And you blink your eye.

And before you know it, you don't even know who's on the team anymore.

And then they're in the World Series.

You live in Queens.

People all around you are wearing Mets stuff and you're like, oh, I don't even know who like these pitchers are.

Syndegar, the guy with the hair, I don't know who that is.

Terry Collins shopped at my same grocery store in Queens and I had no idea, just no clue.

College me would have been a shame.

And in that piece for Grantlin in 2015, I wrote just my advice to younger sports fans as you get older, don't lose touch.

Life's going to get in the way.

Life's going to complicate your fandom you're not going to be able to just be like i'm carving out three hours a night now to watch the mets every single night to watch your team every single night which is what i did i watched every single mets game when i was home every one die hard insane i've said before on this podcast if the baseball gods had come to me before the subway series in 2000 and said we will allow the mets to win if you let us with no anesthesia chop off your right thumb.

I would have been like, cool, I don't need it.

Like, I'll take, I'll take the win.

and I said in that piece, don't lose touch.

It's like, check the box score every day, even if that's all you do, check the box score, have it on in the background for an inning, go to one game, just be in touch so that when your childhood team hits the top again, you're invested, you feel like you're part of it.

Cause, goddamn, it hurt to be out.

And guess what?

I didn't take my own advice in that piece, and I continued to be out of touch with the Mets and just didn't know who was on the team, didn't take my own advice, didn't invest, invest, didn't check box stores, didn't do anything.

And

then I got laid off from ESPN on September something, 2024, right as the Mets were unbeknownst to me becoming like, I guess, the feel-good story in baseball.

They had little fun acronyms, they had signs, they had theme songs, they had Timmy Trumpet, they had Grimace, like just a lot was going on.

And then I thought, you know what?

I may be out,

but I can come back in because I got nothing nothing to do.

I got nothing to do.

And it came back so easily.

Alonzo hits that home run against the Brewers.

I'm screaming in my house.

I don't know Pete Alonzo from anything.

I've missed his whole goddamn career.

I don't know half the players on the team, but I'm in.

And I made a vow, and I've talked about this on the podcast.

During that time, I'm going to actually take my advice this time.

I'm going to check the box score.

I'm going to have the, I have a TV in my office right over here.

If it's the A thing and it's close, I'll pop it on in the background.

At the very least, I'll pop it on in the background.

I could pause King's pistons and just look over and just, oh, okay, that guy's in the game.

I like him.

Batty, Batty, how do I pronounce his name?

I like him.

I'm going to be in.

And then

about a month ago, I went to a fundraiser

for the YMCA and there was a silent auction.

And one of the items on the silent auction was four tickets behind home plate for Mets Dodgers on May 24th, which was two days ago.

And I looked at the bid.

The bid was like, you know, anything of that nature is going to be a considerable amount of money.

I'm like, I'm going to make the minimum bid.

I'm going to be the first bidder.

I'm going to make the minimum bid.

And I knew that it was going to be a Western Conference finals game.

And I was like, there was part of my soul that was like, I can't, I don't know.

I can't.

What if, what if, you know, Shay Gil Salt underscores 70 points and Bill wants to go live on a podcast or who knows what could happen.

I was like, you know what?

Stop.

Just bid on it and see what happens.

No one else bid.

I won.

I totally forgot about it, had some drinks, played some charity poker, woke up the next morning.

I was like, oh, that's right.

The auction.

I won the auction.

So Saturday night, four tickets.

I took my dad, who's 82 years old and is an even crazier baseball fan, not a Mets fan.

He's a Red Sox fan.

I wanted to be a Red Sox fan.

I wrote about this for Grantland when I was a little boy.

And my dad said to me, I don't think you should do that.

It's going to be a life of pain for you.

And this was before the 1986 World Series, which really divided our house.

And he just said, you know, look, I would suggest maybe the local National League team.

Your mother's from Pittsburgh, maybe the Pirates, just not the Yankees.

Can't do the Yankees.

So I became a Mets fan.

The Mets became awesome and won the World Series, deep playoff runs.

Then they were bad for a while.

We'll get to that.

So I took my dad, my wife, who

thinks she's been to one baseball game, but she's from Europe.

Baseball is just like not a thing there.

And my daughter, who's never been to a baseball game.

Four tickets, fifth row.

Otani is 15 feet from us.

And

my God, first of all, I want to thank the Mets because I hit some of their PR people.

I said, hey, I don't know if anyone cares about the NBA, but I'm coming to the game.

They let us go on the field before the game.

I got photos of us on the field, not on the field field, just like behind home plate.

And then Zach Weber, one of their PR guys,

left for a second.

I was like, hold on for a second.

Comes back with a ball that Soto had hit during batting practice, gives it to my daughter, along with a cup full of

like chunks of gum, wrapped up chunks of gum for her.

And she said, Well, I'm more excited about the gum than the ball.

I said, get excited about the ball.

Now she's excited about the ball because she saw Soto.

She saw Sodo hit a ball off the right, off the right field wall with the bases loaded.

She thinks Juan Soto is awesome.

She has the ball.

She's a Mets fan forever.

Thank you to the Mets.

That was such a special experience.

And I was like.

Just right back into it.

Like Diaz comes in, the trumpet song playing, the lights are out.

I'm standing up.

He mows through Bets.

He mows through Freeman.

I'm doing the punch out sign sign in the fourth row.

I can hear the guys behind me who are season ticket holders and they're just diehard.

They're talking about like, well, you know,

Beatty went two of five last night.

I really think he's coming on.

And, you know, oh, Vientos is going to pinch in today, I think, you know, blah, blah, blah.

This dude, I can't remember his name, got called up from the minors.

He was doing this in the minors.

And the community aspect of it got to me.

Like these guys are clearly at every game.

And I was like, you know, I'm never going to buy season tickets.

I'm certainly can't afford season tickets here.

But I like the idea of just being part of it again.

And it's just like now that I've seen it up close, I feel part of it again.

And it just like, again, this is a team that when I went to college, I came back, I watched every single game.

You know, like a lot of kids that go to college, you lose touch with their high school friends, the Mets, and like Ray Ordonias and Gardo Alfonso.

I was like super emotionally invested in Rick Reed making an all-star team.

John Olderude, you're the most underrated player of your generation.

Like those teams, I lived and died.

Al Leiter, every freaking 3-2 count was sweaty ass Al Leiter, lived and died with it.

And then I lost touch with it.

The team became, actually, meant something to me.

They're the only team really in my life that actually meant something to me.

And now they mean something to me again.

I'm never going to be a diehard like that.

But I took my own advice.

And that is what I'm urging all of you to do.

Take the advice that I didn't take.

Thank you to the Mets for an awesome experience for my family.

They won the game five to two.

No home runs.

My daughter really wanted to see the apple go up.

So that means we have to go again.

But just let's go, Mets, and take the advice that I didn't take for myself and thank you to the mets it was awesome that's my that's your major league baseball interlude for today back to the regular schedule programming

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Okay, let's talk briefly because the series resumes tonight.

Wolves, Thunder.

By the way,

let's just enjoy this moment.

It's 10.57 a.m.

Eastern Time.

The margin in the Eastern Conference finals after three games is Indiana plus two.

The margin in the Western Conference finals after three games is Minnesota plus one.

Let's just live in this world.

Minnesota is like plus one, plus two.

It literally can't get any closer than that.

I guess both series could be plus or minus one.

So it could get a little closer.

I had OKC in six

before the series.

I honestly like going into game three, I was a little bit worried the Thunder were just going to run the table for the rest of the playoffs.

I was waiting to see like, will Minnesota respond?

Did they respond?

Holy hell.

Give me one thing you're watching for tonight in game four, or one, maybe one thing,

really anything, but I'm curious, what did you see there that was sustainable going forward?

Sustainable is an interesting word.

Because yeah, I think the variable in this series, as it often is with the Thunder defense, is like, are the opposing role players hitting their shots or not?

And getting those makes from guys like Nas Reed, from guys like Mike Conley, from guys like Jaden McDaniels from the corner, like those are so critical to cracking the Thunder defense.

Is that what the home road splits are going to be in this series?

Is that those guys catching on in a meaningful way that's going to even travel with them to OKC when they go there for game five?

Like to what extent are those players going to be involved offensively?

Because the Wolves desperately need them to hit those shots.

They need the one pass away three to be a thing that is a reliable weapon for them if they're going to compete.

And I'm hopeful it will be enough so that we'll get a long series out of this.

Yeah, I mean, like, look, you're just going to, you're not going to get a lot of clean, clean threes against the Thunder.

But like, what did you actually, this is one thing I wanted to talk to you about.

You know, I mentioned after game one, I think, of this series, just

how, you know, you can look at the numbers.

I made a shooting luck joke on Simmons' podcast, like that, oh, congratulations, the wolves probably won the shooting luck, the shooting quality

game in game one.

Actually, they didn't.

I went through the tracking data and they didn't.

And Mike Connolly talked between games two and three, I think, about how, yeah, the way they close out and defend,

a lot of those shots are rushed.

And I mentioned on Bill's pod, like, not even the ones that are not against closeouts necessarily, that are just regular pick and roll threes, a lot of them are coming early in the shot clock and from long distances.

And I think the mindset underneath that is like, this may be the best we can do in this possession against this team.

Like, let's get, let's get it up.

So I was wondering just sort of where you stood.

Like, Oklahoma City is becoming the new Boston where every year teams shoot way below expectations on lots of threes.

Yes.

And it's carrying into this playoffs.

And I'm wondering how you, as a smart viewer, like apportion credit and blame or whatever for that phenomenon.

Well, I think we've seen this enough.

And look, it was.

Pretty well investigated in Boston's case, and it's been pretty well investigated in OKC's case.

We know enough to know that these teams are not just funneling possessions to the worst shooter on the floor.

Like Oklahoma City gives up a lot of threes to a lot of players, including really good shooters, including some of Minnesota's best three-point shooters.

And yet the swings are what they are.

I give the Thunder a lot of credit still for two things.

The first is the closeouts you just described.

I thought Mike Conley is a great like totem for that idea because he looked incredibly rushed trying to score in any capacity against the Thunder defense.

They are one of the best closeout teams in the league, one of the most aggressive closeout teams in the league.

Just because you wind up taking a spot up three doesn't mean J-Dub or Alex Caruso isn't flying out at you, and that's not going to speed up your process.

That's a huge part of it.

I also think OKC's interior defense is so stifling that it pressurizes all of those shots.

Like, I don't care how open it is, when your team hasn't hit a shot in six minutes because the Thunder keep turning you over and getting out on the break, that's a tough shot to hit for any player, but especially for a role player.

And so, I think all of those compounding effects are why you see those numbers the way they are.

And ultimately, like it's still credit to the Thunder, even if it's technically or, you know, by tracking data, a wide open or a very open shot.

Yeah, I think, look, to put it very simply,

the open ones that look like ones that are open against normal defenses, which you get fewer of against the Thunder, like the pick and roll, kick to the corner, a good shooter's wide open.

You're going to have to make those at like a 40 to 50% rate to beat the Thunder.

If you don't make enough of those, you're just not going to win.

And then you're just going to have to make enough contested, difficult threes.

And Ant made a bunch, like those windows that Ant's working with on pull-up threes on the pick and roll are very small windows.

Unless there's a breakdown, which there rarely is, he's just going to have to make, this is the burden of being a great player is you're just going to have to make maybe a couple more than expectations over the next two games for this to be a real series.

Same with Randall.

Like it's awesome that Randall beasted beasted Kaysen Wallace in the post.

And by the way, didn't hesitate at all in doing so.

Catch, spin, go.

When he got Shea, same thing.

He's also just going to have to make a few tough ones against Jalen Williams because the entire Thunder defensive scheme is based on Jalen Williams being able to guard Julius Randall so that Chet Holmgren can be anywhere but on Julius Randle and really at the basket being very tall.

And like, it's, it's tough sledding.

Jalen Williams made all defense, right?

I think he did.

He did.

He made second team.

It's just, he's just really good and really strong.

And Julius Randle, the burden of being a great player is you're just going to have to make like three fadeaways a game against really good defenders.

That's just the reality.

I thought,

just an interesting,

the Thunder Big Man rotation is maybe my favorite little subplot of this series.

Yeah, Jay Will back for game.

Did not understand why that happened.

I went back and looked at the fouls.

I was like, did I miss some fouls?

I didn't, did you, was there a reason for that in your mind?

Like, I didn't get it at all.

I wasn't sure.

It seemed like maybe there was some trade-off with some of the Kenrich Williams minutes, but I kind of liked the Kenrich Williams minutes before, so I'm not really seeing what happened there.

Yeah, I thought the Thunder really had their rotations figured out in this series,

like, and where Chet should be.

And it should either be both of.

the big guys, which is, by the way, not been awesome in the playoffs.

Hartenstein and Holmgren together for the entire playoffs zero scoring margin plus exact plus or minus whatever zero wow including in this series also exactly zero um but i i thought they had a nice feel of like either both of them are on the floor or one of them's on the floor or when

the wolves go to lineups that do not have gobert and do not have mcdaniels so those are the two places where they want chet to be when the when neither of those guys are on the floor when it's nas reed and randall and three other guys shooters guards

you can play five out you can play five wings none of the big men switch everything

and then jalen williams comes into the into the fold and i'm like i don't know like what's what's happening why is he here um because i thought i thought they just had a nice sort of mix of of lineups and i didn't get that and everyone's talked about ant being off the ball going under on shea now and then mixing that in i thought was smart i also liked shea will do this thing where

against great defensive teams and minnesota can be great where where he'll just run a pick and roll or get a matchup he wants, and he'll just dribble to like a dead zone on the floor, like 18 feet from the rim on the baseline where nobody really wants to be.

But he's like, well, no help defender is going to be here.

And I'm Shea Gilded Gender.

I can make this shot.

And the Wolves were like, actually, we are going to send a second guy over here to get in your face.

And I think it, and that's just like their sheer effort and that's what you never know about these game threes.

One team's playing for its life.

One team's playing with a 2-0 lead.

I can't wait to see what happens in game four.

I still think the Thunder are going to win the series, obviously, but who the hell knows?

I think they will too.

But I hope that, you know, I don't want to get too deep into the officiating conversation with this, but the Wolves were allowed to defend with a greater level of physicality in game three that changed the nature of that game, that changed the way that they're guarding Shay, that changed a lot of things.

I hope that they're still allowed to do that because I want to see Shay crack that front.

I want to see him deal with some of the pressure that he saw in game three on the ball, make some decisions out of those situations that might be complicated, that might be challenging to him to deal with like the full freight of what the wolves present as far as a challenge goes.

In part, because I like seeing Ant do those same things.

Like, this is what we're in the playoffs for, is to see the stars crack these kinds of puzzles.

And I think to Shay's credit, one of his greatest assets as a player is he's just one of the most determined drivers in the game.

Like it doesn't matter if he's getting the calls or not.

It doesn't matter what's happening around him.

Like he is going to get into the paint, into the mix, toward the basket.

He's going to continue to do it.

Ant doesn't always do that.

And I think one of the big changes in game three was some of the determination to turn that corner, no matter how many defenders were in front of him.

And he's athletic enough to get around guys despite that.

That was, I thought, just a huge sea change in the execution of Minnesota's offense and overall, how like aggressive Ant was looking to attack.

When he's the kind of player who, if a couple possessions don't go his way on a drive, if he doesn't get the whistle he thinks he deserves, he'll just start.

jacking threes he'll start doing other stuff on the perimeter in a way that can still be good but i i want to see both those guys in attack mode one of ant's quirks that i really like is and i'm not being facetious i actually do think it's funny is you mentioned not getting calls he you know the rim mics are so good now that you can hear everything yeah and so his go-to when he drives and he feels like he's fouled and he doesn't get a call is just hey ref hey ref

and i i watch the games and i laugh because like if i'm a ref

I mean, like, do I want him to refer to me by my name?

Yeah.

Like, is hey, ref good enough for me?

Like, am I going to be angrier at him?

Because it's just, it's constant, hey, and often he's right.

Like, he's drawing a lot of content.

Hey, ref.

He's just always hey, ref.

And it's one of my favorite things about him.

If I were an NBA referee, I would not want anyone to know my name.

I would want a referee in a mask in complete anonymity.

I just, I want to be out of the national discourse.

I don't want any part of it.

We know too much about each other in general, but we definitely know too much about NBA referees.

So it's, it's, but, but.

Then you don't get to have your moment at the replay center table where you get, you know, some of these refs, it's Charlie Kennedy.

I'm just going to leave that to Billy.

Like, Billy is

the Michael Jordan of that exact presentation.

Why am I trying to jump the line?

We should actually, you know what, we should hire

like an intern whose entire job it is is to compile those.

And then we should have like an Oscars at the end of the year.

So like, here are the nominations for best replay per replay center dialogue monologue by a referee in a leading role and just, you know, give out, just have the clips and give them out.

Because some of them, you can tell, they're hamming it up.

I mean, this is like, this is my moment.

I got my, I did arm day yesterday in the gym.

I'm going to make sure the biceps are out.

You know, it's just delightful.

Any other thoughts as we go into game four?

Any parting thoughts on Wolves Thunder?

I'm trying to think of like what the other tensions in this point or in the series would be at this point.

I mean, I'm blown away by the Wolves, clearly.

Like any win like that against the Thunder is a substantial achievement.

I'm still eager to see that kind of interplay of the bigs that you described.

I thought, you know, one of the reasons, if we're going to get into like the Jay Wheel part of that and like why he's in the series, they did post up Nas a couple of times to some effect against smaller players.

And I wonder how much of it was like, Nas isn't hitting threes and we don't want him to allow him any running water.

And so we don't want him to be able to like take someone down low and bully them inside in a way that he might Kenrich Williams or might a wing or a smaller player.

And so maybe we throw another big out there just because.

But Nas is the kind of player who can sort of twist this matchup a little bit.

His ability to, whether he's hitting threes or not, put the ball on the floor and attack, and whether he can successfully get through the Thunder defense or not unscathed enough to get a shot at the rim, to me, is like a not insubstantial X factor in this matchup overall.

Well, I mean, just, you know, Nas showing some life, making some shots.

DiVincenzo, Alexander Walker, Nas Reed, six of nine on threes, plus a lot each.

That'll do.

Is big.

And, you know, we didn't mention Taryn Shannon, like four really consequential minutes in the first half,

and then lots of garbage time.

But, but it's a fun.

I'm just glad for at least a little while we get some fun.

Because, look, I'm not to spoil any future episodes, but one of the talking points we were going to have in the event that this was a 3-0 series was: does this Oklahoma City performance make you think lesser, more of, particularly more of the Denver Nuggets?

Yeah.

Well, Minnesota's like, no, you don't get to have that discussion.

How about we win by 42 points and have a plus one scoring margin after three games of the Western Conference finals?

Hold it for another day.

Rob Mahoney, just the best.

Thank you for waking up early and joining us on a Mahoney Monday.

Group chat.

Group chat.

I'm just going to say it's my favorite NBA podcast.

It's my favorite.

It's my favorite.

I still, I need to, so I'm dying to have Waz on.

Please.

My obstacle is I don't think he's waking up as early as you are on the West Coast.

That's true.

But sometimes he's bicoastal now a little bit.

So you might, maybe if you catch him on an East Coast swing, it'll be more at Waz hours.

Because he just, he just lets it fly.

I need to know more about like.

I'm listening to the podcast.

He's listening to a podcast about like geopolitics during an NBA game.

I don't even understand how that's possible.

His Instagram is full of Mets

stuff, which is really good for me, and wine.

And I just have a lot of questions, but I guess I got to get his schedule.

But Group Chat's the best NBA podcast there is.

Rob Mahoney is the best in the business.

Thank you, sir.

We'll talk to you soon.

Enjoy the games.

Thanks, Zach.

All right, that's it for us today on the Zach Lowe Show.

We will be back Thursday.

God only knows what will have happened by Thursday morning.

Hopefully we have great series, great competition.

I'm rooting for the underdogs out to make it as exciting as possible.

Thank you today to Jesse, Jonathan, and Mike on the production.

We will see you on Thursday.

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