NBA 2025-26 Season Thread: THE NY KNICKS ARE CHAMPIONS! BING BONG!
Lettuce NBA!
and lettuce lol @ James Harden
Some thoughts on the Finals:
1. I'm no longer a big fan of Wemby. He claimed during the season how he and his team play "ethical basketball". He actually plays as dirty as Embiid and Draymond combined. He also is incredibly arrogant. Like you can be confident and still be respectful. Maybe it's a French thing. Who knows? Don't care. I no longer root for him.
2. The Spurs are an amazing team and play defense like they have 6 guys on the court when Wemby is out there. His length + recovery + help defense + rim protection + denial (how many freaking times did a Knicks player drive to the hoop / under the hoop and dribble out? I lost count).
3. Harper is incredibly talented and played like a vet out there. As I mentioned previously itt, he is a legit #1 pick in at least 50% of drafts. And he's only going to get better.
4. Spurs would be very wise to unload Fox, even if it takes one good asset and one mediocre one. Give more minutes to Harper/Castle. Getting someone back who can guard JDub from OKC would be huge for them.
Iykyk me. Thought about the old school 2p2 guys who started the Knicks thread tonight, and it's been so long since I've been on here I'm not even sure this is the right thread.
Congratulations to us all.
Hawks took 2 games off the Knicks. Spurs only won one game.
hawks >>> spurs
and Giannis will be traded by Monday.
Jerry West never won the MVP. Wow. Eight times in the top 5 and four times second.
I was looking up the 1973 Knicks/Lakers finals, and started wondering if both and West and Chamberlain retired the same year, after that finals. I knew Chamberlain did, so I looked up West, and it turns out he retired after the next season. Can you imagine having West and Chamberlain retire the same season, what that would do to your team? That's two of the top five names in the history of the sport to that point. And that's after Elgin Baylor retired the year before. Baylor would probably also be in the top 5 names to that point. He also had eight top 5 MVPs but never won it.
The next year after those three retirements, the Lakers finally fell apart ... 30-52, fifth in their division. The next year they got Kareem and started to rebuild, though those were handful of years he was dogged for the teams semi-good performance until Magic got there.
I remember the '73 final series somewhat, was a Knicks fan then. Somehow I remember the 1970 much better. But in '73 it looks like the Knicks lost Game 1, then won four straight very close games. West the all-time bridesmaid in Championships and in MVP voting. Brutal.
Jokes aside, as someone who likes SGA and Brunson (what a dog) - I don't get how you have people who hate SGA for "flopping" when Brunson does exactly the same.
i'd argue the 2 fouls he baited on the 3pt-attempts were game-changing last night. but i'm not hating - the guy is so good and so is SGA
Wemby offensive limitations were definitely on display in this series. But it is hard to be too concerned because Harper is probably just going to make a lot of that stuff not matter much.
It's still a great year for the Spurs. Not knocking them. They took out the champs but ran into a sick buzz saw like we've rarely seen. Gonna have to figure out the average score first quarter and fourth in this series.
They need ti figure out that the Pop/Timmy era is over and create something brand new. Prime Pop easily wins this series.
Spoiler
Congrats AIM!! TF I hedged
Iykyk me. Thought about the old school 2p2 guys who started the Knicks thread tonight, and it's been so long since I've been on here I'm not even sure this is the right thread.
Congratulations to us all.
Holy ****ing ****
Just re-watched the end - after the offensive rebound on Hart's missed free throw (with 22sec on game clock) and the Oreb of Mitch - they foul OG instantly down 3
But shot clock resets to 14 on an offensive rebound in the NBA and you have 7sec difference between game clock & shot clock, pretty sure the strategy is to not foul, get a miss, call timeout and advance the ball in the frontcourt to get a 3. haven't seen it talked about by anyone though, what am I missing?
Good catch. I think you’re right. Spurs should have played for the stop. More inexperience causing mistakes. That’s all on Mitch to make his team aware before the FTA.
Congrats knicks fans crazy run. Up there with the Mavs to me more shocking because of Knicks general dominance.
Just re-watched the end - after the offensive rebound on Hart's missed free throw (with 22sec on game clock) and the Oreb of Mitch - they foul OG instantly down 3But shot clock resets to 14 on an offensive rebound in the NBA and you have 7sec difference between game clock & shot clock, pretty sure the strategy is to not foul, get a miss, call timeout and advance the ball in the
I thought for sure that they treated the clock the same as with a non-shooting foul where if it was > :14 they just kept the clock as is, but sure enough on offensive rebounds they truncate it to :14 regardless. TIL.
I did agree with fouling Hart at the other end to begin with, there woulda been only a ~2.5s differential and that's just not enough, especially if someone's able to launch a rainbow shot right at the buzzer.
Agreed, if I remember correctly that was like 27sec on the gameclock with a full 24sec shotclock so the gap was too low and Hart is a 60% ft shooter
But when the hands is in the ball of OG and the difference is 7sec - i'm pretty sure game theory says you have to play for the stop
Agreed, if I remember correctly that was like 27sec on the gameclock with a full 24sec shotclock so the gap was too low and Hart is a 60% ft shooter
But when the hands is in the ball of OG and the difference is 7sec - i'm pretty sure game theory says you have to play for the stop
Yeah, fouling Hart was fine and very likely correct.
Difference on the Robinson rebound was more like 11.5 sec, so leans even more to trying to get a stop.
Jokes aside, as someone who likes SGA and Brunson (what a dog) - I don't get how you have people who hate SGA for "flopping" when Brunson does exactly the same.
i'd argue the 2 fouls he baited on the 3pt-attempts were game-changing last night. but i'm not hating - the guy is so good and so is SGA
Brunson did it on 2 plays, and the first one was smart knowing that Harper couldn't slow his momentum and would run into him.
SGA does it all the ****ing time. They are not comparable as "foul baiters".
