Haliburton’s Heroics, Can the Knicks Recover? OKC Strikes First

This was one of the most perfect games of basketball for New York. They survived all the blur runs that we saw from the Pacers, going nine for nine from the field to start the game, slowly building a lead with classic Knicks basketball. Karl Anthony Towns had an awesome game. He had thirty five points, shooting fifty percent from three more threes taken in Game one from Cat than the entire last series combined. Brunton had forty three. He was unstoppable.

His fouls, though, getting into foul trouble can fuck you because you can't push off to get to try to get the foul when you already have one charge, one charge call when you have five thousand. They had a fourteen point lead with three minutes and fourteen seconds left in the game. They had a ninety nine point seven percent anytime anytime, we're like they had a ninety nine point nine percent win probability. That's because we're dissecting how

possibly they could have lost. Led by nine with fifty eight seconds left, that was probably an incalculable win percentage. Fourteen hundred and fourteen playoff teams one four, one, four, up nine or more with a minute to play. All fourteen hundred and fourteen teams won that game until last night. Until last night, let that sink in. We witnessed something

that's never happened before in the history of the NBA. Now, we also had the Pacers down eight or seven forty eight seconds left to go, and there were only two other times or one other time that a team had come back then and it was another Pacer team. The Pacers are the cardiac kids. The roof just collapsed on Madison Square Garden literally, not literally, figuratively literally, the Pacers made the most improbable comeback in NBA history. No team in NBA history, like I said, has erased a nine

point leading fifty eight seconds or less, not one. Somehow, some way, the Knicks found a way to lose that game, missing free throws, Pacers holding onto their challenges, playing bad defense, Aaron Neismith turning into Reggie Miller. So the key to it all is obviously not what you think. Aaron Neismith game. From the time the clock read three minutes left in the game, the Pacers down fourteen, Aaron Nesmith hit five threes to go with two free throws. He scored seventeen

points himself in under three minutes. What do you do? Why he was just fucking hot, so hot, open threes, contested threes, deep threes. The man was unconscious and some of those threes should have been in once. He shot eight for nine from deep from deep from the game, his most important points hitting a pair of free throws after an anenobe take foul designed to keep him from hitting another three, which he probably would have hit. I remember the commenters being like, oh, should he tried to

miss the second free throw. It was one twenty four one two before he sank it to cut the game to one with twelve seconds left. But then we got lucky, baby, All the Pacers fans got lucky. Brunson tossed a very strange but effective high bounce pass in the back court to og Anoby, which could have been could have been taken. It looked like that was one for the Pacers to

just take. The play wasted a full five seconds. San Anonobi eighty one percent free throw shooter to the line, and man, he missed the front end and then hit the second. Probably the worst outcome you could have if you make the first one and missed the second. Maybe maybe you get that rebound Pacers don't have a time out. They take the ball full court with just seven seconds left,

Indiana needs a two to tie. Halliburton's got the ball in his hands, fakes a drive, gets past the free throw line, gets doubled, quickly does his little Steve Nash thing, runs around in circles, back to the three point line, step back, three, hits the back of the rim. No good, no, wait, goes up in the air, splash. I was losing my fuck when I tell you, I was losing my mind. That's a good six or seven feet, folks, and then swishes through the basket. Just absolute chaos, pandemonium. The Pacers

mob Halliburton because they think that's game over. He puts his hands around his throat like Reggie Miller's winning time choke points at Reggie in broadcasters, row Knicks fans are just stunned. Foot was on the line two, not three. And I thought to myself, well, maybe this is like the Bucks net series where Kevin Durant's foot was on the line. They go to overtime and the Bucks win Game seven. They go to the NBA Finals. No, but

now we've got overtime. The Pacers scored twenty three points in the last three minutes and thirteen seconds of the fourth quarter in overtime. That can't be real. That cannot be real. The Timberwolve scored eighty five in their entire eighty eight in their entire game against the Thunder in Game one. At this point, you just can't like the chances for the Knicks. Feels like they're better from playing

from behind than playing from ahead. The Knicks had a nice little four point overtime lead, and you're thinking, did that end of the celebration cause the Pacers to gas out? No, baby, Nimhard hits five straight, and after trading the lead multiple times, Neimhard gets a layup with twenty six seconds left to put the Pacers up for good. Obi tops it top and ends it with a classic dunk, a double clutch dunk. Brunson and Cat miss threes badly. That last sequence was tough.

I don't think Brunson hits Rim, Kat gets the they kick it back out to Kat from the rebound barely hits Rim. There, Pacers one thirty eight, Nicks one thirty five. What do you say? I mean, what if you're in that building and you're a Knicks fan, what do you what do you say? My heart has been stolen from my chest and eating and eating raw like someone found an ox in the middle of the forest and slit them open and just ate it for the fat and the protein er. That's what it was. I know that

this is Jalen Brunson clutch Player of the Year. It's hard not to say, though the Tyrese Halburn is more clutch than Jalen Brunson. He might be one of the most clutch, greatest clutch players in the history of the game. Do you want to hear stap He is eleven for twelve in the postseason this postseason in the final two minutes on shots to either tie the game or put the Pacers ahead. That's better than Tom Brady. That's better

than Pat Mahomes Twice this year. He's won games on four point plays three times this playoffs, He's led the Pacers to wins in which they had less than a one percent chance of winning. That's fucking absurd. It doesn't seem real. It's like, it really does. Remind me of the two minute offense with Tom Brady, where you're like, oh, well, no lead safe. Tom Brady's got the ball two minutes down ten. Somehow I believe, and they did it less

often though than these pacers. Steven A Smith, still throwing shade Salty, says he doesn't think Tyree Halliburn's a superstar because it takes more than just hitting clutch shots to make superstar. I think that's kind of it though. Actually, if all I need is somebody to hit clutch threes, clutch shots facilitate to the open man, and because of that person, I can come back from down fourteen with three minutes left to go. That guy's a superstar. I

don't give a fuck what he does in January. Really, I don't care what he does in February. I don't care what he does in March. Tell me what he's doing in April, May and June, and guess what, we're gonna probably see Hallie in April, May and June. A lot of Salty Knicks fans are his game tying shot lucky. But guess what, he's had a lot of those. He's had other ones too that were slapping their face. They

were splash. I like what ESPN's Timligler said. He said the fact that it drew back iron and bounced means the shot was deadly accurate. And just to touch long an inch to either side and Hallie doesn't even get a bounce. Considering it was a fall back three off the back foot following one hundred and eighty degree pivot and Mitchell Robinson closed out beautifully. It was an insane shot and we should probably we should probably give some

love to Rick carll That man deserves his flowers. He's coaching his fucking ass off, and he has been for two decades. He's pocketing his challenges which he used to perfection multiple times. Twenty seconds to go, in Ot knicks down one og Nanobi throws the ball to Brunson, Nemhar tips it, call is Nick's baby, and then Rick carl I was like, I would like to see that again. I would like the rest to take a look at that one. Jalen Brunson biting his towel at the bench

being like, oh fuck, I know I touched it. Indiana ball up one. Oh no, this is bad. Immediately after, Obi Toppin dunked to put him up three with twenty seconds left to go, game over, game over. If Carlile hadn't done anything but just get out of his players way down the stretch, it would have been good coaching, but it is easy to blow that challenge in the first quarter. We see it all the time. Players are like doing a little swirly thing. First, No, Carlile was like,

we're not doing that bullshit. Okay, We're going to save them from when they actually matter. What are we making the series now? I think Vegas has the Knicks as dogs. They're now plus one forty to win the series. They were minus one fifty five before Game one. They are now plus seven hundred to win the championship, up for plus four to fifty before game one. If you look at ninety five percent of the game, the Knicks are the better team. They dominated. They looked like a lot

more better than the Pacers. It was bad grammar, even if it wasn't seen in the score at the time. That fourteen point lead was built on a fourteen to oher run that happened when Brunson went to the bench Tibbs. Tibbs was saying stuff. He said, the keys to this series was winning the non Brunson minutes, and boyl boy, did they do that?

knocked the fuck out. I don't know how you recover. I really don't know how you recover the miss. Because the confidence that the Pacers continue to have and it continues to grow, is that it doesn't really matter how much we're down. And that is something that the New York Knicks have as well. They had that against the Celtics and that helped them a lot. And maybe you say the Celtics are a better team than the Knicks as well. Yeah, but guess what, they're home and the

Knicks are still playing. You cannot be tight, you cannot play nervous. You have to just play back your game no matter what the score is. Keep putting your foot on their neck. Don't let them fucking shoot seven threes down the stretch. Here's a scary stat for Knicks fans. This was statistically the worst game that the Pacers have played in the entire playoffs this year. What are the

odds they play this bad again and they won. It feels like the Pacers to me, are a team of destiny, the team that everyone just wants to take too lightly, Like the Bucks ignored them, the Calves ignored them, and it was like the Bucks ignored them, but then the Calves ignored what they did to the Bucks. They were like, ah, we're sixty four wins. Then the Knicks are now ignoring what the Pacers did to the Bucks and the Calves. The scalps are evident. They're showing you and you're like,

not my scalp. I don't know when people are gonna realize this team is so dangerous. They have eight nine players that can get you fifteen points and they are seven and zero clutch games in this playoffs. Friday Night is going to be fucking electric. I can already tell this. The series is going to be classic, and oh boy, the NBA is all the way back. Moving on Game one of the Minnesota Timberwolves versus a thunder is in

the books. Okac took a close game at halftime they were down for and then they just blew Minnesota's doors off and Edwards looked bummy, looked like his ankle is not good. Nos Reed continues to struggle. We're not getting much out of Dante DiVincenzo. They outscored the Wolves by fourteen points in the third and sixteen in the fourth, and nos Reed, like I said, just is nowhere. He's gotta go. He can't stay. We thought NOAs was an important piece of this puzzle. Nas can't stay. He was

one for eleven from the field. You gotta go, sir, you gotta go. Rudy Gobert was completely non existent as well. You can't have your two bigs just go into the ether against Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein. Can't do it, can't do it, and you have a bum ankle and Edwards, your superstar is injured. That's three players you needed production from that you didn't get any. Not sure you can learn a lot because the Wolves have had bad game ones in the playoffs. They lost last You look at

game one of the Golden State series. The Warriors starters were a combined plus fifty six net rating in this game, and the Warriors won going away in a game that they led by twenty Ant shot twenty five percent from three, and our dubs were like, Oh, this is gonna be easy, and it wasn't. The Wolves blew their doors off four straight, won the series in five. You look what game one of the OKC series. OKAC starters were a combined plus

one plus sixty one net rating. Ant shot six three for eight from three, And now everybody again is saying that the Wolves are dead in the water. The Wolves scored eighty five, eighty eight, and eighty eight points in these three losses. Then they never scored less than one hundred in any game after that. I like, Okay, see, they're impressive, really good offense. Transition offense is electric, historically good defense, multiple players who can shoot a bunch of threes,

but also their half court offense struggles at times. This OKAC team had a hard time beating an underman Nuggets team took them seven, should have lost the final two against Memphis that was a walking hospital wing. They've got the ability to be beat. If Minnesota wins Game two, the pressure now falls on the Okay set thunder shoulders. Also,

let's talk about these refs. It's egregious, it's disgusting. Not only is Shae getting to the line in ways that sort of terrifies you, where he's barely getting touched, you had door. It was so bad, Doris Burke called him a foul merchant during the game on the broadcast. Shae, I know people are saying, oh, Shay isn't getting as many foul calls as so and so, or he's still

scoring twenty five a game without free throws. It doesn't matter because the truth is the fouls that are getting committed against the Timberwolves are fucking mob hits and not getting called. And you barely scrape Shay's elbow and he pushes off a lot and you get called for the foul, and they're not calling the fouls that the Okacs is

committing pretty much all game. That's why they're such a historically good defense is because their whole game plan is we're going to just foul all game, and the refs can't call us for everything. It's impossible to officiate that way. Yeah, the way he gets whistles changes the game. He gives the thunder a bunch of time stoppages that they wouldn't get otherwise, they can be better rested, they can make

quick changes on the court. It changes everything. If you're defending Shay and you know he's getting Tiki Took calls, you're not gonna blankt him like you would normally. There's a reason that Randall and Ant were laughing in their postgame looking at SGA's foul shot stats. That's what they were looking at. I don't care what people say, that's what they were looking at. Everyone sees it. Everyone knows it's happening, and nothing's changing. And I know the argument, Oh,

Julius Randall's a bigger guy, you can't officiate them. Those two guys the same way. The guy is getting an elbow to the forearm every single time down and you can hear the slap. You should get to the free throw line. This is like the Zion argument, where it's like, oh, we can mug Zion because he's too ninety. Doesn't matter, doesn't change anything in terms of his ability to get to the room. That doesn't matter. It's contact. Contact is contact.

It's Trey Jung, it's Jalen Brunson, it is Shay Goojess Alexander, It's Pete Harden, It's Dame Lillard. It's fucking annoying. We all see it too. We all see it. Game two is gonna be fascinating, and this series, I suspect might go a lot longer than people think. That's all the time that we have for this episode of the Heat Check.

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