00:00Knicks fan in the city are in full panic mode.
00:03So let's talk to our Knicks beat writer for the post, Steph Bondi.
00:07Bondi, you're down in the A.
00:09The Knicks are down in the series.
00:11We're going to start off with a word as Bondi.
00:13I need you to give us your takeaways from game three.
00:16And after a gut-wrenching loss like that, mentally,
00:20do you think this Knicks team can get over that loss?
00:23Yeah, I mean, it was discouraging.
00:25It was disappointing.
00:26You have a situation where you are the better team.
00:29I've been saying that from the beginning.
00:30The Knicks believe they're the better team.
00:31They have every right to believe they're a better team.
00:34And they had a game.
00:35It wasn't quite must-win, but it was, all right, red alert.
00:40The teams that go to trail 2-1 in the series,
00:43they tend to lose those series.
00:44The Knicks are not built to be a first-round elimination team.
00:48So you had a situation where they trailed for most of the game.
00:52They mounted a comeback.
00:53I mean, they showed some fight.
00:54But at some point, you can't have Mikael Bridges starting
00:58and scoring zero points and then waiting to bring in Myles McBride
01:02to help you help the offense lift the team back into a situation
01:06where they could possibly win against the team that you should be beating anyway.
01:10So there were a lot of problems.
01:12They had problems guarding C.J. McCollum again.
01:14They had problems down the stretch.
01:15The offense got stagnant again.
01:18A lack of creativity with the play calling.
01:21Cap wasn't involved as much as you would like.
01:23Like I said, trouble guarding C.J. McCollum.
01:25There were problems up and down the roster and with the strategy and the schemes.
01:32And now the Knicks face a situation where, you know, if you go down 3-1,
01:38chances are you're going to be eliminated in the first round.
01:40So big game upcoming tomorrow.
01:43The Knicks have to bounce back.
01:44That's just the bottom line.
01:45Let's talk C.J. McCollum and how they could stop him or neutralize him
01:49because there's a lot of finger-porting going on from the franchise or to the fan base
01:54to the players in the franchise.
01:56I blame the fan base for C.J. McCollum getting hot
01:59once they started the bleep you C.J. chant at the guard.
02:03Now I believe game two.
02:04This dude is absolutely cooking and they have no answer for him.
02:09So Steph Bondy, put on your Mike Brown hat or whatever.
02:12How do you stop this guy?
02:15Game four.
02:16Well, the only way to stop, in my opinion, the only thing left to do is to try to blitz
02:21them.
02:21I mean, what the Hawks did was like, Jalen Brunson, you're not going to beat us.
02:25We're going to throw multiple defenders at you.
02:28The Knicks have tried to throw individual, different individual defenders at C.J. McCollum.
02:33None of them have worked.
02:34Even in the fourth quarter of game two, they tried to throw O.J. Ananobi on them.
02:39Guess what?
02:39C.J. McCollum dashed to the corner, hit a fadeaway jumper.
02:43He's just been tremendous.
02:44He has the poise.
02:46He's a veteran.
02:46He's a professional scorer.
02:47That's who he is.
02:49Nobody else on the Hawks has shown they can beat you.
02:51Jalen Johnson has been underwhelming.
02:54Nikhil Alexander-Walker has been underwhelming.
02:56So why not throw multiple defenders at C.J. McCollum and make somebody else beat you?
03:00Double them and triple them if you have to.
03:03But he's the one guy that's been killing you.
03:06Make that stop and then make the other guys beat you.
03:09I think that's the last strategy and I think that's something they should deploy in game four.
03:14For the Knicks side of things, you know this is a finger-pointing city.
03:18So who's to blame for this recent loss?
03:20And who do you feel needs to step it up under the lights and play better game four in the
03:25rest of this series?
03:27Well, if I were to pick one person, it'd probably be Mikkel Bridges.
03:30I wrote a column about it.
03:31You can't – I mean, he just became unplayable.
03:35He was benched two minutes into the second half.
03:38They gave him another shot in the fourth quarter.
03:41He had one possession where they called a play for him and he turned it over immediately.
03:45And they benched him again and they went to Miles McBride.
03:48And, you know, it's impossible to ignore the fact they traded five first-round picks for this guy.
03:53They gave him a $150 million extension.
03:56And Miles McBride was the better player.
03:58So it's either Mikkel Bridges steps it up or the Knicks make a lineup change and throw Miles McBride in
04:04there.
04:04I say that is who I'm pointing at for, you know, the number one reason why game three went the
04:10way it did.
04:11JB, Jalen Brunson's taken a lot of heat for that last shot or lack thereof.
04:16I mean, from where you were sitting, like, what did you see on that last play from Jalen Brunson?
04:21Yeah, I mean, it's tough.
04:22I don't want to be a hypocrite.
04:23I killed him in game two because Mikkel Bridges took the final shot and Jalen Brunson didn't.
04:29And to me, Jalen Brunson has been the clutch player that you relied on for a very long time.
04:33If I were putting money on who would be able to make a play down the stretch, it'd be him.
04:38However, like I said, the Hawks have made it a point.
04:40You are not going to beat us.
04:43And they're doubling him.
04:44They're tripling him.
04:45They made sure that he was not going to get off that shot, and he threw a bad pass.
04:49It was a bad possession.
04:50I've seen situations where Jalen Brunson gets off the ball a lot quicker.
04:54He wanted to be the hero.
04:56He wanted to make a play.
04:57And the whole play just deteriorated very quickly, and he threw a turnover.
05:02So, yeah, not a good play.
05:04Not a good play call.
05:06It's hard to see what exactly they were planning.
05:08It looked disjointed from the start.
05:10You had Josh Hart dribbling around the perimeter trying to find Jalen.
05:13Eventually, they found him, and he found himself in like a, I don't know, like just a scrum of Hawks
05:18under the basket.
05:19It was an ugly play.
05:22And the Knicks, again, lost because they couldn't convert down the stretch, among other things that we've talked about already
05:27about why they couldn't win.
05:28We know about the pressure this team was facing going into the playoffs.
05:33Now it looks like the fan base is starting to hit that panic button.
05:37So, in your opinion, do you feel like the Knicks, down 2-1, are in trouble, and is Game 4
05:44a must-win?
05:45Yeah.
05:46I mean, listen, it's not a must-win unless it's an elimination game, but this is about as close as
05:51you can get.
05:53And, you know, I don't know the exact history of the percentage of teams that come back from 3-1,
05:59but it's very small.
06:01And this is a game, you can't go back to the garden down 3-1.
06:05You have to bring it back even 2-2.
06:07The Knicks have to have that mindset.
06:10It's no more relaxing.
06:11Let's try to figure something out.
06:13One of the most frustrating things about watching the Knicks now is they don't seem to have a set, established
06:21rotation where they're playing this guy this many minutes.
06:24They understand what lineups work together.
06:26It's not the playoffs.
06:27It seems like they're experimenting when they should have been now, when they should have been a lot earlier in
06:32the season.
06:33You have a situation where Mike Brown has decided that Mitchell Robinson can't play with Cat all of a sudden.
06:39And, well, if that's the case, why are we just figuring this out right now?
06:44And so Mitchell Robinson has basically been taken out of this series.
06:47He has not had a good series.
06:48Landry Schammett, who Mike Brown loves and would love to play, has become unplayable as well.
06:54He's been terrible.
06:55So they've experimented with Jose Alvarado, and they've tried a lot of different things.
07:00Nothing seems to have stuck.
07:02But so here we are.
07:04The Knicks are facing a game tomorrow night that I feel is just about as close to a must-win
07:09as you can get.
07:10Nothing needs to be said after that.
07:12Steph Bondi, appreciate you hopping on with us.
07:15All right, man.
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