00:01welcome back to newswire here on sports grid always great to catch up with gilbert mcgregor
00:05from phoenix sports and he covers the suns for them and does a lot of live streaming and youtube
00:10videos and when the suns are not in action it's time to cover the rest of the nba so let's
00:15check
00:15in with gilbert gilbert great to catch up with you here on the show and so let me ask you
00:19the
00:19question that i posed just before went to the break was this the best nba game in the playoffs
00:26this season with the knicks coming back to beat the calves in overtime yesterday it was a really
00:32good one i know that's some tough competition for the game the night before though because that
00:35double overtime game between the spurs and thunder is right up there but the fact that we got this
00:40level of competition and back-to-back nights i think i saw something first time ever i believe that the
00:45game one of the eastern and western conference finals both go into overtime so as a basketball
00:50fan i have no complaints about it but it would either be last night's game or the game that we
00:54saw monday night i think that's fair and what did you make of just the the knicks like well-rounded
00:59effort here i know in the end brunson's always going to be the one that's going to carry the
01:03knicks over the top but it seemed like everybody was getting involved there and overtime in the
01:06fourth quarter definitely a team effort when you come back from 22 down in the fourth quarter it does
01:11require everybody and obviously demoralizing for the cavaliers but talk about the knicks and this
01:16is something that they did last year in the playoffs against the boston celtics this is a team who
01:20it's part of their dna they don't quit they don't say die dalen brunson being the head of the snake
01:24a
01:24guy that you follow his lead but executing defensively doing what you want to do offensively
01:29they made no secret that they were trying to find james harden on that end of the floor and they
01:33stuck
01:33with it things started going well for them things started going bad for the cavaliers and they end up
01:38on top and kenny atkinson defending harden after the game saying he's going to be out there for the next
01:43game no matter what so don't even think anything otherwise uh the knicks are now huge favorites by the way
01:48to win
01:49in the series minus 390 after that win yesterday and i guess the factor that you would think is is
01:54this demoralizing as you said like is this going to potentially put the calves on ice here but if
02:00you look at thursday's game the odds are telling us basically this could be a very similar outcome
02:06knicks minus six and a half total 215 and a half so slight change there as you see on the
02:11total but
02:12i think what makes it interesting gilbert is that the knicks didn't have that offensive explosion like
02:16they had in the end of the regular season and into the playoffs until the end of the game so
02:21maybe
02:21the calves are just close they just couldn't put them away i thought yesterday it definitely brings
02:27up the whole argument of rest versus rust obviously the knicks sweeping 76ers having some time to get
02:33back and get healthy with respect to og ananobi but they hadn't played basketball in a while and
02:37the calves had that game seven win on sunday which is a dominant game i think they were able to
02:42ride
02:42that momentum and take that through and what they showed in the first half of last night's game even
02:47up to the point where they built that 22 point lead in the fourth quarter so i'm curious to see
02:51how that
02:51resets as they have a game or a day off in between games to prepare for one another now that
02:57the knicks
02:57kind of find that momentum that they use to close the game do the calves recognize that hey we can
03:01find
03:02some success against this team we've done it already we can do that again i do think these teams will
03:06be somewhat evenly matched but i just think so much of the knicks and what they have done and the
03:11team
03:11that they've built and their guys on the calves i don't necessarily trust all the way and we saw
03:15exactly why uh yesterday agreed yep fair enough all right so uh i don't i think a lot of people
03:21saw this coming actually game one with the spurs beating the thunder because i mean maybe they just
03:27simply have their number but what's funny gilbert is that i see people saying that the spurs are going
03:31to win again tonight i don't know if you feel the same way the thunder is six and a half
03:34point
03:35favorites total 216 and a half it feels like shea gilgis alexander is the mvp of the league
03:41but they've run into an absolute freight train with victor wimbayama who's arguably playing
03:46as well as any nba finals mvp has played through one game albeit through one game if wendy plays this
03:53well gilbert the spurs are going to win the nba championship i mean at this kind of level when a
03:59player gets there i mean this is like dirk this is like lebron dwayne wade like winning championships
04:04shaquille o'neal kobe bryant i mean we are having that conversation right now and it's crazy we're
04:09having that conversation he's 22 years old which is pretty incredible but it's hard to argue with
04:13that craig this is a guy who we're seeing play like the best player in the world it's either him
04:18or shea depending on who you ask and we talk so much about the thunder being a team that feel
04:22inevitable doesn't matter what you do how well you play what goes right for you what goes wrong for
04:26them they always have a chance well victor wimbayama feels like an inevitable player and that's
04:32what we saw in game one every time the thunder bounced back and took a lead or whatever it was
04:36they ran into victor wimbayama 41 points 24 rebounds no answer for him offensively or defensively
04:44talk about shane not necessarily having his best game a lot of that had to do with the presence of
04:48victor wimbayama defensively chet holmgren did not have his best game did not play like an all-star
04:53or the all-star that he is or supposed to be because victor wimbayama takes that match up
04:58personally so when he's focused like that which is crazy to say for a guy in his third season at
05:0322
05:04years old they can reach those heights and they have had oklahoma city's number this season they're
05:08five and one against the thunder now yeah agreed all right gilbert so this is it this is the last
05:13chance that you'll ever get okc at this point of the playoffs is plus money to win the championship
05:20because if they win tonight it's back to minus the rest of the playoffs plus 120 to win the nba
05:25championship are you going to get off okc gilbert or are you staying on here and doubling down on the
05:31plus i still trust oklahoma city this feels similar to where they were last year albeit around earlier
05:37but they lost that game one to the nuggets and it was a disastrous loss aaron gordon had that game
05:43winner and a lot of people had a lot of questions about the thunder and how they matched up and
05:46if
05:46they were going to have enough to deal with nicole jokic now it's a different international center a
05:51different mvp candidate that they're dealing with a different way to lose down the stretch but we saw
05:57that series go seven games but oklahoma city ultimately just had enough they had more than
06:02what the nuggets had i think that's what's going to happen i think they're going to outlast the san
06:05antonio spurs in this series the thunder did play well but jaylen williams could have played better
06:10shea could play much better aj mitchell could play much better and i don't know how much of that is
06:15a
06:15credit to the spurs and what they did defensively or the thunder having some rest that they're dealing with
06:19after sweeping their first two rounds so i fully expect them to bounce back tonight and i fully
06:23expect them to bounce back in the series even if the series goes to distance the spurs time is coming
06:27just not yet gilbert uh jason kid generational player in the 90s very similar to the trajectory
06:34sort of of steve nash i kind of felt like and nash got a head coaching gig uh ended up
06:39getting let go
06:40and here we are with kid i mean these are two players that we watched right in the 90s
06:44watching them grow as players and then kid in particular as a coach he's going to get paid
06:49he got bought out but i do have to ask you gilbert does he get another chance i think we'll
06:54get another
06:54chance two guys we saw uh play and play at a high level in phoenix by the way but i
06:58do think he'll
06:58get another chance i think players like playing for jason kidd i'm kind of surprised that it happened
07:02the way it did but i guess it makes sense for what the vision that masai jiri has for the
07:06mavericks
07:06moving forward so maybe portland maybe orlando give them a call but i'll be curious to see what
07:10happens in the future of jason kid on the sideline nba yeah and dallas will uh recycle some coach
07:15that just got fired like a year ago that's that's the way the nba works gilbert thanks again for
07:19coming on appreciate it we'll talk soon sounds good craig
Comments