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The Cavs were up 22 in the fourth quarter and LOST? Kevin Sheehan reacts to one of the biggest comebacks in Conference Finals history, and the Knicks stealing Game 1.
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00:00So if Kenny Atkinson, like, was oblivious to the fact that his team was blowing a big lead, it shouldn't
00:08have been because it was deafening.
00:10Like, why were they so loud, coach?
00:13So number one is this idea that they were tired.
00:18No, that's not my number one.
00:20My number one is he had four timeouts when this run started.
00:26Four.
00:27You know, you see the little dash marks underneath Cleveland on the scoreboard Chiron on TV.
00:36He had four timeouts when this thing started.
00:40He did not call a timeout until the Knicks had run off 18-1 run over a four-minute period.
00:51The clock went from 739 to 330, and his team had been outscored 18-1, and a 93-71 lead
01:03went to 94-89 before this numbnuts literally woke up and called a timeout.
01:12Now, I mean, I'm sitting there watching it.
01:15What was exciting about it is that there wasn't a timeout, and so you're like, man, they might really –
01:21the Cavs are completely coming apart at the seams here.
01:25This is fun to watch.
01:27Usually, it gets interrupted with so many timeouts because you've got to stop the run.
01:32You've got – by the way, if your team is tired, exhausted, because they just played game seven, that's another
01:40reason you've got to call the timeout.
01:43I mean, there should have been maybe two to three timeouts.
01:47Yes, certainly one, more likely than not two during that 18-1 run.
01:53The damage had already been done.
01:56The table – or tables – had been turned.
02:01They were in deep trouble because their head coach was asleep at the wheel.
02:08Do you have that piece of sound that I asked you to get, Max?
02:11Yes, I do.
02:13Kenny Atkinson, the head coach of the Cavaliers, was asked about why not a timeout as the Knicks are in
02:21the midst of an insane 18-1 run, which, by the way, was almost all Jalen Brunson.
02:27I'll get to that in a moment and how it happened.
02:30Why not a timeout?
02:31Here's what he said.
02:33Yeah, well, I like to hold my timeouts.
02:36I mean, you know, I didn't want to have one timeout at the end of the game, one or two
02:40-point game.
02:41I mean, I try to hold him, you know.
02:45I mean, that's the dumbest answer ever.
02:49Look, he's probably a really good coach, and he just had the worst night of his life as a head
02:55coach.
02:56Every great head coach has had a bad night, and I bet you there are a lot of coaches that
03:00are like, take it easy.
03:02The guy knows what he's doing.
03:03He had a bad night.
03:05Yeah, he did on a very big stage, and that's the problem is because that's a memorable bad night.
03:15He let the Knicks, over a four-minute period, go on an 18-to-1 run as his 22-point
03:22lead went down to five without a timeout because he said he likes to save them for the end.
03:29Sure, you'd love to have, you know, in the final minute of a game, you'd love to have two timeouts.
03:34You want to have one for a challenge opportunity.
03:36You definitely want that in case there's a call that the refs miss.
03:40You certainly want at least one to be able to advance the ball, but what are you thinking you're going
03:45to need them for when you're up 22?
03:48Like, I think the first one comes when, you know, the lead gets cut from 22, let's just say down,
03:56like a quick 5-0 run, which is what they went on.
03:59A quick 5-0 run that made it 93-76.
04:01I think that's the first one.
04:03Hey, guys, let's just, you know, 5-0 run.
04:07We don't want this crowd to get into it.
04:08We don't want them to start believing.
04:10Let's get a really good offensive set here.
04:12Take a deep breath.
04:13You're tired from game seven.
04:15Oh, by the way, James, we're going to take you out of the game.
04:18More on Harden coming up in a moment because you can't guard a lamppost.
04:24And we're going to get a better defender, whether it's Schroeder or it's Wade.
04:28We're going to get somebody else in the game.
04:29But what we're really going to do is offensively, we are going to run something that gets us a really
04:35good shot because we need to kind of quell this quick 5-0.
04:40I think timeout.
04:417-0 for sure.
04:43You know, when that thing gets to 93-78 for sure.
04:47He let them go on an 18-1 run.
04:51And he had four of those dashes, timeouts.
04:55And by the way, if you don't know this about the NBA, when there's this use them or lose them,
05:02you get that in college basketball.
05:04You have to use one at the end of the first half or it doesn't carry over.
05:08You either, you go to the final three minutes.
05:12You lose two of the timeouts that you have left.
05:16Use them or lose them.
05:17Now, he did.
05:18He used one of them at the 330 mark.
05:21So that's number one.
05:23The head coach, when it came to what he could potentially do, you know, to stop the Knicks' roll.
05:33And by the way, it's not just to stop momentum.
05:35It's not just to quiet the crowd.
05:37It's not just to take a deep breath.
05:39It's to come up with a strategy on both ends of the floor to stop them from doing what they
05:47had started to do to get back into the game and stop them from doing that, which they never did.
05:53So the second reason that this is much more about Cleveland than it was about New York is one of
06:01my all-time favorites.
06:03If you've been listening to this show for years, you know that I find James Harden to be the least
06:09enjoyable team sport star to watch.
06:13I can't stand watching James Harden.
06:16I've never liked watching James Harden.
06:18I can't stand the iso, the constant iso ball.
06:22To me, you can't win four out of seven four times in the postseason if your best player is an
06:30iso player only.
06:31I can't stand the flailing.
06:33I can't stand, even though there is a skill to it, there's no doubt about it, the foul drawing.
06:40I can't stand the obliviousness to, you know, tight situations, game situations.
06:47Look, he is a skilled scorer, an all-timer.
06:51He's going to be, he's going to go to the hall of fame.
06:53I have found watching James Harden to be the least enjoyable, the most joyless watch in sports for me over
07:02a long period of time.
07:03And I've expressed that many times.
07:05One of the problems with James Harden is that he legitimately, it's not that, it's not just that he can't
07:12guard.
07:14It just seems like he doesn't really have much interest at times.
07:18I actually thought he guarded pretty well for him in game seven.
07:23And I said this on Monday's show, that you'll look at James Harden's stat line in game seven against Detroit.
07:29He didn't score in double figures.
07:31He had nine points on two of ten from the floor.
07:34He was 0 for 6 from behind the arc.
07:36And I actually said, you know what?
07:38It wasn't his worst game.
07:40He actually made a lot of good decisions offensively.
07:43And he actually gave them some at least caring and effort defensively.
07:48Last night, he was back to James Harden.
07:52He was, once again, I think this is the 31st time he's ended up with more turnovers than made shots
08:00in a playoff game.
08:01That is disgraceful.
08:03There is no way to justify that, even if you want to say, well, he's got the ball in his
08:09hands a lot.
08:10And guys that handle the ball and have high usage rates typically have high turnover numbers.
08:17First of all, he's not their primary ball handler, right?
08:21Donovan Mitchell is.
08:22He had six turnovers last night.
08:24Could have had another three.
08:25That's the thing about Harden.
08:26He lucks into three non-turnovers a game.
08:32Somebody said this morning on one of the shows, that's an all-time choke job by Harden.
08:37And the list is super long of Harden choke jobs in the playoffs.
08:41I don't even look at him playing last night and say he choked.
08:47That would mean that he actually feels the pressure.
08:53I don't think he feels it.
08:55I think he's oblivious to it.
08:57I think he just thinks playoff games are just like games in November or December.
09:03That's the way he's always played in the postseason.
09:06He has played these playoff games as if the game is played similarly to a regular season game.
09:13And anybody that watches the NBA knows they are two different sports altogether.
09:18And the reason his turnover numbers go up and his shot numbers go down is because he's getting guarded much
09:26differently and much harder in the postseason than he is.
09:30So his casual play that he gets away with in the regular season becomes a major liability in the postseason.
09:38I don't think he choked.
09:40I think the head coach choked.
09:41I don't know that Harden's capable of choking because that would mean that he feels it.
09:47I don't think he feels it.
09:48I think he's oblivious to it.
09:51By the way, there's something to be said for the guy in a pressure situation who's oblivious to the fact
09:58that he should be feeling pressure.
09:59The guy that always comes to mind for me that fits that description to a tee, but actually it worked
10:06for him, was Joe Flacco.
10:08Joe Flacco didn't – I don't think at any point when he was quarterbacking the Ravens in big playoff games,
10:16I don't think he ever really understood that he might want to feel a little bit of tension.
10:23And it's, I think, why he excelled in the biggest of moments.
10:27I mean, he was not an elite quarterback.
10:28We know that.
10:29Not a great quarterback.
10:30Not a Hall of Fame quarterback.
10:31No, but one of the great road records in the history of the postseason for a starting quarterback and one
10:37of the best clutch postseason quarterbacks of the last 20 years.
10:41And it wasn't because he thrived under pressure.
10:45It was because he just didn't know to feel the pressure.
10:49I view Harden in the same way.
10:52The problem is he's not executing.
10:55He doesn't execute at a high level without feeling the pressure.
10:59But reason number two, after not calling timeouts, is that the Knicks attacked James Harden like you wouldn't believe.
11:12He is a terrible defender.
11:16Harden in the fourth quarter and in overtime was switched onto Jalen Brunson nine times,
11:24which resulted in an absolute astounding 1.9 points per switch.
11:36You've got to take Harden out of the game, Kenny Atkinson.
11:38What are you doing?
11:40Like that first time out when they attacked him, you know, it started to attack him.
11:45James were either not going to switch, which is a whole other subject.
11:48I don't personally understand.
11:51I talked to Legler about this on the show a week and a half ago when he was on.
11:55And I said, why do teams accept switches so easily?
12:01For those of you who don't know what we're talking about, in the NBA, because most teams don't play a
12:07true zone, there are zone defenses.
12:08But when you're in man-to-man and somebody sets a screen for the guy with the ball, and the
12:14defenders decide, you know what, I was guarding the ball, but now I'm going to take the screener.
12:19And you, who are guarding the screener, you take the guy with the ball.
12:22That's a switch.
12:24You switch the guys that you're guarding defensively because they screened you into the switch.
12:31Now, you don't have to switch.
12:33You can fight over the screen.
12:35You can go underneath the screen and stay with your guy.
12:37There's lots of things you can do.
12:39And you can hedge hard as the guy whose man is setting the screen until the guy that's guarding the
12:46ball recovers.
12:47There's lots of things you can do to not switch.
12:51What's interesting last night about the switching is the screens weren't even like real screens.
12:58Cleveland just accepted the fact that we're going to throw kind of a quasi-screen on the guy that's guarding
13:06Brunson so that Harden is switched on to Brunson.
13:10And they just accepted it over and over again.
13:12I don't understand that.
13:13You know, a much higher level basketball mind could explain to me why teams at all levels, by the way,
13:23accept switches so easily.
13:26Like, if you have five defenders that are equal, there's nothing better than switching every screen.
13:31It's so hard to play a team that one through five can really guard and guard any kind of position
13:40so that they can switch every single ball screen.
13:43It's a really great way to play defense, but you have to have five defenders that can all guard and
13:49guard different positions and be versatile.
13:51With James Harden on the floor, you can't accept the switching over and over again.
13:59This was such an obvious thing as it was happening.
14:03I'm sitting there going, first of all, I almost turned it off like I'm sure many people probably did.
14:08I'm glad I stuck with it because it truly was magical to watch this with the crowd and the scene
14:14in the garden and the whole thing.
14:16But right when it started to happen, it's like, oh my God, you've got Atkinson.
14:23You've got to either stop switching or you've got to take Harden out of the game.
14:29Harden literally is a lamppost and was last night.
14:33There's no sense of urgency with him at all.
14:38I mean, he'll probably live a super long life.
14:41I don't think he's ever felt the stress of anything.
14:44The anxiety of anything.
14:48And, you know, whatever.
14:49I mean, Matador, right by, right to the rim, and Brunson is just going on an absolute heater.
14:57And every single time down court, here comes Bridges, here comes whoever's Harden's guarding,
15:03that he's going to set the screen and Harden's going to switch.
15:05And they just accepted it.
15:07No timeout to get him out.
15:08Never took him out of the game.
15:10That's number two.
15:11The not using timeouts and then the absolute destruction of one man defensively over the final seven and a half
15:22minutes and five minutes in overtime without any strategic change.
15:27Now, I should say, they did start to double.
15:29They did start to double.
15:30And I think that's a terrible strategy against the Knicks, too.
15:34Because Brunson will find the guy whose man went to double.
15:38And now you've got open three-point shooters or you've got an open drive to the rim because you're playing
15:43four on three.
15:44I don't love that strategy either.
15:46But it's better than letting Harden guard him.
15:49But that didn't happen until we got to overtime.
15:55That's number two as to why they imploded and why they blew it is they let over and over and
16:03over and over again.
16:05One man, the worst defender on your team, the most disinterested defender on your team get matched up against one
16:15of the most lethal scorers in the NBA.
16:18It was literally just watching, you know, a varsity player against a ninth grader who plays on the freshman team
16:28defensively.
16:30And so that was a big problem.
16:34Then you had what was going on on offense.
16:39Donovan Mitchell is a great player, a great scorer.
16:44He had 29 points last night.
16:46He took six total shots in the fourth quarter and overtime.
16:53Now, there is some reporting that perhaps he may have gotten hurt, may have tweaked an ankle.
16:59But they did not go through Mitchell when they needed points, when they needed to quell the run.
17:07It was Harden.
17:08It was others.
17:10Where's Max Struzan defensively?
17:12Where's Dean Wade?
17:13Where's Schroeder?
17:14Give me somebody other than Harden.
17:17And Mitchell became nonexistent.
17:22It was a disappearing act.
17:24How do you not, with one of the timeouts, stop it and say, we're running something to get Donovan going
17:30downhill with the ball in his hands?
17:33That was terrible to not do that.
17:37And then lastly, Jalen Brunson, who's going on this incredible tear.
17:44When it starts, he's got four fouls.
17:47He picks up his fifth foul on an offensive foul during the run.
17:51And they don't attack him on the other end.
17:54Because you know what?
17:55He's not a great defender.
17:57So Cleveland ignored not going after Brunson defensively to get him the hell out of the game.
18:04Now, they did because Harden made a shot down this stretch with 20-something seconds left to give him a
18:12two-point lead.
18:12And it was Brunson guarding him.
18:14But that was the only time they targeted Brunson.
18:19Just one of the worst coaching malpractice situations that you'll ever see.
18:26And I'm sure that he is a fine coach, and I'm sure we are talking about just his worst moment
18:33and his worst night.
18:34It just happened to have been on a massive stage, game one of the conference finals, in the most famous
18:41arena in the world, Madison Square Garden.
18:45And it was one of the worst implosions you'll ever see.
18:49I want to make one thing clear.
18:52The Knicks had to do their part, too.
18:54They had to take advantage of Cleveland saying,
18:57We're open to the possibility of you making one of the all-time comebacks in NBA playoff history.
19:03But you still had to have the Knicks do their part.
19:07And Jalen Brunson was incredible.
19:09And Landry Schammett knocked down some big threes, including one that bounced twice on the rim and went in when
19:16they were down 99-96 to tie it at 99.
19:18There were some really, really good performances by some of the other players as well.
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