00:00I have been real annoyed since the Knicks won this title.
00:08And it's not that it's everyone to blame,
00:12but man, there are a lot of people rewriting history.
00:18The story of the Knicks, and Coach, you'll tell me if you disagree,
00:21and that's fine if you do.
00:23We'll have that conversation.
00:24The story of the Knicks is not a one-man band dragging guys
00:31across the finish line.
00:33The story of the Knicks is they finally unlocked their potential
00:40that we all thought they had when they put this team together.
00:47Brunson is an all-NBA caliber guard.
00:50Cat is an all-NBA caliber big.
00:53We knew that.
00:55O.G. Ananobi is an all-star-level player.
00:59Mikal Bridges is an all-star-level player.
01:03We knew those things.
01:05And yet, three games into the playoffs,
01:10nobody was carrying their weight.
01:14They then made an undeniable, clear-as-day change to how they operated,
01:23and they finally unlocked Carl Anthony Towns and unlocked O.G. Ananobi
01:31and made Mikal Bridges feel more comfortable,
01:34all while Brunson continued to get into a rhythm.
01:40And that led to a dominant Eastern Conference run,
01:45and then a NBA Finals where if you handed out a game MVP,
01:55at the end of game one, you would have given it, I believe, to Cat.
02:00At the end of game two, I believe you would have given it to Cat again.
02:04At the end of game four, you certainly would have given it to O.G. Ananobi.
02:09And at the end of game five, of course, you would have given it to Jalen Brunson.
02:14Don't worry, this is not me attempting to make some Carl Anthony Towns Finals MVP case.
02:18What it is, is putting this Knicks team into an appropriate context.
02:23This is not the Jalen Brunson story.
02:27I'm sorry.
02:28It's the New York Knicks story.
02:31It's validation for Cat, for O.G., for Bridges, for Mike Brown.
02:38It is validation.
02:41It is not Brunson passing some of the greatest guards in league history
02:48just because he's a Finals MVP.
02:51We didn't do this with Jalen Brown.
02:53We knew better.
02:55And I'm sorry, but we should know better here.
02:58When we think about how many of these New York Knicks will have their number retired,
03:03it's not Brunson and maybe Cat.
03:06It should be the entire starting five.
03:10Because that is how I will remember this team and what they accomplished, Coach.
03:17Yeah, I mean, when you think about it, Kevin, it was April 25th.
03:21I want to rewind people.
03:23Kevin and I did a show that day.
03:26And part of what we talked about, and we both talked about it,
03:30is the ball just became too dominant in Jalen Brunson's hands.
03:33And I remember, Kevin, as night is day,
03:36we said the ball's got to find a way through Cat, that he's got to be better.
03:40And that was the day.
03:42You saw it.
03:44There was something that was said between Cat, and Cat talked about it recently,
03:48that he went to Mike Brown and said, let me be the hub of the offense.
03:52Credit to Mike Brown for listening.
03:55Tibbs wouldn't have listened.
03:56He would have just kept playing the same way.
03:59Mike Brown adjusted.
04:00You know what else did?
04:02Jalen did.
04:03And that's also the same day.
04:05If people remember, in the third quarter, the Knicks started to make their run.
04:09The ball got a little stagnant, Kevin.
04:12If you remember, they came to the sidelines, and Rick Brunson looked at his kid and said,
04:18move the bleeping ball.
04:20Move the bleeping ball.
04:22And that, to me, was what unlocked everything.
04:25When Mike Brown got hired for the Knicks, and by the way, shout out to the Sacramento Kings.
04:32You guys are a great organization.
04:34You know, Darren Fox goes to the finals.
04:35You know, Mike Brown wins the championship.
04:37You guys are just sinking in quicksand.
04:40But I'll tell you this.
04:42When they hired Mike, the Knicks, I envisioned that the offense would go through Cat the way that they did
04:52with Demotis Sabonis.
04:54You did not see that all year until game four of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals.
05:01Give it to Cat, whether it's that split-screen action where you screen away, back to whatever.
05:07Then you saw, or the flex action where you set the flex screen.
05:10And if you remember, Kevin, not only did Cat get going, that's when OG got going.
05:15And he went on his run.
05:17And then remember, Mikel Bridges, I don't think scored in either game two or game three.
05:22In that series.
05:23Then he got unlocked.
05:25The Knicks folks, as great as people say Brunton is, and he is great.
05:30They reminded me of the 2004 Pistols.
05:33They beat you by the sum of their parts.
Comments