Spurs vs. Knicks, again
Rhyming the deep past (1999) and the recent past (December).
Rhyming the deep past (1999) and the recent past (December).
Good morning. The NBA Finals start today. Let's basketball.
Either the New York Knicks or San Antonio Spurs can win the championship. That much is clear.
The Knicks have been absolute killers for a month now. They haven't lost in 40 days. Forty days is an incredible amount of time. Forty days from now, the NBA Draft and most of NBA free agency will be over. Summer League will be in full swing. In all those wins, they have typically either stomped the emotion out of their opponents or come back from epic deficits to crush the hearts of their foes. They have been absolute killers.
The Spurs took down to the defending champs, a team that half-a-season ago looked to be on the verge of 73 wins, on the backs of a 22-year-old superstar, a 21-year-old co-star and a 20-year-old sixth man, all in the franchise's first playoff appearance in years. Poof! Title contender. No one knows what to do with them.
It's amusing that the last time the Knicks made the Finals, they faced a Spurs team featuring a generational big man who seemed to reach the finish line way earlier than expected. But that time, New York was the unlikely entrant, rising up from a No. 8 seed with a ragtag band of players through a legendary playoff run. Perhaps the most '90s team of all.
The Spurs were making their second playoff run of the Tim Duncan era in '99, having fallen to the Jazz in the second round in 1998 when Timmy was a rookie. (Those Jazz teams ruined a lot of young Western Conference teams' hopes.) That '99 season was lockout-shorten and post-MJ, so it was ... weird. I remember parts of the Knicks-Heat series, and the Larry Johnson highlights, and the Finals, which were not terribly competitive until Game 5, with the Spurs up 3-1 and trying to clinch in Madison Square Garden, which in retrospect was quite rude. And it all came down to a wide open Avery Johnson baseline and a totally smothered Latrell Sprewell baseline turnaround.
The wunderkind defensive genius tipping a critical shot from the opposing player? That's a new one.
The sport is totally different than it was in 1999. The two teams are totally different than they were when they met for the NBA Cup Final a few months ago.
Well, maybe not. Josh Hart flying around making crazy, impactful plays. O.G. Anunoby hitting huge shots. Dylan Harper playing years beyond his age. Stephon Castle all over the place (good and bad). De'Aaron Fox trying in vain to recapture his clutch magic. Victor Wembanyama changing attackers' mind for them and toggling between ripping threes to mixed success and getting down low.
The biggest differences between then and now? Wembanyama, Castle and Harper are even more confident; Mitch Johnson and Mike Brown have both proven they have full belief of their players; Karl-Anthony Towns is a much bigger halfcourt presence without shooting much; Devin Vassell is a two-way monster; Brunson smells blood on almost every possession; Landry Shamet is now playing the role of Tyler Kolek much to the chagrin of opponents; and Mikal Bridges has found the right combination of spirit and poise and is back in the crunch time rotation in those rare events when the Knicks decide to allow there to be crunch time.
This has the potential to be an incredible series. Either way – if the Knicks win their first title in 53 years, or if the Spurs go all the way in Wembanyama's first playoff run – the story will be incredible.
Game 1 is 8:30 PM Eastern on ABC.
You Almost Didn't Get A Preview This Morning
Who decided to do the surviving basketbloggers dirty and release this time suck the day before the Finals? This is August material!
Gimme those lottery balls.
Here's the closest to perfect I could get this morning.
I think I might have hit 80 wins if I would have taken Paul Pierce over Antoine Walker with my first pick (sorry, I like what I like), because then I could have taken Pau Gasol at PF instead of Shareef Abdur-Rahim after lucking into '60s Wilt, which is this game's cheat code if you stick blocks in your PF or SF slots, which I did not.
I also left the era spin on the table for the Lakers '90s pick (final pick), but thought I need the assists more than anything but blocks.
Anyone got an 82-0 yet? Or conversely, less than 5 wins?
Miscellanea
Rest in peace to the great Rick Adelman, legendary coach of the golden era Kings and patriarch of a great coaching family. He made a huge impact on a ton of players over the years.
The Magic hired Sean Sweeney as head coach. He would have been one of my top preferred targets if the Kings were willing to pry themselves away from Doug Christie. Alas.
Paul Flannery on how Victor Wembanyama is fitting in the Spurs' tradition.
Dan Devine's big Finals preview.
Jared Dubin with a batch of Finals questions.
Ratings for Spurs-Thunder seem like they were ridiculously good. It's so funny how the last elite Spurs team was anathema to T.V. ratings and the new version is basically the best thing the NBA can have on.
Jeopardy! is never beating the allegations that their sports questions are absurdly easy.
My old colleague Jay Busbee on how sports teams figured out that fans would pay almost anything for a ticket to a big game.
Sigh, yes, you do have to hand it to Patrick Redford and, if not him, whoever wrote this Defector headline. Vivek Ranadive should have to hold a press conference attended by fans and answer questions about this.
The luxury of getting to use a Clyde Frazier suit fitting as your Finals hype video.
The head dude at Aspiration, Joe Sanberg, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison. I'm sensing a news drop from the NBA on their investigation into Aspiration and the Clippers on, say, July 3 at 4:45 PM Eastern.
Alright, I think that's everything. Remember: paid subscribers will get newsletters Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week. (Game 2 is on Friday, so the recap will arrive Saturday morning.) If you're a free subscriber or just coming across this via a forward or social media: becoming a paid subscriber gets you access to every edition of the newsletter we publish.
Be excellent to each other.
