Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective - Emergency Pod: Historic Knicks’ Comeback, Boston In Trouble

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Brian Windhorst talks the historic Knicks’ comeback win over the Celtics in this emergency pod including what both locker rooms are feeling, what is going wrong for Boston, why the best could be to come from New York, where the series goes from here, what makes this such a unique battle and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, sports fans, the ESPN app has all of ESPN all in one place. The ESPN app is your home to thousands of live events, ESPN shows, and originals across every ESPN network and service. And now you can check if you already have ESPN Unlimited as part of your TV package for no additional calls. Visit activate.esPN.com to learn how to access your account or sign up, then start streaming in the ESPN app. It's all of ESPN all in one place. Sign up or activate now. Hello and welcome the Hoop Collective podcast. I talk about the NBA. This is an emergency podcast that Jackson Brow beat me into.

I don't really think it's appropriate to do an emergency podcast by myself, but here I am early on Thursday morning in Boston. I had to evacuate the TD Garden because there was a fire after the game. Jason Tatum couldn't even do his post-game press conference. couldn't is an interesting word that I just used. He probably was pleased he didn't have to do it. You could make a whole bunch of metaphors, and I'm sure many people and my media brethren will make metaphors

about the fire alarm. I'll just pause for a second while you come up with your own. Good job. But I did want to just spend something. Tim McMahon is covering the Oklahoma City game. I didn't watch one second of it. I think they won. Jackson did they win, the Thunder.

They were winning big. I was busy evacuating. So he's not available. And Tim Bontemps is burping his son. So it's just me for right now. There was a, there is a ton of statistics about this game that are about, really these two games are absolutely crazy. You're going to probably hear a lot of them if you take in taking any media over the next couple of days. There's a couple that I'm just going to point out.

But there's a, there's literally. an ending supply. The Knicks have won five road playoff games in this postseason, the three in Detroit and now two here in Boston. And they've won all of them by three points or less, all of them. To me, that is a more jaw-dropping statistic than the fact that they had two 20-point comebacks in the second half of these last two games here in Boston. And Tatum and Jason Tatum and Jalen Brown are one of 12 in clutch time.

Boston's 25 of 100 on three-pointers I could go on and on the Knicks have only led for 12 total minutes You know there's already There's been over 100 minutes played

Because of the Because the first game went to overtime So they've led you know For 10-ish percent And they're 2-0 That's never happened before Anybody who's there's been like 239 teams that have gotten up

2-0 in a series No one's ever only for 12 minutes. I could keep going on and on and on. Let me just say I went to both locker rooms after the game. The Knicks were chill. Obviously, they were very happy, but they were chill. There was a lot of praise in the Knicks locker room for Mitchell Robinson,

who made a key adjustment on the last play of the game. So the Celtics missed 14 or the last 15 shots. They had one basket in the last eight and a half minutes. They had some free throws, but they had one actual basket. That's how you blow a 16-point lead in the fourth quarter because that's what were they were when that started going down. And that basket came on a Jason Tatum dunk with 18 seconds left.

Then the Knicks had taken the lead, and Joe Mazzula called timeout, and they ran a really good play where Al Horford, he was like a pulling guard. He was a ridiculous moving screen that he wiped out OG An Anobie on the play. But, you know, there's moving screens everywhere. I'm not focusing on that. And it moved, you know, Mitchell Robinson was kind of caught in no man's land.

Tatum went right by him and dunked it. And so when Jalen Brunson hit two free throws to put the Knicks ahead by one point with 12 seconds left, Joe Bazula had a timeout left and he decided not to take it. He didn't want the Knicks to be able to take Jailen Brunson out of the game. they had already had towns out of the game. I got to say Mitchell Robinson, he was just brilliant in general in this game. The Knicks were really saved by his minutes on the court.

And in the fourth quarter, the Celtics started playing hack a Mitch. They were hacking Mitchell Robinson. He took a free throw in the fourth quarter, I think it was in the fourth quarter, where he shot at about 13 feet from the 15-point-free throw line. It was embarrassing. You know, I'm sure it was all over social media.

But let me just tell you what wasn't embarrassing that Celtics fouled him to force him to be taken out of the game. He's a non-skilled backup center. And the Celtics were so unnerved by him that they fouled to get him out of the game. And if you saw what he did in the last play, maybe you would get it because he was in the games for Carl Towns. and they elected to run the exact same play.

Tatum got the ball, started his full court run. This time, instead of coming way up towards center court, Mitchell Robinson hung back. And I asked O.G. Anobie, I said, did you and Mitch talk during the gate? Because there wasn't a timeout. Nobody called time out. And I said, did you two talk, like,

like how you were going to defend it differently if they ran it again? And O.G. said, no, we didn't. We just knew what to do, which was to not come too far up the court. And so when Tatum came down, Ananoby was more ready for Al Horford, you know, pulling as a pulling guard. And he and Robinson backed up a little bit so that he didn't get caught flat-footed. And Tatum ended up making contact with Al Horford. And he kind of lost his dribble. And then all hell broke loose. He was scrambling, looking for a shot. Missoula could have called timeout in that moment, but he tried to call time out at the end of the game on Monday, and he couldn't get the timeout. So Tadam went hunting for a shot. Missoula said he thought he had a, he had a look. And we didn't get to ask Jason Tatum about it because the fire alarm went off. But I'm not going to spend a lot of time breaking down the last play.

Just know that in the Knicks locker room, they were praising Mitchell Robinson up one side and down the other for how well he played. And when you talk to the Knicks, you know, you tell your players and coaches, you say like, what's going through your mind when you're coming back from these 20 points down? And because it's a weird thing. What's going on right now in this series is sort of inverse. I'm not, I'm actually having a hard time quantifying it and talking about it on television and writing about it because it's on its head. So the Celtics, even though they've got the lead, they play tight. And I think it's because they're kind of, they know Brunson's there. It's like, you know, the boogeyman.

And it's like, are they going to get it to clutch time? And then the Knicks, they play loose. Even when they get down like 16, 18, they always kind of bring it back. They kind of bring it back. They kind of bring it back. They play very loose from behind. It's unusual because they're on the road and they're the underdog. By the way, as of right now, and it might be different by morning,

the sports books don't know what to do with this. I actually kind of feel better that I don't really know what's going on because the sports books don't know what's going on either. They still have Boston as the favorite to win the East, obviously because the calves are down 2-0 as well. But they've got the Nixas the favorite for the series, which sees me to believe that money's coming in all over the place. Nobody knows what to do here. So that makes me feel better. More Hoop Collective Podcast after this. In the Boston locker room, obviously they're upset.

But what I'm getting from listening to their players and talking to their players is that I don't think they quite understand why it's not working. They feel like they're running good offense. Now, you can pull out individual moments like Tatum at one point in the fourth quarter had Jalen Brunson on him yet again. This is where he hoisted a three-pointer several times in game one. He had Brunson on him, and he gave the ball up like two seconds later. And you're like, what are you doing? You know, you guys can't make a shot. You've got Jalen Brunson on you.

Isoed, no help. Go to the basket or, you know, get in and get a good shot. They started the game posting people up. They were posting Jalen Brown up early in the game multiple times. They, you know, they were driving in a little. It wasn't like they were abandoning the three because they still, they still took 40 tonight. But they were looking to go inside. That was just gone.

So you can find individual moments where Tatum wasn't aggressive or Jalen Brown wasn't aggressive. But they feel like they're getting good looks. They don't feel like they're failing in running their stuff. And that's what's confounding them because they feel like it should be working. And they've just had two games in a row where their worst three-point shooting. This happened to Cleveland, too. Cleveland, you know, the number one percentage three-point shooting team, they've got all these injured guys and they're like,

how are we having our worst shooting games when we're also having our star players injured? How is that our lot in life? And this is what Boston's saying too. How are we shooting this badly? It doesn't make sense. Like, I don't think they quite understand why this is not working. They don't feel like they're getting,

you know, and that's the other thing. That's what I would say if you're a Knicks fan, I don't think the Knicks have played well yet. And that Celtics are a reason for that. I think they're defending well. They're causing the Knicks problems with their length and their ball pressure. Their Knicks are not getting a lot of good looks.

The Celtics are getting way more good looks. And if you're a Boston fan, you're saying, well, that's going to come around. And maybe it will. But the Celtics are having a difficult time understanding why they're losing and what's happening in these games. And I am not able to provide, other than reading you statistics and looking at individual moments, I'm not able to provide you a reason why either. It's just sort of happening.

and a lot of it is wrapped in confidence. And here's the other thing. O.G. and Anobie and O'G.Nobie and Mikhail Bridges, the two wings that the Knicks traded for and are paying and all these draft picks and everything. They're outplaying Tatum and Brown in the fourth quarter of the two games in this series. Tatum and Brown, like I said,

are one of 12 in the fourth quarter of these two games, or at least in clutch time. One of 12 in clutch time. And the closer, Jalen Brunson's clearly outplaying Jason. datum in the closing role. So you have the wings, which is the strength of the Celtics team, getting outplayed by the New York wings, and you've got the closer closing better. I mean, this was the, again, Jalen Brunson, he had nine points in the fourth quarter.

He hit two huge shots, one of them a three, one of them a driving shot, and then he made two clutch free throws. On the Brunson clutch scale, what do we think it was? A seven? Like, I don't even think it's one. one of his three best clutch, I mean, obviously it was a win. It doesn't matter. But like, he's so good I can parse it. I don't think it was one of his three best clutch games of the five that he's helped them win. And so again, like if you know, on Saturday, Brunson could have

45 on Saturday. So could Tatum, but Brunson could have 45. Here's something else about the Celtics that should be a little bit worrisome. Chris Houss-Poorzingis is not right. He played, but he didn't start. And I think it's because he's got no energy. And, and, And I talked to him after the game. I shouldn't say I talked to him. I was in the scrum with him, listening to him. And he basically said he doesn't feel well. And he's, it's killing him that this is coming back around.

And here's the thing. Like, I don't know what's going on. I'm not going to say what's going on or what I've heard. He's not like got a runny nose and, you know, got a cough. He doesn't look, other than maybe just not looking with good. coloring. He doesn't look like his good color. He's not like sick, like, you know, got the flu. He's, there's something else going on there. And, you know, he's like, no one's going to feel sorry for he's like, nobody cares. No one's going to feel sorry. I feel sorry for him for being sick,

because I can't imagine what it's like to be sick and the doctors. And I'm sure he's getting, I mean, first off, Boston is a medical city. It's one of the leading medical cities of the world. I promise you, every good doctor who they could possibly consult, I'm sure has been brought in on this. They don't know what it is. Or if they know what it is, they're not being able to correct it. And so we know that Porzingis is a huge X factor for them. And he did have eight points and four rebounds. He had a couple of good plays. But he is openly saying he is not feel right. And so that is something that is coming out of this as well. So I would not say that the Knicks feel like they've got this at all.

This is where, as I close here, I go on my pulpit. By the way, when I told McMahon that I was like, I guess I'm just going to do this alone for 15 minutes, he was like, well, you do a long intro for 15 minutes and don't let us talk at the start of every podcast. So, I appreciate that. Now here's where I'm going to make my preach. Over 20 plus years covering the NBA, there's certain truths that I've learned that are just true. and I've just come to believe them. And one of them is that there's always time.

You've probably heard me say this before, but here I go. There's always time. NBA basketball is extremely forgiving because games are long, playoff series are long, seasons are long. It's never over after two games. Never over. I would say that about the Cavs Pacer series, as I compliment the Pacers for how great they've played.

I'd say that about this series. Boston has won a road game in 11 consecutive series, six different times. They've won multiple road games. So what I'm basically saying there is that the game on Saturday afternoon at the Garden, the 3.30 game on ABC, it's the biggest game at the Garden probably since the 99 finals. I don't know. I mean, I'm not a chapter inverse Knicks guy.

But I would say probably since the 99 finals, which by the way, they lost 4-1 and we're not really in. So, because if they go up 3-0, no one's ever come back from that. So huge. But there's always time. And the Celtics are in trouble, no doubt. But especially because I don't think that the Knicks have done their best yet. Like it'd be one thing if the Knicks shot like 66% on threes and you know, you know, because you see this in playoff series where one team just gets red hot. The Knicks haven't been red hot.

They've just walked them down. And I was watching this game tonight. And there's four minutes left in it in the Brunson gets a basket and cuts it to five points, which automatically makes it a clutch time game, which is, you know, been the whole thing. Just get to just get to clutch time. That's the strategy. And I was like, these guys did it again. they got it to clutch time and then they just walked him down.

So that's what it was like here in Boston tonight. It's one of the more unusual series I've ever covered. I always tell Bon Temps like 17 times a year will be at a game and he'll say on our group chat, this is a weird game. And I go, there are no weird games, there's only NBA games. Well, here I am saying this is a weird series.

This is a weird one. The last three days of, watching the playoffs have gotten me scratching my head. Maybe I'll change and add a new mantra. But thank you for watching, listening to the Soup Collective Emergency Pye. I don't know if you liked it. I rambled. Jackson's got to stay up all night. By the way, Jackson stayed up until 8 a.m. This is a Jackson's sleep update. Jackson stayed up until 8 a.m. because we were so late, putting that together two nights ago. So Jackson's Sleep Update. And the production call for Get Up is in five and a half hours, five hours and 15 minutes. So I'm going to

take leave of you now. Thank you for listening and watching. We'll talk to you later this week.