Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective - Emergency Pod: Historic Knicks Win Reaction + Boston’s Future??

Episode Date: May 17, 2025

Brian Windhorst is joined by ESPN’s Tim Bontemps following the New York Knicks series clinching win vs. the Boston Celtics to talk the magnitude of the Knicks advancing to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in 25 years.  Then, the guys talk the fallout on the other side with the Boston Celtics and how their future remains a mystery after Jayson Tatum suffered an Achilles injury in Game 4.  Plus, how the Indiana Pacers matchup with the New York Knicks after an impressive series vs. the Cavaliers.   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, welcome to the Hooke Collective podcast. We talk about the NBA, which we're doing inside Madison Square Garden late on Friday night. I'm with Tim Bontemps.

Tim McMahon couldn't be bothered. We just watched the Knicks absolutely demolish the Southwings. I don't even know what the final score was, to be honest with you. It's irrelevant. The series is over. The final score was the Knicks were up by 41 in the third quarter, and Joe Missoula pulled the plug before the third quarter. That's all you need to know. Tom Timito pulled the plug like 25 minutes later.

I was just dreading the inevitable discussion about Tibbs and minutes until everybody got successfully out of the game. But look, I mean, this has been the weirdest series I've ever covered. You like to say that the NBA, there's never such a thing as a weird game. Every game in the series was weird. The Celtics felt like to should have won basically the first five games. The one thing we thought wasn't going to happen was that the Knicks could win by a lot. The first 11 games of the playoffs, the Knicks had never won by a lot. They never led by a lot.

They didn't win by a lot against the Pistons. Right. And then they absolutely obliterate the Celtics. And look, I mean, there's a lot to talk about the Knicks. Nick's Pacers is going to be fascinating. But this very well could be the end of one of the real dominant eras of a team for the Celtics team. And it's hard for me, having spent a lot of time around the Celtics, obviously you have two, to think much about anything else than was this the end of this group?

Yeah. We were walking out of the locker room and Al Horford went down the tunnel. And I don't know. You know, Al Horford's a great Celtic. I don't know. That may have been it. You know, I'm sure it was on his mind. I don't, you know, the players, you know, acknowledge that there's, you know,

Derek White said the same team's not going to be back. You know, they know that. They know. They don't know how it's going to play. I don't think anybody knows. Like I wrote about it earlier this week. injury for Jason Tatum is one of the most significant injuries in the history of the league. When you look at what it could potentially do to this Celtic team, we've talked about

what could potentially happen with Janus this summer. We've obviously talked a lot about what could happen with Kevin Durant this summer. The Celtics have a lot of older players and their best player is going to miss, if not most of next season, all of next season. They already were looking at being an extraordinarily expensive team. This could be like the Warriors in 2020 when they wound up with the second pick in the draft. If they decide to move on from their older players, get a ton of stuff for them and reset around Jason Tatum, who, by the way, we'll come back,

even if he misses all next season, is a 28-year-old guy who's still in his prime, who could still be really good. But that's what makes this so crazy. Yeah. Five days ago, we were walking in here for game four. I thought the Knicks were going to lose the next three games. I think you thought the Knicks are going to lose the next three games.

I don't know if I thought the next three, but I thought the Celtics absolutely could still be in the series. I just thought they were winning the series. I thought they were going on to the finals. I still thought they were the dominant team in the league. Or at least in the East. And three days later, five days later, their season's over. They lost year by a thousand points.

Jason Tatum's got a torn Achilles. And the whole future of the franchise is up in the air. And by the way, like, the players and coaches were like, we didn't think this was going to happen. You know, we weren't, we didn't think we had a lot of fatigue. Like, we liked where we were. Even down 2-0, they thought they were okay. Yeah, they were up by 20 in each of the first two games. Yeah, like, this wasn't like, oh, we saw this coming.

You know, maybe I saw them going out eventually to the Knicks in a game that wasn't decided by two points. Maybe I could see the Knicks winning a game convincingly here. If you had told me tonight that this game wouldn't have gone to clutch time, I would have said, okay, I believe the Knicks would play much better than they played in game five. But the way they just collapsed. And I will say this, the Knicks played awesome defense in this game. That was the best half of defense in particular, the first half. This Knicks team has ever played. That was the best half of defense they've played under Tom Thibodeau by a lot.

mile. I have a coaching friend who was here at the game. He said they didn't miss a single coverage the entire first half. All you have to know is Deuce McBride got a chase down block. Yeah, well, but it was everything. It was Mitchell Robinson flying out to the corner to stop Jaylon Brown shooting a wide open three. They were completely on a string and engaged. Everything they weren't in game five. And look, the first few minutes of the game was some real danger time for the Knicks. We talked about it before the game. I thought it was really important that the Knicks got off to a good start because this crowd was juiced. Oh my God. But this crowd also was on a nice edge and ready to go, oh my God, the Knicks are going to collapse.

This was, I understand why the Knicks fans were so nervous because they have only seen disappointment for 25 years. Yes. But they were nervous. I was like, guys, guys, you're up. And the Knicks were nervous to start the game. Like they hit a couple baskets and I thought it was really indicative of the way Carl Towns played. Carl Towns, for as much as Jalen Brunson is the best player on the Knicks.

Carl Towns is really the bellwether for the Knicks. And when he gets sideways, like he did in game five, the Knicks get sideways. And you could see in the first quarter, he was trying really hard, right? He's chasing for fouls. There's a play down here where he has Jalen Brown on the block. And he tries to go through Jalen Brown to the other side of the basket and lets Chris Sperzingis block him. He then gets a foul that negates a three point shot sticking his leg out, trying to catch Drew Holiday for no reason, right? It was just silly stuff.

Yeah. But once he got locked in, you know, they got a little early lead. He settled down. And then once they got cooking with a lead, the Celtics just didn't have anything to stop. Also, it was a great Josh Hart game. He had a triple double. Only the third next triple double in the playoff history, I think I read. Wow.

And OG had an Obie had a good OG had an Obie game. Yeah, I mean, those guys were all great. They were flying around. Yeah. I mean, they were honest. And Jalen Brunson barely did anything in the first half and they were up by 27. So as we're doing this right now, it's around midnight. 7th Avenue, just outside.

Oh. Just outside the garden. A literal sea of humanity. How long are we going to have to be in here until we can safely go to the game. I'm leaving as soon as the game's over. The game is over, my friend. Well, I mean, as soon as we're done with the podcast,

podcast is over. It's been a long day. Good luck. But it's going to look. It's a scene. And I mean, look, the Knicks fans, this place is the best place in the league to watch a game. And Boston Garden is a close second.

And the fans here, as you said, they've waited 25 years to have the Knicks make it back to the conference finals. This is a team, remember, that was a lot like the Celtics. Like the Celtics broke through in one last year. But it was always like the Knicks, the 90s, the 90s, the 90s jazz and this Celtics team until they won.

That was most playoff games without winning a title. Most playoffs series, that went into title. I mean, the Knicks from 99 to 2000 won a playoff series every single season. 1990, 1990. Well, I think it was nine straight years. Right. Okay. But they made it to the conference finals.

You said 99 to 2000. Oh, sorry. Yes. I think it was 90, I meant 92 to 2000. Yeah. They made the conference finals several times. The final was a couple times. The Riley Van Gundy years.

Yes. I mean, they had a lot of great, great teams and never quite won. And it's why they show the Larry Johnson four-point play all the time here. They show John Stark's all the time here. They're going to show the Miles McBride chase down block. Oh, I mean, look, this Nick's team is going to be like that. The other thing is there's four days off now before, and there's a weekend. And the Knicks fans are just going to have a weekend.

Just going to be a five-day party. Oh my God. Before game one is here, the Knicks, the Knicks have home court advantage in the conference finals. I didn't think the Knicks were going to win a game maybe in this series for it starting. Yeah. I mean, and now things have totally opened up for them. By the way, there's going to be people here.

Speaking of the celebrations, they're going to already be planning going to the finals. And not so fast, my friend, to quote our friend, our guy Lee Corso. That's right. The Pacers are awesome. That's right. This is going to be an awesome series. Both these teams have earned their way here. No matter what injuries happened, they kicked the other team's asses.

No question. I mean, look, any questions you had about the Knicks in this series, the way they came out today and took care of business was unbelievably impressive. And again, I want to say that the Celtics down the line were saying this after the game. Oh, yeah, no, for sure. They were like, look, we hate what happened to Jason. We feel terrible right now. The Knicks did a great job. They were extremely complimentary.

Well, Chris Sperzingis, who obviously was dealing with this illness and did not play well. You know, he obviously is very fond of the Knicks fans. and the Knicks and the city. He was very complimentary of both after the game. I mean, Joe Missoula gave like a Valentine to Tom Thibodeau after the game. He was like, I'll talk about two guys that are aligned.

And we should say, we should have mentioned it. I mean, it's been Tom Thibodeau made the conference finals in his first year as a head coach. He has not made it back since. That's right. And he's had a lot of good teams. He's had a lot of,

you know, a lot of playoff disappointments. They got up one oh, by the way, and that's in that conference finance. Yes, they did. To the heat. To the heat.

But he's had a lot of, a lot of, years with a lot of success and not getting back to this point. So congrats to him. More hoop collective podcast after this. But I asked that's Williams during the game, because I grew up as a 90s kid watching the NBA on NBC, watching the Knicks and Pacers. This series will be the ninth time the Knicks and Pacers have played in the last 32 years, which is a lot of times, especially since the Knicks haven't been in the playoffs a lot, the last 25 years. Including a seven game series last year. That's right. Yeah. No two teams have played

more playoff games than the 48 games the Knicks have played the Pacers over those 32 years. And that is an eight series, including one five game series. So that was 48 out of a possible 54 games that those eight series went. And I think we're looking at another six or seven game series here. That's going to be absolutely awesome. And I would say this, the Pacers game plan is really the same game plan that they had a year ago, which is that they will try to wear the Knicks down in the individual games. They will start doing things in the first quarter with the intent to wear them down on the fourth,

which, by the way, the Knicks are killers. They've been killers in clutch time in the playoffs. And the Pacers will operate thinking about wearing them down by game six and seven at the start. That would be the Pacers game plan. That's right. And the Knicks game plan will be get to the fourth quarter and hand it over to number 11. That's the way it'll be. And by the way, if you go back to Pacer's calves, what did we talk about the whole time?

The Pacers had guys to go at Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell, and the Cavs didn't. That is not the case in this series. Andrew Nemhart, who's a terrific defender. He got destroyed by Jalen Brunson last year before he got hurt. Brunson was unbelievable in that series. The Knicks have Mikhail Bridges, who is a pretty good matchup for Tyrese Halliburton. They've got O.G. Annanobie, who's a pretty good matchup for his former teammate, Pascal Seaccom. This is a much different Knicks team than that team was last year, missing Julius Randall.

Obviously, OG was hurt by the end of that series. Jaylen Brunson was hurt by the end of that series. I think it's got a chance to be an incredible series. I agree. And I thought it was vital for New York in particular to win this game today for the exact reason you said. They get five days off. They obviously play their top guys, a ton of minutes. This has been a grueling series.

Now they get five days to rest up because that's going to be every other day for two weeks. And we have seen repeatedly over the last two years, the Pacers, like you said, take it out of teams over seven games. And if they had to go, even if they won in Boston on Monday, turn around, to play two days later against the Pacers, I don't think the Knicks could have won the series then. This rest is critical for it. And there's some big individual matchups in this. I'm not sure, you know, I don't think Halliburton and Brunson will be guarding each other, obviously, but the way they perform is going to drive their teams.

You know, Halliburton isn't as high of a points score as Brunson is. He distributes a little bit more than Brunson does, but how he goes defines that is clearly the same way. They can tend to disappear sometimes in games. Oh, yes. You saw it. Oh, he's hot and cold. Right. In the Cavs series in games three and four, he combined for 15 points.

That's right. And then he had 15 points in a row in the second quarter of game five. So the way that matchup goes, you're going to have Miles Turner and Carl Towns. Both of those guys can step out and shoot the three. Both of those guys are a little bit fragile with the way they play. When Turner plays well, the- Turner has been unreal in these playoffs. Talk about a guy's made himself some money.

Yes. He has made himself some money in these wells. And when Turner plays well, the Pacers usually do well. And Siakum has been, really Seacom has been great the whole second half of the season. He does a lot of things for them. And then, you know, you're obviously going to have the next, the Knicks. Josh Hart, by the way, was absolutely awesome in this series. And Josh Hart was dinged up a little bit last year as well.

He was dealing with some injuries against the Pacers. Look, this is just a, it's crazy. I mean, you and I have been covering Eastern Conference playoff games now for a long time. And this really does feel like a turning of a page in that, again, it hurts to talk about the Celtics like this, given how proud a group they are. And as much as I like individually, all those guys who are all great guys. But you kind of have to take them off the board for next year as a contender. For now. Well, I don't mean forever, but for now.

Yeah. And it's hard to assume Tatum is going to be back in the same form next year. I think long term he'll be fine. But the Knicks and Pacers, they're sitting here with teams that you have everybody coming back. Like, you probably have to go into next season at minimum with them in the Cavs as the three top teams in the East. As of now, we'll see what happens. But this could be the start of a new chapter in the East. And as a basketball fan, I think this series is going to be awesome.

I just think what's so refreshing is that this playoffs has been unexpected. I mean, the Knicks won 0 and 10 against the top teams. How could, I mean, they're 0 and 4 against Boston and it wasn't competitive. I know there were some memes about people, about the Celtics raising a banner that said 4-0 against the next November season. And then they were up 20 in the first two games. I know. This was the strangest series I've ever covered. But that said, the Knicks absolutely earned it.

100%. I mean, I got the job done. There's people going to talk about the Tatum injury, but they were going to win that game. They were already up 3-1. They were already up 3-1. They played great in that game. And again, they curb stomped the Celtics today. I did not think, I thought the Celtics could win the next two games still coming into today. I did not have this on the board at all.

Like the fact that they were up 41 points late in the third quarter was just, it was truly unbelievable. I think the Knicks coming into this game had been out. Now, granted, it was largely because of lopsided games in games three and five. The Knicks have been outscored by 20 points in the postseason. Well, they wound up outscoring the cell. Celtics in the series by three. And that was with winning this game by a thousand points. And they won the series four to two.

And they won the Piston series by less than 10 points combined. I mean, it's it's been that kind of been that kind of playoffs for them. Jackson was just telling us that the Knicks led more in this game and they led the entire series. Oh, yeah. I mean, by a long shot. Yeah. I mean, they barely were up in any of the other games. well it was a very exciting game here i was just thinking i've covered conference finals games in

every eastern conference city except for charlotte philly and washington and that and new york and so in my 20 whatever three years so now i'll be at the garden for conference final series yeah i'd have to think about that i mean yeah it's probably no one that's covered a playoff series at least conference finals in charlotte because it hasn't no haven't ever ever happened no philly how long is philly since it's been 50 years for washington it's been 20 years for washington it's been 24 years for Philly. Is there anybody in the media right now who has covered the last time Washington was Tony Cornheiser covering the bullets?

Yeah, last time would have been 79, right? Was it, was it down to Cornhus? I mean, I don't know if he was covering, I mean, he was at the, he was at the post by then, I think, but I don't think he was, I don't think he was covering the Wizards. Anyway, I'm looking forward to a conference finals in New York. Oh, I mean, this is going to be, this is just going to be an unbelievable, scene and especially because of this team like this is a team that is much like that 90s next team like people think about new york and they think about glitz and glamour and big star power but

nicks new york fans gravitate towards teams like the nicks like stars like jalen brunson a out of nowhere diamond in the rough guy who grinded himself into a superstar player like that is the kind of thing that New York fans eat up. I mean, look, the crazy thing is he's already zoomed past Carmelo Anthony in terms of accomplishments in New York. And the only guy, I was talking to Mike Vakarro, the legendary New York columnist and most importantly, legendary Bonaventure figure before the series started. And I think the only guys ahead of him in Nick history are Clyde Frazier, Patrick Ewing,

and Willis Reed, which is an unbelievable thing to say about a guy who signed here three years ago. I don't know if you count Spike Lee as the authority on this, but Spike was on first take today. He's as good of an authority as anybody. He was having the same Yeah, I mean, it's an unbelievable accomplishment already. I mean, three years in a row winning a playoff series. This team had won one playoff series this century before he showed up. And yeah, I mean, this next couple weeks, especially against the Indiana Pacers. Like, this is a team that has so much history here. It's the final TNT series. Reggie Miller is going to be calling all of the games.

That's right. I'm sure he'll be getting into it with Spike Lee. The last series for TNT. It's the last series of TNT. You're going to have Charles Barkley and those guys here. You're going to have, I'm sure Stephen A will be getting into it, Reggie Miller. I'm sure Spike Lee will be getting into it, Reggie Miller. And you've got Halberton and Brunson.

We're at WWE last summer. Like, they've got the history of last year's playoffs. There's a lot of fascinating matchups across the board. Like, it's not the series anybody would have imagined we would get a month ago. but I think it's got a chance to be an absolutely awesome basketball series, and I'm fired up to be around for it. You and I will be here, and McMahon won't be. All right, thank you for listening and watching the Houp Collective.

Thanks to Jackson and Zach, our producers who came here to the Garden tonight and are going out to humanity. I'm just walking my hotel. I'll be fine. Thank you to Bont Hemp's as well. We'll talk to you in a couple days.