Knicks Take 2-0 Finals Lead: New York Is Two Wins From the Parade

The New York Knicks are two wins away from an NBA championship.

Ian reacts to the Knicks stealing Games 1 and 2 of the NBA Finals in San Antonio, Jalen Brunson continuing to prove he is the best closer in basketball, Karl-Anthony Towns changing the series against Victor Wembanyama, Josh Hart doing all the dirty work, and why this Knicks team looks like the more grown, more battle-tested group through two games.

Plus, Game 3 comes back to Madison Square Garden for the first NBA Finals game at MSG since 1999. The Garden is going to be chaos, the city is losing its mind, and the Spurs are desperate. But the job is not finished.

The Knicks are up 2-0.

The parade is two wins away.

But man.

It is right there.

Transcript

Knicks Finals Nerves And Hope

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I guess there's only one way to find out was to do it to it, right? I purposely waited for this episode to come out on the day of game three. Because I wanted to hype you guys up listening to it. I I don't know how to act right now myself. One of my teams is two wins away from winning a championship. The New York Knickerbockers. The Knicks. The teams we suffered through. The team we watched be terrible. The team we kept showing up for anyway, because apparently it's just the sickness of New York. And now it might actually be the year. I don't know how to act because I've spent my whole life preparing for the pain and not the parade. And as much as I want to act like this thing is over, I can't fully let myself go yet. I am still a New York sports fan. The trauma does not leave the body that quick. The last time one of my teams got this close was the Mets in 2015, and I still haven't processed that like a normal adult. So until the fourth quin is done, until the clock hits zero, until somebody says the New York Knicks are your 2026 NBA champions, I'm not pretending I'm calm. But this team, this team makes it really hard not to believe. They don't stop. Down 14, down 22, road game, finals game, Wemby game, chaos game. They play until the clock hits zero. Maybe that's why this team feels like it belongs to us. Because Knicks fans never really stopped believing either. The Knicks walked into San Antonio needing one. They got both. Game one was the warning shot. Game two was the theft. And now the NBA finals are coming back to Madison Square Garden for the first time since 1999, with the Knicks up 2-0. The Knicks are two wins away from the parade. And the reason this feels different is not just because they won two games, it's how they won them.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Extra, extra. Keep the lights low. New York talking with the late night go from the garden glow to the stadium. Every win, every loss, every what does it mean? Right on the radio, coming through your speakers, big dicks, bars, heartbreaks, believers, match games, death giants, next on the ride. Pull up a chair, let the whole city decide. No feet, all answers, no sitting on the fence. We can talk loud, laughs, to make it make sense. Running down lights, hit the mic right on the radio.

Quick Recap Of Games One And Two

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Let's do it to it in the Before we hopefully celebrate a win for game three. Let's cover games one and two quickly here. The Knicks haven't exactly been perfect. Yeah, this isn't something where the Knicks went into San Antonio and played two flawless basketball games. They didn't shoot the cover off the ball. Brunson, I mean, he capped and clutched it a little bit, but he didn't have one of those ridiculous, oh my God, he's in the zone games yet either. He may missed a free throw late. There have been plenty of weird possessions. Game two, I mean, game two had a fourth quarter where I think every Knicks fan alive briefly saw the Grim Reaper standing in the corner wearing Spurs warm-ups. He misses that shot, but we could easily be talking about 1-1. But we're not. They won twice on the road in the NBA Finals, and we're talking about 2-0 coming home. The difference right now, the Knicks are two wins away because they're winning the grown-up possessions. That's what this series is to me so far. San Antonio has the generational alien. Sure. The Knicks have the battle scars. Game one, San Antonio had the building. They had the Spurs Legends in-house trying to copy New York like everybody does. They had Wemby's final debut. They had all the next face of the league energy. They had the lead. The Knicks were down 14 in the second half. Brunson had already limped to the locker room twice, pretty much. The knee scare, I felt like I was watching Derrick Rose. And then the ankle, I'm like, oh my God, this guy just, we we can't catch a break here. And then the Knicks just kept walking. Not sprinting, not panicking, not throwing haymakers from half court, just walking them down. Cat gets going. OG keeps them afloat. Hart is grabbing every rebound like someone insulted his family. Brunson starts finding his spots. Defense tightens up, and the Spurs stop getting easy transition looks. Game slow down. And then the fourth quarter turns into the place where the Knicks are comfortable, and the other team starts looking around, going, wait, wait, wait, why are they still fighting? Why are they still here? Brunson scores 13 in the fourth. The Knicks close on an 11-0 run. And they win 105-95. They erase a 14-point deficit and steal game one. And look, you could talk yourself maybe into saying, okay, that was the steal. That was the punch. The Knicks got one. San Antonio's going to respond game two. Honestly, I expected San Antonio to respond. That's not the crazy take. That was the normal baseball expectation. You lose game one at home in the finals, you get punched in the mouth, and you come back with everything in game two, especially a young team. Especially a team with Wemby. Especially a team that had already been through a seven-game war with Oklahoma City and survived it. Credit to San Antonio. They did respond. They came back down from 14. They go on their own little 14 over on. Wemby starts getting downhill. Dylan Harper gives him some juice. Fox gets back involved. The whole building kind of woke up a little bit. And the Knicks go from shit, they might cruise to 2-0 to oh no, here we go. That's the part where the younger teams usually feed off the chaos, and the older teams sometimes start grabbing at the game. But the final minute told the truth. San Antonio did the hard part. They came back, they tied the game, they had the ball. Wemby gets the rebound with the game tied. They had a chance to run, had a chance to win it, chance to make the series 1-1, and completely changes the mood going back to New York. Instead, the pass goes off Stefan Castle's back. Brunson gets it. Wemby fouls. Brunson hits a free throw. Then Wemby gets one more look, and Mitchell Robinson is there right in his face and it rims out. Knicks win 105, 104. That is the kind of game that can sit in a team's stomach for a while. San Antonio did not get blown out. They were not outclassed for 48 minutes. They had plenty of chances. They had the comeback. They had the ball. And then the moment got big, got blurry. That's the difference between these two teams. The Spurs are learning finals lessons in real times, and the Knicks look like they've already paid those lessons and learned those dues. Or vice versa. Paid their dues and learned their lessons. There we go. But that's what I mean by grown-up possessions. It's not just age, it's not just playoff games played. It's not, oh yeah, okay, this team's older, so there automatically means they win. No, man. It's not, it's not losing your mind when the whistle gets tight, which it was in game two. They let them play. I'm sorry, not tight. It was weird. They let them play, but there were so many bad calls. You know, it's also not folding when a lead disappears and not letting a 14-point lead turn into a tie game because it's an emotional funeral. It's knowing where the ball has to go late. It's trusting your spacing, trusting your defense, trusting the man next to you that he put into work just like you did. Towns talked about leaning on experience and execution. That is the whole series right now. Experience and execution. The Spurs have players who make you throw your remote across the room because you can't believe the human body is built to do that. But the Knicks have a team full of guys who have been humbled by this league. They have dogs. They have guys who have lost, guys who have been doubted, guys who've had an ugly playoff night, guys who have been traded, guys who've had the conversation around them turn mean. Brunson has had to prove that he's always been more than Luca's old sidekick. Kat has been called soft half of his career. Bridges went from the perfect role player to did the Knicks trade too much and his shot is broken, and how do we fix him? Did we we made the wrong move? Josh Hart has had to learn how to be useful when the jumper isn't falling, and the boxware doesn't exactly make casual fans understand what he did really impact in the game. And Mitchell Robinson has been through injuries, foul trouble, free throw nonsense, still gets thrown into the biggest defensive possession of the season. Hey, go guard the 7'4 alien. Go let him know what's up. That's what battle scars look like. San Antonio's mistakes feel like young mistakes. The Knicks' mistakes, they feel survivable. They feel fixable. That's why they're up 2-0. Not because everything is gone, right? But because when everything gets messy, they still know who they are.

Grown Up Possessions And Battle Scars

SPEAKER_01 8:36

You know, when you start asking why those grown-up possessions keep going New York's way, it starts with the people making them. And it starts with Jalen Brunson.

Why Brunson Is The Closer

SPEAKER_01 8:44

I don't really know what else I'm supposed to call him at this point. Brunson is the best closer in basketball. And I understand how that sounds. I know there are other names that you want to throw in. There are bigger names. There are more guys with more athletic pop and highlight dunks and MVP votes. Whatever, man. If it's the fourth quarter and the game is ugly and everybody's tired and the shot clock feels like it's moving faster, and somebody has to get a real bucket, give me number 11. Down four, down 10, down 20. Road game. I don't care. Bar fight game. Don't matter. Brunson wants the ball when everybody else starts negotiating with the moment. That is the separator. Game one was not some pretty efficient clinic. He took 31 shots to get 30. There were stretches where San Antonio made him work for everything. He had the knee scare, he had the ankle scare, limping around. He was annoyed. He was talking to Scott Foster. Somebody was chirping him on the sideline. He was bleeding through the knee sleeve like he was trying to enter New York sports mythology. I saw him at the end of the bench. They tried to put a brace on him and he waved him off. The fourth quarter came and he was still Brunson. 13 in the fourth, no turnovers, big shot after big shot. The possession after Wemby puts San Antonio up 95-94. Brunson comes right back down to the corner three. That is the captain stuff. Game two, same thing in a different way. He doesn't shoot. He didn't shoot well. 7 for 25 is not pretty. But he is still in the final sequence. He's still where he needs to be. The ball bounces off Castle's back. Who's there? Brunson. Wemby fouls, who has to step into the line? Brunson. Free throws go down, Knicks win. OG said it perfectly. Brunson is the same whether he's making shots or missing shots. Relentless, composed, poised, and aggressive. That's the definition of closing. Not just the makes. The fact that the room does not change him. And Mike Brown had a great line about this before game three. He's talked about facing Brunson when he was still with Golden State and Brunson was what Brunson was like in Dallas. He basically said when they were preparing for that series, his concern wasn't really Luca. His concern was Jalen. They put Draymond Green on Brunson because he needed somebody bigger, stronger, and tougher to slow him down. That's Draymond Green. So this is not some random heater that Brunson has been on. The league knew it. The Knicks just gave him the keys and said, go get him. And now, because of it, everybody gets to lose their mind. The city gets to lose its mind. The Knicks fans get to lose their mind. I get to sit at the bar ordering a beer with pregame jitters, like I'm the one about to get shots up at MSG. But Brunson can't. The city can lose its mind, but Brunson can't. And that's why he's the captain. Now, Brunson is the closer. He is the voice. He's the guy you trust late.

Towns Bends The Wemby Matchup

SPEAKER_01 11:41

But the biggest baseball reason the Knicks are up to might be Carl Anthony Towns. Big C. Big Cat has changed this series. And look, I know Brunson's going to get the headlines because he's the captain. He's the closer. That's how this works. But through two games, Kat has been the matchup swing piece. Game one, 18-12. Game two, 21, 13, and 4. 17 in the first half of Game 2. When the Knicks needed offense and Brunson didn't have it going. He's attacking the paint. He's putting the ball on the floor. He's making Wemby defends in ways that San Antonio does not really want Wemby doing. That's the problem Kat creates. San Antonio wants Wemby Roman. They want him as the giant ghost in the lane. They want him lurking behind everything, erasing mistakes, making you drive and being afraid that he's going to block your shot. Well, Kat complicates that. If Wemby guards Hart, then Hart is not really the shooting threat that pulls him away from the rim. San Antonio can live with that. That lets Wemby be the monster under the bed, right? But if Wemby has to deal with towns, now he's working. Now he's moving. Now he's defending out. He has to respect the jumper, respect the drive, and just really respect the strength. I mean, Big Cat is stronger than him, man, by a lot. If San Antonio does not put Wemby on towns, Cat is looking at wings and backup bigs like food. And that's the chess match going on right now. The defensive side might be even more important, though, because Kat has helped pick up Wemby much better than people expected. And because Kat can survive enough of that matchup, the Knicks don't have to break the rest of their defense. Cat could not handle any of that, then maybe OG has to spend the night wrestling Wemby. Maybe Bridges gets moved around. Maybe Hart has to do something other than Hart stuff. Maybe the Knicks start bending every part of their defense towards one guy. You don't want that. Instead, Kat holds up. So Mitch gives you possessions. OG can stay on a wing. Bridges can stay on a wing. Hart can roam around and rebound and become a complete pest. The Knicks can guard San Antonio as a team instead of like five guys reacting to a house fire. You know, Kat is not just scoring. Kat is keeping the Knicks' defensive structure intact. And for a guy who has been labeled soft for more than half of his career, what a moment this is for him. He is not hiding. He is not floating. He is not being dragged through this series. He is right in the middle of it. The Knicks are two wins away from a championship, and Carl Anthony Towns is playing some of the most important basketball of his life. You ever think you'd say that sentence out loud?

Josh Hart And Winning The Chaos

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Now you get to Josh Hart. And I mean, where do you where do you go? Where do you say? Josh Hart is just Josh Hart. I don't know how else to explain this man. Game one, he's got three points. Three. And if you looked at the points, you would think, oh, that sucks. Hart had a bad game, didn't do anything. Wrong. Loudly wrong. Throw your box score in the garbage wrong. Three points, 15 rebounds, six assists, four steals, a plus 22. This is not a role player box score. This is a why is this guy always in the way box score? This is the kind of game where the broadcast just keeps coming back from commercial and he's somehow already on the floor. Loose ball, Hart. Long rebound, Hart. Spurs trying to start a break, Hart's hand is in there. Somebody misses a shot and the ball bounces weird. Here comes Hart. Josh Hart is like it's he's never found a rebound that he didn't think he could get. And I saw some comparisons floating around too. They were giving him a little comparison to Rodman. Look, he's not Dennis Rodden. Okay, I'm not saying that. But the numbers are pretty close, man. And everybody needs that crazy guy. That's what Rodman was. You know, you scored here and there, whatever. But rebounds, rebounds, rebounds, get the second possession, get the guys the ball. That's hard. Low scoring, loud rebounding, extra possessions, defensive chaos, and consistently being annoying. He's the heart and soul of this team. Plain words, big true. He's the glue guy. He's the emotional batter. He's the guy who may not have the marquee scoring night, may not have the clean highlight package. He might not even be the guy that casual fans talk about first. But inside the team, inside the game, inside the possession battle, he is everything. That's the Knicks right now. They have too many guys who can win a piece of the game. Brunson wins the closing piece. Kat wins the matchup piece. Hart wins the chaos piece. OG gives you power and defense. Mikhail Bridges gives you length, shot making, and another guy who can stabilize a stretch. Mitch gives you defense and offensive rebounding. I'm Deuce gives you pressure. Shamick gives you shooting. Jose gives you annoyance. Where do you want me to go? How many more do you want me to talk about here? The Spurs have the brightest star in the series. No doubt. Congratulations. Happy for him. The Knicks have the bigger, better, fuller basketball team. And speaking of, that

Wemby Is Real But Not Finished

SPEAKER_01 16:46

brings me to Wemby. Let me be clear, very, very, very clear here. I know how this works. This is not a Wemby-ish trash segment, but it's going to sound like it. He's 22 years old. He's seven foot whatever. He blocks shots that normal people don't even think are blockable. He has possession sometimes that it looks like the sport was invented incorrectly because he can absolutely go for 32, 35, 38, dunk from the foul line. In game three, if that happens, nobody should fall out of their chair. He can look ridiculous because he is ridiculous. But he's not finished. And that's the point. Wemby is not fake. Wemby is not finished. There's a difference between terrifying talent and championship command. Right now, the Knicks are testing the command part. Game one, he has his numbers 26, 12, but he shoots six for 21, six turnovers, 15 missed shots. And he said it himself. I was bad tonight, it's not more complicated than that. Yeah, a little cocky, Chief. You know, maybe you got bullied a little bit. Game two, he's better. Much better in the second half. 29 points, 9 rebounds, 4 blocks. He's a huge reason San Antonio even has a chance late. But then the last 30 seconds get messy. Miss the jumper, turnover on Castle's back, the foul on Brunson, miss the final look. And after the game, he talks about it being blurry and needing more poise, more control. Yeah, the Knicks are not playing the myth of Wemby. They're playing the 22-year-old in front of them. And the 22-year-old in front of them is still great. He is still terrifying. He's still capable of winning a game by himself if you let him. But through two games, the Knicks are making him think. They're making him play through the bodies. They're making him deal with Kat on one end and Mitchell Robinson on the other. They're making him make decisions in traffic when it's late, when he's tired, with the game speeding up, with the relentlessness of the Knicks. This might be the series that creates the monster everybody thinks that he's going to become. But right now in this series, the Knicks are not bowing down to the future king of the league, so to speak. They're playing the guy in front of them and they're beating him down. The other part of this is Mike Brown.

Mike Brown Raises The Ceiling

SPEAKER_01 18:55

And I'm not going to turn this into a full coaching debate because this episode does not need to become 15 minutes of tips talk. But Mike Brown deserves a hefty amount of credit here. Look, this might have been the accidental right answer. And I say that tongue in cheek, not accidental because he doesn't belong. Accidental because the Knicks tried to open other doors first. And somehow, the one that opened might be the exact one that roster needed. Mike Brown has been around stars. He has been around championship level basketball. He has been through the league. He has been hired, fired, doubted, dismissed, brought back, questioned again. And yet players speak of him in glowing fortune. Coaches respect him all over the league. He has walked into the Knicks job where the expectation was not, please just make us respectable. No, respectable was over. This was supposed to be a team trying to win the whole thing. And here's where I want to be fair. This is not Tibbs slander. This is not a Tibbs segment. Tibbs deserves some flowers. Julius Randle deserves some flowers. When this franchise was face down in the mud, those two helped drag it back to respectability. They made the Knicks be serious again. They made the garden feel alive again. They helped make this place attractive enough for Leon Rose to build what we are watching now. Sibbs helped rebuild the floor. Brown has now helped raise the ceiling. That is the distinction. This version needed a little more flexibility, a little more trust in the bench, a little more willingness to keep guys engaged all year. So when June showed up, they didn't look like they were shocked to get their number called. LeAndrew Shamit hitting huge shots. Miles McBride giving real minutes. Jose Alvarado just being a pest and loving life right now. Mitchell Robinson getting thrown into clutch possessions against Wemby. All of this is not random. This comes from a season where guys got the pie divided a little more evenly, where guys had to sacrifice a little more, where guys had to accept different roles, and Brown had to manage egos and minutes and expectations. And because of all that, this is where it shows up. The Knicks are not just winning because Brunson is closing. They're winning because the whole roster has a job and they all understand it.

MSG Returns And Ticket Price Rage

SPEAKER_01 21:17

And now all of that comes back to Madison Square Garden. Game three. This is not a normal game three. This is the Garden getting 27 years of finals noise back all at once. Before the ball even goes up, this thing is already a circus. I mean, Jada is there. Fat Joe is joking with Mike Brown about his sneakers. Ben Stiller's filming the press conference and courtside movies. Chalamet's there. The president's gonna be there. I mean, uh ticket prices are disgusting. Let's just say that what it is, okay? Let's call it what it is here. Josh Harvey basically said he wishes people who waited for this moment for years could actually afford to get in the building. And yeah, listen, I would love to go. Okay, I've been waiting forever. I even joked with my wife about hey, maybe we should go. And then when I told her the ticket prices, she said, That's not happening at all. That part stinks. The cheapest ticket is seven or eight grand. I mean, that's insane. And by the way, that seven or eight grand, you get to sit on the roof and watch the game on TV. You know, there are people who watch 17 win Knicks teams who cannot get in the door for the biggest Knicks game in a generation. That's pretty brutal. But the building itself, the building is going to be ridiculous if you were so lucky to get in. The Spurs heard some Knicks fans on the road in San Antonio. You could hear them. You could feel that the New York presence was in their building. If they thought that was loud, Monday is different, man. Today is different. Madison Square Garden, NBA Finals, Knicks up 2-0, first finals game there since 1999. The city is electric. Everybody trying to act normal and failing miserably. You know, if San Antonio thought Knicks fans in Texas were loud, they are about to find out what this actually sounds like when the roof is trying to leave the building. And if the Knicks win game three, forget it. Forget about it. Game four becomes potential close at game at Madison Square Garden. I don't even know what that sounds like. I don't know if they make insurance for that. Dolan's gonna have to take out some more uh policies. But here's the adult part about it the garden can be a weapon, or the garden can become nerves.

Game Three Plan And Prediction

SPEAKER_01 23:29

Okay, the Knicks cannot get drunk off the crowd. That's kind of my biggest thing for game three here. San Antonio is desperate. They know what this is. They know if they lose game three, the series is basically done. They're going to come with everything they have. Wemby is going to be aggressive. Harper probably gets more run here. Fox is gonna try to push pace. Castle is going to try to make up for that ending. Their role players are gonna try and hit shots before the building swallows them completely. So for this Knicks team, you know, look, don't get it twisted. The pressure is now on. Okay, cannot come out sloppy. No lazy turnovers, no soft closeouts, no uh let's feel it out, no first quarter where the Spurs get a couple easy buckets. The Garden gets anxious when that happens, and then suddenly it gets quiet. And suddenly San Antonio starts breathing again. No, no, no, no, no, no. Jump on them early. Make every Spurs player feel like the ball weighs 40 pounds. Make them not be able to think in their huddles, not think in their own heads. Make Castle hear the crowd. Harper feel every closeout. Make every player on the Spurs feel the garden screaming down the back of their neck. And look, if Wemby gets his, fine. I've made peace with that. He's too good to act like you're not gonna hold him down. If he gives you 30, 32, 35, okay, whatever. Stars are gonna star. But nobody else can get comfort comfortable. You don't stop Wemby, you can tame the damage and make sure nobody else gets rich off the attention that he creates. That's the game, that's the plan for game three. San Antonio is gonna throw its best punch. I expect that. They have too much talent, too much pride, too much desperation not to. You know, they didn't get to the finals by accident either. But I trusted the Knicks to steady it. I trust Brunson Leigh. I trust Kat to keep bending the matchup, and I trust Hart to find three possessions that make no sense. I think the Knicks win game three. And yes, if I'm being completely honest, my ideal game three script is feet up halfway through the fourth quarter. I mean, what fan wouldn't want that? I want the Garden losing its mind. I want the Knicks up 20. I want Spurs fans checking flights. I want national meeple media people deleting drafts, deleting tweets, going back on their word. We kept all the receipts. And let's be

Receipts On The Season Long Doubt

SPEAKER_01 25:44

real here. The goalposts have moved on this Knicks team all season, all postseason. You know, when they were down 2-1 to Atlanta, it was see, oh, this team can't handle the pressure. And then they beat Atlanta. And then Philly beats Boston in game seven, and it turns into, well, I don't know. The Knicks were up built for Boston. Maybe they don't want to match up with Philly, and Bede could be a problem. Cool. Sweep. Get out. Have fun. Then Cleveland comes in after taking out the number one seed, and it turns into Donovan Mitchell and James Harden are the better guards. Cleveland's playing great basketball. Knicks could be in trouble. Cool. Another sweep. Get out again. And the Cavs basically folded up shot by games three and four. Then, after all that, after every round was supposed to be the one where the Knicks finally got exposed, suddenly it became, well, you know, they haven't really played anybody. They haven't really played a team like San Antonio. They haven't played a team like the Spurs or the Thunder. The finals are going to be different. They're in for a rude awakening. Really? Because we're up 2-0. So which one is it? Did the Knicks play dangerous teams all postseason and beat the hell out of them, or did they just play nobody and breeze through the East? Because it feels like every time the Knicks answer one question, people pretend they asked a different one. And now, now that they are up 2-0, now all of a sudden it's well, this Knicks team plays together. This Knicks team is deep. They have great chemistry. The team is built the right way. Oh, oh, now you see it. Now that they are two wins away, everybody wants to act like they saw the vision the whole time. Sorry, bandwagon's full. And that is why, yes, I would love nothing more than for the Knicks to come home and put their foot on San Antonio's throat. I would love nothing more than for them to sweep the quote unquote next face of the league. Not because Wimby's trash, he's not. But because the Knicks have been treated like a temporary problem all year. And now they have a chance to make the whole league sit there and watch them become permanent. Watch them in the whole offseason. When they say, when they turn on the TV and it says, the 2026 NBA champion, New York Knicks, the defending champions, New York Knicks. Keep doubting them. They feed off of it. But here's where we pull the wheel back before we drive the car straight into the parade traffic.

Bridges Warning And Finishing The Job

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Mikael Bridges knows. Okay. If anybody in that locker room needs to give the shut up, it's not over speech, it's Mikael Bridges. He was on that 2021 Suns team. They went up 2-0 in the NBA Finals. They had the building, they had the energy. They had people thinking the series might be over. And then Milwaukee won four straight. So, you know, Bridges does not have to imagine how fast a 2-0 can turn on you. He lived it. That's kind of the cautionary tale here. This is not fear. This is just maturity speaking. Enjoy the edge. Keep the receipts. Talk your talk, man. Let the garden shake. Let the city lose its mind. But do not get stupid. Two wins is not a trophy. Two wins away is not done. Two wins away is not a banner. Two wins away is not a Larry O'Brien rolling out onto the court. The Knicks still have to finish this thing. And I think they will. I really do. I think they are the more grown team. I think they have the battle scars they need to get through this. I think the Knicks are going to win the title. But until that fourth win is done, until the clock hits zero, until somebody says the New York Knicks are your 2026 NBA champions, I'm not getting all the way comfortable, man. This is the Knicks. I know better. Because the trauma is still right next to the joy. But man, man, that joy is loud right now. This team has not lost since April 23rd. They just keep fighting and fighting and fighting. Anyway, go New York go New

Final Pep Talk And Where To Follow

SPEAKER_01 29:41

York go. That's gonna be our show for today. Hopefully you're settled in. If you're getting to the garden, God bless you. Make sure you went early. Make sure you didn't bring much into the stadium with you. And yell as loud as you can. Yell at the alien if you're at home or if you're at the bar. Pour yourself a good drink. Yell for the free throws. Yell at the refs. Yell for this team and just enjoy the moment, man. Be excited. Fucking great to be here. God, we love the Knicks. And if you don't love the Knicks, hey, God bless you. Anyway, uh, I am Ian Rice. This has been episode 73 of Rice on the Mics. As always, you can catch me on Instagram, on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, whatever. It's at Rice on the Radio. I know it sounds confusing, but promise you, it makes sense. And until then, I'll catch you next time. Let's go next. Let's go next. Go New York. Go New York.

unknown 30:37

Good morning.