Analysis Contributor
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first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
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No Dunks · The Knicks Do It Again, Thunder Crush Nuggets & Steph Curry Out For A Week · 8 May 2025
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Good morning, sweet world, and welcome to the No Dunks Podcast on The Athletic Network. It's Thursday, May 8th, 2025. I'm Jay Skeets, here in the Classic Factory, and alongside me, as always, Tass Mellis. Podcast listeners, this is for you. Next to him, it's the bearded one, my top shot hot boy, Trey Kirby. Ayo! Ayo! And over yonder, making the magic happen, super producer JD. Hello. There he is.
Here we are. Hello to the YouTubes. Hello to the podcast listeners. Lots to talk about once again. It was deja vu last night when it came to that first game. I saw a Zach Cram tweet. Putting the Mario Kart blue shell in the NBA playoffs has done wonders for the entertainment product. Good tweet, Zach. Yeah, the New York Knicks did it again. Down 20 in the third quarter of Game 1.
Down 20 in the third quarter of Game 2. Two huge comebacks. Two incredible road wins against the defending champs. You can't have the Bing without the bong, Tass. My God, the Knicks. Up 2-0 as they go back to Madison Square Garden. And it was very similar to Game 1. Yeah.
He was the one guy to hit a bucket in the final eight or nine minutes of the game. Eight.
There's two explanations. On one side, it's what Boston did wrong. On the other side, it's what the Knicks did right. Boston is missing shots. There's no other way to put it. They went 7 for 34 in the second half on shots that were not in the restricted area. 2 for 11 on 3. And like you're saying, Tass, they were getting good shots. There are some wide open looks.
They missed so many good looks that they are then passing up on good looks as well. It's just... A choke from shooting. There's no other way to put it. They're shooting 25% on 100 attempts through two games. They aren't making shots. Simply put, like, Derek White's getting good looks. Tatum's getting good looks. Al Horford's getting good looks. They're just missing.
They turned the ball over nine times in the second half. That hurts as well. And the last criticism I would have for the Celtics, Drew Holiday seemed a little panicked on that last play when he was guarding Jalen Brunson, like all up on him. And you don't see him playing that ragged all that often, I don't think. So the Boston side of things, I think, is kind of easy.
It's more like what the Knicks are doing that's very impressive. Hart and McBride hit threes right at the end of the third quarter. I thought that was humongous. I started watching back when they were down 20 to see everything that happened. Bridges came alive. in the fourth quarter. That's crazy. 0-4 for the first three quarters, 14 in the fourth quarter.
At one point, Reggie Miller says, there's no structure offensively for New York, because at that point, Kat's on the bench, Brunson is on the bench, so it's Deuce and Mitch in for those guys alongside Bridges, OG, and Hart. And Reggie was 100% right. These were not organized baskets that Mikael Bridges was scoring. It was broken plays. It was transition.
It was just luckily getting points on the board, and then he got into such a rhythm that when the starters came back, Tim was happy to run things through Mikael Bridges, which was humongous. The Knicks were quicker to lose balls. You mentioned Josh Hart was massive on this one.
Al Horford steals an inbounds pass, and then Josh Hart blocks him at the rim, turns into a three-pointer on the other end for Bridges. The offensive rebounds were huge. Hart had one that turned into a Brunson three. Carl Anthony Towns had an and one. So the Knicks were just scrapping a little bit harder. And then I thought OGN and OB's point of attack defense was awesome.
I thought Deuce McBride's point of attack defense was awesome. They both played A-plus games, taking the Celtics out of their actions, making them play late into the shot clocks. And then Brunson, of course, just did his magic. Nine points, one assist in the fourth quarter, knocked down the two huge free throws. So I think it's a combination choke and well played by the Knicks. Uh-oh. For sure.
I mean, the Knicks have now made this, what, five straight road games where they've basically done this. Come back to some extent, maybe not down 20 against the Pistons, but obviously got back in those games and made all the clutch plays. They're now 5-0 on the road this postseason. All of them coming by three points or less. That sounds crazy.
That's wilder than two 20-point comebacks to me against the defending champs. That many close games that you keep pulling out on the road. Incredible. Schumann has the stat when it comes to the Celtics. just being abysmal in the clutch or down the stretch. They've scored just 38 points on 50 possessions in the fourth quarter and overtime in the series. They've shot 11 for 53 in those 29 minutes.
And they're two superstars. The two Jays have been abysmal. They've just been very, very bad. That last play, to go back to that, you're right. Obviously, they... Sort of knew what they were going to do because they'd just done it and got the Tatum dunk. So they're a little bit more prepared for it. Al Horford couldn't get his blocking on as well.
Mitchell Robinson did a good job staying with Tatum. Then Tatum's handle was sloppy. He lost the ball as he got onto Mitchell around the free throw line. Then sort of like, where am I going? Got into the corner. Here comes all the help. And yeah, I think they originally said it was a block. I think it's been changed to a steal because he was trying to pass out.
He had no shot and he's maybe trying to get it to Jalen Brown, but Bridges with the huge steal again.
They took 20 less. They were inside way more often.
The start of this game was hilarious. The crowd basically groaning or sighing every time the Celtics attempted a three. I'm talking right back at the tip, right? Now, thankfully, the Celtics didn't take a lot of threes really early in the game. I think they only got like four three-point attempts up in the first six minutes.
So instead, they were driving, they were getting post-ups, they were getting stuff around the paint. And yeah, the balance was better in this game, but I think that was so funny. Even the crowd is like... That narrative from Game 1 of when they took so many and missed so many, it was like, please stop shooting threes. And you could see it.
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