Justin Verrier

It was special.

I felt that in ways that probably I hadn't in even recent years when other teams have

Well, I do want to talk about that.

I had this later on, but we should talk about it now.

You're right.

Steph feels like a completely separate thing.

He basically ushered in a different style of basketball being played with the shots that he was making.

And so he feels like his own little subcategory to that.

In terms of small guards, it just doesn't happen this way.

And I do wonder how much a result of the Knicks' success just came from insulating him with the exact right team you would want around him

And I think that gets us into the conversation about how much did his initial pay cut on his extension really just basically outfit him with the right team in order to do so.

On the one hand, I think the pay cut thing is a little misleading because ultimately in the long run, when he gets to his next extension, he isn't going to lose that much money.

If anything, he's going to make it back.

Um, it does take a lot of faith in your organization that when you sign an extension, you're going to then get the maximum amount on the next, uh, extension coming down the road there.

And so there's that, but it did feel like, you know, him doing that allowed him to have this sort of top heavy team.

It's basically a big three.

When you look at just pure salaries with OG him, uh,

and carl anthony towns and then obviously you added mikhail and so like it was it as much brunson's like just particular style of brilliance one rob or is it as much about like him getting exactly what he would need by doing the pay cut in order to put himself in position to be on this sort of stage

Yeah.

And I have to imagine that by game five, that Brunson was probably in their heads a little bit based off of some of those slight fakes and hesitations and pivots and whatnot, that they were just like they didn't know where to go because it felt like he was just getting scot-free, especially like that one play late in it.