One thing’s for sure about the New York Knicks: unlike a certain metropolitan couple, they’re certainly not “on a break.”
The Knicks stand as one of the hottest, if not the hottest, teams/team left on the dwindling NBA bracket as the owners of a nine-game winning streak, the 17th tally of its kind in postseason history. New York owns a 2-0 lead in its best-of-seven Eastern Conference Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers and can earn the penultimate win on its quest to NBA Finals on Saturday night (8 p.m. ET, ABC).
While many Knicks legends have played witness to their successors’ success, three are current stationed out west for the other bracket’s final between the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs situated on NBC Sports. Carmelo Anthony, Jamal Crawford, and Tracy McGrady are narrating the Western war for NBC and its streaming service Peacock but have kept track of what’s transpiring in their former Manhattan stomping grounds.
“I think the Knicks have a chance. I know New York’s excited,” Crawford, a five-season Knick said in an NBC Sports conference call this week. “[Fans] almost tackled [former Knick] J.R. Smith just after the playoff win. I know what that would be like if they got to the Finals.”
If the Knicks do reach their first NBA Finals since 1999, it’ll fulfill a prophecy put forth by Anthony shortly after it was revealed that he be stationed in the studio for NBC’s return to pro hoops coverage. In October, the newly-minted Hall-of-Famer believed that his former employers would finish atop the Eastern Conference, citing a “different energy” brought in by new head coach Mike Brown.
While a handful of regular season swoons relegated the Knicks to third, Anthony praised the way New York has recovered in time for the vital final hours. Anthony even feels the Knicks’ recovery from the early doldrums under a fresh boss serves as the perfect definition of how an NBA season should go.
“You talk about the epitome of how a season’s supposed to go, this is what and how a season’s supposed to go,” Anthony, one of seven to score 10,000 in a Knick uniform, said. “You’re supposed to go through the ups and downs and try to figure things out and work and fail and keep moving and get back up and fight.”
“You have to go through that, that roller coaster of just emotions and development throughout the course of the season,” he continued. “I think going through that allowed the Knicks to actually find their identity right now as a basketball team and as individual players.”
Brown’s hire after Tom Thibodeau guided the team to its first ECF in a quarter-century raised some eyebrows from the start and things only got more awkward after a lukewarm start.
But Crawford, a record three-time winner of the Sixth Man of the Year title, praised the way Brown “diversified” the New York offense by getting captain and point guard Jalen Brunson off the ball. Crawford remarked that it reminded him of the turn-of-the-century Philadelphia 76ers’ work with Allen Iverson that produced a Finals berth in 2001.
“He’s running around a lot more,” Crawford, who called Knicks games on MSG Network last season, said of Brunson. “He’s getting behind the defense, so to speak, and then he’s getting quick pick-and-rolls. His responsibility isn’t just to be in front of the defense where all the eyes can see him. I think with him doing that, and then when the playoff comes, he really starts dominating 15 feet in the air.”
“With his footwork and his balance, he almost becomes like a post player in that way. That opens up things for his team. They’re playing with a better pace, it seems, and guys are hitting 3-pointers and (Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns) has been unleashed a little bit more, not in the regular season, but in the playoffs in certain matchups.”
McGrady, whose Hall-of-Fame career featured 24 tours with New York in 2010, was sure to offer credit on the floor, specifically calling out the postseason breakouts of Towns and Mikal Bridges, which have removed part of the metropolitan burden from Brunson’s back.
He hinted that Brown offered Brunson’s army a similar “liberation” that opened things up, particularly in an offensive setup that has outscored opponents by over 200 points during this impressive nine-game stretch.
“I think, all season long, when you have one player that just really has on the offensive end, liberation to do anything, have the green light, and you have other guys on that roster that have the ability to have impact on the offensive end, it causes some friction, it causes problems,” McGrady noted. I think what really changes, you added that liberation to other guys, meaning KAT.”
“When you unlock that part of your offense and got him involved, now you see you get Mikal Bridges out of his shooting slump, and everybody starts playing well and playing with a great deal of confidence, and now that’s carrying over to the bench, and now the bench is coming in and giving you a new found energy … I think once they made that change, they went into looking like a completely different team.”
While Knicks fans won’t Anthony, Crawford, or McGrady on the call in their ECF set, a familiar voice is nonetheless poised to take them the rest of the way.
ABC/ESPN play-by-play man Mike Breen, who fulfills the same role for local Knicks broadcasts on MSG Network next to Walt “Clyde” Frazier,” will continue to narrate the Cleveland clash and he will also be on the mike for the 21st consecutive edition of the NBA Finals.
