The Knicks Stopped Moving And Died

Despite plenty of cause to fear that the NBA Finals would be derailed by Donald Trump’s attendance and the resultant security apparatus that turned Madison Square Garden into a cage within a cage within a cage, Knicks fans showed up early Monday night, packed the house, booed the President, and watched their team lose a frustrating Game 3, 115-111.

So much of the story of Game 3 concerns the various, overlapping off-court spectacles framing the game—the chirring that’s emanated from a New York City totally entranced by its team’s now-snapped 13-game playoff win streak; the multiple associates of Jeffrey Epstein who took in the game from premium seats; the outrageous price of tickets for both normal people and the countless celebrities in attendance—and not just because they are so significant on the merits. The game at the center of all this simultaneously felt elevated to a new plane of competitive fervor by the baying crowd, and also slightly warped on account of being the object of such intense, idiosyncratic focus.

The Knicks, clearly jittery from everyone who showed up to what they hoped would be a de facto championship party, began the game by committing two totally boneheaded turnovers and spotting the Spurs a quick 7-0 lead. Mikal Bridges got himself into immediate foul trouble, which prevented him from ever getting his head fully into the game and forced Landry Shamet so far into the spotlight that he melted. Most of the numbers will say New York’s offense had a decent game, but amid the more or less average shooting splits, a big night from OG Anunoby, and a somehow bad 32-point night from Jalen Brunson, one number stands out. The Knicks tossed just 18 assists, which is their lowest mark of the playoffs and would have been their second-lowest assist total in the regular season.

Upon that number, as is the case with almost every figure in either team’s box score, one can glimpse the shadow of Victor Wembanyama. The Knicks didn’t have great offensive performances in their two wins in San Antonio, though their halfcourt offensive process looked more determined in Games 1 and 2 than in Game 3. The challenge for any team playing the Spurs is how to approach the task of summiting Mount Wembanyama, and the Knicks spent the first two games (well, until the end of Game 2, when they opted against playing offense) very smartly maneuvering Wemby into the action. This seems like a bad idea, like opening the window and beckoning in all the spiders in the yard, but if Wemby is drawn out to the perimeter, he can’t protect the rim as easily or establish rebounding position. He also has to accept the duel if he’s on Karl-Anthony Towns, because you can’t just let Towns shoot open threes.

The thing is, it takes considerable time and effort to get Wemby all the way out, run the pick-and-roll that might dislodge him, then make the play on the back end, and do it all crisply enough that you maintain the micro-edge you get before Wemby lopes back into position. In Game 3 New York was not as committed to expending the necessary energy. The Spurs, in turn, were ready, and kept Wemby’s defensive assignments flexible.

It was not all bad for the Knicks. Brunson hit his threes and got to the line eight times; Josh Hart was aggressive in transition; the bizarre, two-headed backup point guard duo of Jose Alvarado and Jordan Clarkson was somehow quite effective. But the Knicks did not move the ball with one third the verve they did in the first two games, and Towns scarcely participated. “We just wanted to stand and watch one guy dribble a ton,” Mike Brown said after the game. “And then when the ball got passed, there were no quick decisions by the guy receiving the basketball.”

As for San Antonio’s offense, Wemby was finally the best player on the court; relatedly, he spent zero possessions dicking around. He was decisive, which is an important way for him to play: He’s such an obvious threat to dunk for free if he gets so much as two uncontested steps in a row inside the three-point line, so everyone reacts to him even getting a runway as an emergency. I am getting so used to Wemby posting lines as great as he did in Game 3—32 points on 18 shots (he was also robbed of a potential four-point play because cheating-ass Keldon Johnson was doing karate moves on Mitchell Robinson), eight boards, six assists, two steals, three blocks—that I have to actively remind myself that these are his debut playoffs, and nobody does stuff like this in their first playoffs, or really ever.

Also, speaking of karate moves, he did this to Jalen Brunson.

Everyone else on the Spurs knows how to play around Wemby, and he and his pick-and-roll mate, De’Aaron Fox, used Wemby’s gravity to open up passing lanes to Spurs shooters, who shot as well as the Knicks did on a significantly greater number of open shots. Of the three San Antonio point guards, it was Stephon Castle who scored well in Game 3, with Fox and Dylan Harper shooting a combined 9-for-32. But Harper grabbed a team-high nine rebounds, and Fox threw eight assists and nailed a 15-foot jumper with 12 seconds remaining to send the game into the free-throw zone.

Fox’s jumper has occasionally come and mostly gone in these playoffs, and even as an avowed Fox stan, I have to admit he hasn’t been good with any consistency. He mostly doesn’t make shots anymore, nor does he get to the rim very often at all. But he’s also providing a critical force of organization for his team. Someone needs to initiate the offense, throw the ball ahead in transition, and find open shooters.

Fox’s passing is essential for San Antonio’s offense, which might sound strange given that he’s not all that creative as a passer. What the Spurs need isn’t creativity, but rather a guy who keeps the ball moving quickly and knows how to get it into the most dangerous spots. Mostly that means delivering it to the 7-foot-5 guy, which the Spurs did a lot in Game 3, so they won.

All of which is to say, Game 3—the first Finals game at MSG in 27 years, an event wrapped in a panoptic security apparatus, a reminder of just how much the Knicks’ owner detests his own team’s fans, a chance for the Knicks to claim a 3-0 series lead and all but clinch their first title in 53 years—was also somehow a basketball game. A tense, entertaining, sloppy game, but a normal basketball game, one with pindown actions and agonizing replay reviews and stuff. Granted, it was also the sort of basketball game where Alvarado pursued a loose ball into the crowd and obliterated a guy in a blue sweater who turned out to be Michael Bloomberg. Donald Trump nodding off and Howard Lutnick grimacing courtside while De’Aaron Fox hits a game-sealing jumper seems more like a description of a mild nightmare than a spectacle people paid $16,000 to watch in person, but it was a basketball game.

The Knicks’ magic run was likely to end before they could sweep their way past Wembanyama and into the history books. Knicks fans who wanted to throw a premature coronation were confronted with basketball reality, plus kilometers of security architecture and the oleaginous presence of Trump. Their team still has supremacy in this series, though Wednesday’s Game 4 is now mission-critical. Thankfully, Trump will presumably be falling asleep at some other event that night.

Now that everyone on both teams got to feel the insane rush of playing in such a charged environment, they can all settle in for a more regular basketball game. At least, as regular as any game involving two seven-footers going crossover-for-crossover, two lefty geniuses kinda-sorta experiencing crises and kinda-sorta solving them, and a super high intensity and execution level can be.