May 23, 2025 • 20 mins
The Conference Finals are here and the chaos is already off the charts. Trysta breaks down the Pacers’ wild comeback win over the Knicks, Haliburton’s heroics, and the Aaron Nesmith Game that no one saw coming.
How do the Knicks recover from this collapse? And can OKC keep rolling after a dominant Game 1 win over the Timberwolves? Trysta dives into it all with takes, questions, and a healthy dose of playoff drama.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On this episode of The Heat Check. Are you kidding me?
Are we serious? You're joking me? What we're seeing from
the Indiana Pacers is one of the greatest comebacks of
all time, and that's considering two other historic comebacks that
the Indiana Pacers has had this season. This postseason will
(00:22):
break down Pacers Game one. I guess the Knicks as
well as Okay, see in the Wolf series, no time
to waste, so much to talk about, drop that motherfucking
beat that should beat Rihanna.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
You're listening to the Hottest the Hottest India podcast out here.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I said what I said, it's the check Check. It's
just stop critic man. The greatest maybe the greatest comeback
or maybe the biggest choke depending on how you look
at it, in the history of NBA basketball. So we've
had I've had like twelve hours to process this, fifteen
(01:02):
hours to process this. I don't really know how the
New York Knicks recover emotionally from being up twenty, for
being up fourteen with three minutes left to go, and
losing that game for forty five or forty eight minutes.
This was one of the most perfect games of basketball
(01:24):
for New York. They survived all the blur runs that
we saw from the Pacers, going nine for nine from
the field to start the game, slowly building a lead
with classic Knicks basketball. Karl Anthony Towns had an awesome game.
He had thirty five points, shooting fifty percent from three
more threes taken in Game one from Cat than the
(01:47):
entire last series combined. Brunton had forty three. He was unstoppable.
His fouls, though, getting into foul trouble can fuck you
because you can't push off to get to try to
get the foul when you already have one charge, one
charge call when you have five thousand. They had a
fourteen point lead with three minutes and fourteen seconds left
in the game. They had a ninety nine point seven
(02:09):
percent anytime anytime, we're like they had a ninety nine
point nine percent win probability. That's because we're dissecting how
possibly they could have lost. Led by nine with fifty
eight seconds left, that was probably an incalculable win percentage.
Fourteen hundred and fourteen playoff teams one four, one, four,
(02:31):
up nine or more with a minute to play. All
fourteen hundred and fourteen teams won that game until last night.
Until last night, let that sink in. We witnessed something
that's never happened before in the history of the NBA. Now,
(02:52):
we also had the Pacers down eight or seven forty
eight seconds left to go, and there were only two
other times or one other time that a team had
come back then and it was another Pacer team. The
Pacers are the cardiac kids. The roof just collapsed on
(03:12):
Madison Square Garden literally, not literally, figuratively literally, the Pacers
made the most improbable comeback in NBA history. No team
in NBA history, like I said, has erased a nine
point leading fifty eight seconds or less, not one. Somehow,
some way, the Knicks found a way to lose that game,
(03:36):
missing free throws, Pacers holding onto their challenges, playing bad defense,
Aaron Neismith turning into Reggie Miller. So the key to
it all is obviously not what you think. Aaron Neismith game.
From the time the clock read three minutes left in
(03:58):
the game, the Pacers down fourteen, Aaron Nesmith hit five
threes to go with two free throws. He scored seventeen
points himself in under three minutes. What do you do?
Why he was just fucking hot, so hot, open threes,
contested threes, deep threes. The man was unconscious and some
(04:21):
of those threes should have been in once. He shot
eight for nine from deep from deep from the game,
his most important points hitting a pair of free throws
after an anenobe take foul designed to keep him from
hitting another three, which he probably would have hit. I
remember the commenters being like, oh, should he tried to
(04:42):
miss the second free throw. It was one twenty four
one two before he sank it to cut the game
to one with twelve seconds left. But then we got lucky, baby,
All the Pacers fans got lucky. Brunson tossed a very
strange but effective high bounce pass in the back court
to og Anoby, which could have been could have been taken.
It looked like that was one for the Pacers to
(05:04):
just take. The play wasted a full five seconds. San
Anonobi eighty one percent free throw shooter to the line,
and man, he missed the front end and then hit
the second. Probably the worst outcome you could have if
you make the first one and missed the second. Maybe
maybe you get that rebound Pacers don't have a time out.
(05:25):
They take the ball full court with just seven seconds left,
Indiana needs a two to tie. Halliburton's got the ball
in his hands, fakes a drive, gets past the free
throw line, gets doubled, quickly does his little Steve Nash thing,
runs around in circles, back to the three point line,
step back, three, hits the back of the rim. No good, no, wait,
(05:51):
goes up in the air, splash. I was losing my
fuck when I tell you, I was losing my mind.
That's a good six or seven feet, folks, and then
swishes through the basket. Just absolute chaos, pandemonium. The Pacers
mob Halliburton because they think that's game over. He puts
his hands around his throat like Reggie Miller's winning time
(06:13):
choke points at Reggie in broadcasters, row Knicks fans are
just stunned. Foot was on the line two, not three.
And I thought to myself, well, maybe this is like
the Bucks net series where Kevin Durant's foot was on
the line. They go to overtime and the Bucks win
Game seven. They go to the NBA Finals. No, but
(06:34):
now we've got overtime. The Pacers scored twenty three points
in the last three minutes and thirteen seconds of the
fourth quarter in overtime. That can't be real. That cannot
be real. The Timberwolve scored eighty five in their entire
eighty eight in their entire game against the Thunder in
Game one. At this point, you just can't like the
(06:55):
chances for the Knicks. Feels like they're better from playing
from behind than playing from ahead. The Knicks had a
nice little four point overtime lead, and you're thinking, did
that end of the celebration cause the Pacers to gas out? No, baby,
Nimhard hits five straight, and after trading the lead multiple times,
Neimhard gets a layup with twenty six seconds left to
(07:17):
put the Pacers up for good. Obi tops it top
and ends it with a classic dunk, a double clutch dunk.
Brunson and Cat miss threes badly. That last sequence was tough.
I don't think Brunson hits Rim, Kat gets the they
kick it back out to Kat from the rebound barely
hits Rim. There, Pacers one thirty eight, Nicks one thirty five.
(07:40):
What do you say? I mean, what if you're in
that building and you're a Knicks fan, what do you
what do you say? My heart has been stolen from
my chest and eating and eating raw like someone found
an ox in the middle of the forest and slit
them open and just ate it for the fat and
(08:01):
the protein er. That's what it was. I know that
this is Jalen Brunson clutch Player of the Year. It's
hard not to say, though the Tyrese Halburn is more
clutch than Jalen Brunson. He might be one of the
most clutch, greatest clutch players in the history of the game.
(08:22):
Do you want to hear stap He is eleven for
twelve in the postseason this postseason in the final two
minutes on shots to either tie the game or put
the Pacers ahead. That's better than Tom Brady. That's better
than Pat Mahomes Twice this year. He's won games on
four point plays three times this playoffs, He's led the
(08:45):
Pacers to wins in which they had less than a
one percent chance of winning. That's fucking absurd. It doesn't
seem real. It's like, it really does. Remind me of
the two minute offense with Tom Brady, where you're like, oh, well,
no lead safe. Tom Brady's got the ball two minutes
(09:07):
down ten. Somehow I believe, and they did it less
often though than these pacers. Steven A Smith, still throwing
shade Salty, says he doesn't think Tyree Halliburn's a superstar
because it takes more than just hitting clutch shots to
make superstar. I think that's kind of it though. Actually,
if all I need is somebody to hit clutch threes,
(09:31):
clutch shots facilitate to the open man, and because of
that person, I can come back from down fourteen with
three minutes left to go. That guy's a superstar. I
don't give a fuck what he does in January. Really,
I don't care what he does in February. I don't
care what he does in March. Tell me what he's
doing in April, May and June, and guess what, we're
(09:52):
gonna probably see Hallie in April, May and June. A
lot of Salty Knicks fans are his game tying shot lucky.
But guess what, he's had a lot of those. He's
had other ones too that were slapping their face. They
were splash. I like what ESPN's Timligler said. He said
the fact that it drew back iron and bounced means
(10:15):
the shot was deadly accurate. And just to touch long
an inch to either side and Hallie doesn't even get
a bounce. Considering it was a fall back three off
the back foot following one hundred and eighty degree pivot
and Mitchell Robinson closed out beautifully. It was an insane
shot and we should probably we should probably give some
(10:38):
love to Rick carll That man deserves his flowers. He's
coaching his fucking ass off, and he has been for
two decades. He's pocketing his challenges which he used to
perfection multiple times. Twenty seconds to go, in Ot knicks
down one og Nanobi throws the ball to Brunson, Nemhar
tips it, call is Nick's baby, and then Rick carl
(11:01):
I was like, I would like to see that again.
I would like the rest to take a look at
that one. Jalen Brunson biting his towel at the bench
being like, oh fuck, I know I touched it. Indiana
ball up one. Oh no, this is bad. Immediately after,
(11:22):
Obi Toppin dunked to put him up three with twenty
seconds left to go, game over, game over. If Carlile
hadn't done anything but just get out of his players
way down the stretch, it would have been good coaching,
but it is easy to blow that challenge in the
first quarter. We see it all the time. Players are
like doing a little swirly thing. First, No, Carlile was like,
(11:43):
we're not doing that bullshit. Okay, We're going to save
them from when they actually matter. What are we making
the series now? I think Vegas has the Knicks as dogs.
They're now plus one forty to win the series. They
were minus one fifty five before Game one. They are
now plus seven hundred to win the championship, up for
plus four to fifty before game one. If you look
at ninety five percent of the game, the Knicks are
the better team. They dominated. They looked like a lot
(12:06):
more better than the Pacers. It was bad grammar, even
if it wasn't seen in the score at the time.
That fourteen point lead was built on a fourteen to
oher run that happened when Brunson went to the bench Tibbs.
Tibbs was saying stuff. He said, the keys to this
series was winning the non Brunson minutes, and boyl boy,
did they do that?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I don't know. In a lot of ways, it's like
a boxing match. The Knicks had the perfect game plan.
They weathered a bunch of flurries, they wore them down.
They knocked the Pacers down, and it was like the
umpire refer was like one two three, and like right
before it's like I leaving, I fucking leaving. Pacers jump
(12:53):
up and then Powell game over, knock knocked out. Somehow
the Nick decided instead of playing it safe, they're just
gonna trade blows in the last round, they get themselves
knocked the fuck out. I don't know how you recover.
I really don't know how you recover the miss. Because
the confidence that the Pacers continue to have and it
(13:14):
continues to grow, is that it doesn't really matter how
much we're down. And that is something that the New
York Knicks have as well. They had that against the
Celtics and that helped them a lot. And maybe you
say the Celtics are a better team than the Knicks
as well. Yeah, but guess what, they're home and the
Knicks are still playing. You cannot be tight, you cannot
(13:34):
play nervous. You have to just play back your game
no matter what the score is. Keep putting your foot
on their neck. Don't let them fucking shoot seven threes
down the stretch. Here's a scary stat for Knicks fans.
This was statistically the worst game that the Pacers have
played in the entire playoffs this year. What are the
(13:56):
odds they play this bad again and they won. It
feels like the Pacers to me, are a team of destiny,
the team that everyone just wants to take too lightly,
Like the Bucks ignored them, the Calves ignored them, and
it was like the Bucks ignored them, but then the
Calves ignored what they did to the Bucks. They were like, ah,
(14:17):
we're sixty four wins. Then the Knicks are now ignoring
what the Pacers did to the Bucks and the Calves.
The scalps are evident. They're showing you and you're like,
not my scalp. I don't know when people are gonna
realize this team is so dangerous. They have eight nine
players that can get you fifteen points and they are
seven and zero clutch games in this playoffs. Friday Night
(14:40):
is going to be fucking electric. I can already tell this.
The series is going to be classic, and oh boy,
the NBA is all the way back. Moving on Game
one of the Minnesota Timberwolves versus a thunder is in
the books. Okac took a close game at halftime they
were down for and then they just blew Minnesota's doors
(15:02):
off and Edwards looked bummy, looked like his ankle is
not good. Nos Reed continues to struggle. We're not getting
much out of Dante DiVincenzo. They outscored the Wolves by
fourteen points in the third and sixteen in the fourth,
and nos Reed, like I said, just is nowhere. He's
(15:22):
gotta go. He can't stay. We thought NOAs was an
important piece of this puzzle. Nas can't stay. He was
one for eleven from the field. You gotta go, sir,
you gotta go. Rudy Gobert was completely non existent as well.
You can't have your two bigs just go into the
ether against Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein. Can't do it,
(15:44):
can't do it, and you have a bum ankle and Edwards,
your superstar is injured. That's three players you needed production
from that you didn't get any. Not sure you can
learn a lot because the Wolves have had bad game
ones in the playoffs. They lost last You look at
game one of the Golden State series. The Warriors starters
were a combined plus fifty six net rating in this game,
(16:07):
and the Warriors won going away in a game that
they led by twenty Ant shot twenty five percent from three,
and our dubs were like, Oh, this is gonna be easy,
and it wasn't. The Wolves blew their doors off four straight,
won the series in five. You look what game one
of the OKC series. OKAC starters were a combined plus
one plus sixty one net rating. Ant shot six three
(16:30):
for eight from three, And now everybody again is saying
that the Wolves are dead in the water. The Wolves
scored eighty five, eighty eight, and eighty eight points in
these three losses. Then they never scored less than one
hundred in any game after that. I like, Okay, see,
they're impressive, really good offense. Transition offense is electric, historically
(16:51):
good defense, multiple players who can shoot a bunch of threes,
but also their half court offense struggles at times. This
OKAC team had a hard time beating an underman Nuggets
team took them seven, should have lost the final two
against Memphis that was a walking hospital wing. They've got
the ability to be beat. If Minnesota wins Game two,
(17:14):
the pressure now falls on the Okay set thunder shoulders. Also,
let's talk about these refs. It's egregious, it's disgusting. Not
only is Shae getting to the line in ways that
sort of terrifies you, where he's barely getting touched, you
had door. It was so bad, Doris Burke called him
a foul merchant during the game on the broadcast. Shae,
(17:39):
I know people are saying, oh, Shay isn't getting as
many foul calls as so and so, or he's still
scoring twenty five a game without free throws. It doesn't
matter because the truth is the fouls that are getting
committed against the Timberwolves are fucking mob hits and not
getting called. And you barely scrape Shay's elbow and he
(18:02):
pushes off a lot and you get called for the foul,
and they're not calling the fouls that the Okacs is
committing pretty much all game. That's why they're such a
historically good defense is because their whole game plan is
we're going to just foul all game, and the refs
can't call us for everything. It's impossible to officiate that way. Yeah,
(18:24):
the way he gets whistles changes the game. He gives
the thunder a bunch of time stoppages that they wouldn't
get otherwise, they can be better rested, they can make
quick changes on the court. It changes everything. If you're
defending Shay and you know he's getting Tiki Took calls,
you're not gonna blankt him like you would normally. There's
a reason that Randall and Ant were laughing in their
(18:45):
postgame looking at SGA's foul shot stats. That's what they
were looking at. I don't care what people say, that's
what they were looking at. Everyone sees it. Everyone knows
it's happening, and nothing's changing. And I know the argument, Oh,
Julius Randall's a bigger guy, you can't officiate them. Those
two guys the same way. The guy is getting an
elbow to the forearm every single time down and you
(19:05):
can hear the slap. You should get to the free
throw line. This is like the Zion argument, where it's like, oh,
we can mug Zion because he's too ninety. Doesn't matter,
doesn't change anything in terms of his ability to get
to the room. That doesn't matter. It's contact. Contact is contact.
It's Trey Jung, it's Jalen Brunson, it is Shay Goojess Alexander,
(19:28):
It's Pete Harden, It's Dame Lillard. It's fucking annoying. We
all see it too. We all see it. Game two
is gonna be fascinating, and this series, I suspect might
go a lot longer than people think. That's all the
time that we have for this episode of the Heat Check.
Come back Tuesday for an all new episode, and check
out the feed for past episodes and many episodes which
(19:48):
may come expectedly to you, like plot twists in the
Apple series Surface.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Do not forget to follow the Heat Check all playoffs
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Speaker 1 (20:07):
Day off see y'all guys, still enjoy the Playoffs
On this episode of The Heat Check. Are you kidding me?
Are we serious? You're joking me? What we're seeing from
the Indiana Pacers is one of the greatest comebacks of
all time, and that's considering two other historic comebacks that
the Indiana Pacers has had this season. This postseason will
(00:22):
break down Pacers Game one. I guess the Knicks as
well as Okay, see in the Wolf series, no time
to waste, so much to talk about, drop that motherfucking
beat that should beat Rihanna.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
You're listening to the Hottest the Hottest India podcast out here.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I said what I said, it's the check Check. It's
just stop critic man. The greatest maybe the greatest comeback
or maybe the biggest choke depending on how you look
at it, in the history of NBA basketball. So we've
had I've had like twelve hours to process this, fifteen
(01:02):
hours to process this. I don't really know how the
New York Knicks recover emotionally from being up twenty, for
being up fourteen with three minutes left to go, and
losing that game for forty five or forty eight minutes.
This was one of the most perfect games of basketball
(01:24):
for New York. They survived all the blur runs that
we saw from the Pacers, going nine for nine from
the field to start the game, slowly building a lead
with classic Knicks basketball. Karl Anthony Towns had an awesome game.
He had thirty five points, shooting fifty percent from three
more threes taken in Game one from Cat than the
(01:47):
entire last series combined. Brunton had forty three. He was unstoppable.
His fouls, though, getting into foul trouble can fuck you
because you can't push off to get to try to
get the foul when you already have one charge, one
charge call when you have five thousand. They had a
fourteen point lead with three minutes and fourteen seconds left
in the game. They had a ninety nine point seven
(02:09):
percent anytime anytime, we're like they had a ninety nine
point nine percent win probability. That's because we're dissecting how
possibly they could have lost. Led by nine with fifty
eight seconds left, that was probably an incalculable win percentage.
Fourteen hundred and fourteen playoff teams one four, one, four,
(02:31):
up nine or more with a minute to play. All
fourteen hundred and fourteen teams won that game until last night.
Until last night, let that sink in. We witnessed something
that's never happened before in the history of the NBA. Now,
(02:52):
we also had the Pacers down eight or seven forty
eight seconds left to go, and there were only two
other times or one other time that a team had
come back then and it was another Pacer team. The
Pacers are the cardiac kids. The roof just collapsed on
(03:12):
Madison Square Garden literally, not literally, figuratively literally, the Pacers
made the most improbable comeback in NBA history. No team
in NBA history, like I said, has erased a nine
point leading fifty eight seconds or less, not one. Somehow,
some way, the Knicks found a way to lose that game,
(03:36):
missing free throws, Pacers holding onto their challenges, playing bad defense,
Aaron Neismith turning into Reggie Miller. So the key to
it all is obviously not what you think. Aaron Neismith game.
From the time the clock read three minutes left in
(03:58):
the game, the Pacers down fourteen, Aaron Nesmith hit five
threes to go with two free throws. He scored seventeen
points himself in under three minutes. What do you do?
Why he was just fucking hot, so hot, open threes,
contested threes, deep threes. The man was unconscious and some
(04:21):
of those threes should have been in once. He shot
eight for nine from deep from deep from the game,
his most important points hitting a pair of free throws
after an anenobe take foul designed to keep him from
hitting another three, which he probably would have hit. I
remember the commenters being like, oh, should he tried to
(04:42):
miss the second free throw. It was one twenty four
one two before he sank it to cut the game
to one with twelve seconds left. But then we got lucky, baby,
All the Pacers fans got lucky. Brunson tossed a very
strange but effective high bounce pass in the back court
to og Anoby, which could have been could have been taken.
It looked like that was one for the Pacers to
(05:04):
just take. The play wasted a full five seconds. San
Anonobi eighty one percent free throw shooter to the line,
and man, he missed the front end and then hit
the second. Probably the worst outcome you could have if
you make the first one and missed the second. Maybe
maybe you get that rebound Pacers don't have a time out.
(05:25):
They take the ball full court with just seven seconds left,
Indiana needs a two to tie. Halliburton's got the ball
in his hands, fakes a drive, gets past the free
throw line, gets doubled, quickly does his little Steve Nash thing,
runs around in circles, back to the three point line,
step back, three, hits the back of the rim. No good, no, wait,
(05:51):
goes up in the air, splash. I was losing my
fuck when I tell you, I was losing my mind.
That's a good six or seven feet, folks, and then
swishes through the basket. Just absolute chaos, pandemonium. The Pacers
mob Halliburton because they think that's game over. He puts
his hands around his throat like Reggie Miller's winning time
(06:13):
choke points at Reggie in broadcasters, row Knicks fans are
just stunned. Foot was on the line two, not three.
And I thought to myself, well, maybe this is like
the Bucks net series where Kevin Durant's foot was on
the line. They go to overtime and the Bucks win
Game seven. They go to the NBA Finals. No, but
(06:34):
now we've got overtime. The Pacers scored twenty three points
in the last three minutes and thirteen seconds of the
fourth quarter in overtime. That can't be real. That cannot
be real. The Timberwolve scored eighty five in their entire
eighty eight in their entire game against the Thunder in
Game one. At this point, you just can't like the
(06:55):
chances for the Knicks. Feels like they're better from playing
from behind than playing from ahead. The Knicks had a
nice little four point overtime lead, and you're thinking, did
that end of the celebration cause the Pacers to gas out? No, baby,
Nimhard hits five straight, and after trading the lead multiple times,
Neimhard gets a layup with twenty six seconds left to
(07:17):
put the Pacers up for good. Obi tops it top
and ends it with a classic dunk, a double clutch dunk.
Brunson and Cat miss threes badly. That last sequence was tough.
I don't think Brunson hits Rim, Kat gets the they
kick it back out to Kat from the rebound barely
hits Rim. There, Pacers one thirty eight, Nicks one thirty five.
(07:40):
What do you say? I mean, what if you're in
that building and you're a Knicks fan, what do you
what do you say? My heart has been stolen from
my chest and eating and eating raw like someone found
an ox in the middle of the forest and slit
them open and just ate it for the fat and
(08:01):
the protein er. That's what it was. I know that
this is Jalen Brunson clutch Player of the Year. It's
hard not to say, though the Tyrese Halburn is more
clutch than Jalen Brunson. He might be one of the
most clutch, greatest clutch players in the history of the game.
(08:22):
Do you want to hear stap He is eleven for
twelve in the postseason this postseason in the final two
minutes on shots to either tie the game or put
the Pacers ahead. That's better than Tom Brady. That's better
than Pat Mahomes Twice this year. He's won games on
four point plays three times this playoffs, He's led the
(08:45):
Pacers to wins in which they had less than a
one percent chance of winning. That's fucking absurd. It doesn't
seem real. It's like, it really does. Remind me of
the two minute offense with Tom Brady, where you're like, oh, well,
no lead safe. Tom Brady's got the ball two minutes
(09:07):
down ten. Somehow I believe, and they did it less
often though than these pacers. Steven A Smith, still throwing
shade Salty, says he doesn't think Tyree Halliburn's a superstar
because it takes more than just hitting clutch shots to
make superstar. I think that's kind of it though. Actually,
if all I need is somebody to hit clutch threes,
(09:31):
clutch shots facilitate to the open man, and because of
that person, I can come back from down fourteen with
three minutes left to go. That guy's a superstar. I
don't give a fuck what he does in January. Really,
I don't care what he does in February. I don't
care what he does in March. Tell me what he's
doing in April, May and June, and guess what, we're
(09:52):
gonna probably see Hallie in April, May and June. A
lot of Salty Knicks fans are his game tying shot lucky.
But guess what, he's had a lot of those. He's
had other ones too that were slapping their face. They
were splash. I like what ESPN's Timligler said. He said
the fact that it drew back iron and bounced means
(10:15):
the shot was deadly accurate. And just to touch long
an inch to either side and Hallie doesn't even get
a bounce. Considering it was a fall back three off
the back foot following one hundred and eighty degree pivot
and Mitchell Robinson closed out beautifully. It was an insane
shot and we should probably we should probably give some
(10:38):
love to Rick carll That man deserves his flowers. He's
coaching his fucking ass off, and he has been for
two decades. He's pocketing his challenges which he used to
perfection multiple times. Twenty seconds to go, in Ot knicks
down one og Nanobi throws the ball to Brunson, Nemhar
tips it, call is Nick's baby, and then Rick carl
(11:01):
I was like, I would like to see that again.
I would like the rest to take a look at
that one. Jalen Brunson biting his towel at the bench
being like, oh fuck, I know I touched it. Indiana
ball up one. Oh no, this is bad. Immediately after,
(11:22):
Obi Toppin dunked to put him up three with twenty
seconds left to go, game over, game over. If Carlile
hadn't done anything but just get out of his players
way down the stretch, it would have been good coaching,
but it is easy to blow that challenge in the
first quarter. We see it all the time. Players are
like doing a little swirly thing. First, No, Carlile was like,
(11:43):
we're not doing that bullshit. Okay, We're going to save
them from when they actually matter. What are we making
the series now? I think Vegas has the Knicks as dogs.
They're now plus one forty to win the series. They
were minus one fifty five before Game one. They are
now plus seven hundred to win the championship, up for
plus four to fifty before game one. If you look
at ninety five percent of the game, the Knicks are
the better team. They dominated. They looked like a lot
(12:06):
more better than the Pacers. It was bad grammar, even
if it wasn't seen in the score at the time.
That fourteen point lead was built on a fourteen to
oher run that happened when Brunson went to the bench Tibbs.
Tibbs was saying stuff. He said, the keys to this
series was winning the non Brunson minutes, and boyl boy,
did they do that?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
I don't know. In a lot of ways, it's like
a boxing match. The Knicks had the perfect game plan.
They weathered a bunch of flurries, they wore them down.
They knocked the Pacers down, and it was like the
umpire refer was like one two three, and like right
before it's like I leaving, I fucking leaving. Pacers jump
(12:53):
up and then Powell game over, knock knocked out. Somehow
the Nick decided instead of playing it safe, they're just
gonna trade blows in the last round, they get themselves
knocked the fuck out. I don't know how you recover.
I really don't know how you recover the miss. Because
the confidence that the Pacers continue to have and it
(13:14):
continues to grow, is that it doesn't really matter how
much we're down. And that is something that the New
York Knicks have as well. They had that against the
Celtics and that helped them a lot. And maybe you
say the Celtics are a better team than the Knicks
as well. Yeah, but guess what, they're home and the
Knicks are still playing. You cannot be tight, you cannot
(13:34):
play nervous. You have to just play back your game
no matter what the score is. Keep putting your foot
on their neck. Don't let them fucking shoot seven threes
down the stretch. Here's a scary stat for Knicks fans.
This was statistically the worst game that the Pacers have
played in the entire playoffs this year. What are the
(13:56):
odds they play this bad again and they won. It
feels like the Pacers to me, are a team of destiny,
the team that everyone just wants to take too lightly,
Like the Bucks ignored them, the Calves ignored them, and
it was like the Bucks ignored them, but then the
Calves ignored what they did to the Bucks. They were like, ah,
(14:17):
we're sixty four wins. Then the Knicks are now ignoring
what the Pacers did to the Bucks and the Calves.
The scalps are evident. They're showing you and you're like,
not my scalp. I don't know when people are gonna
realize this team is so dangerous. They have eight nine
players that can get you fifteen points and they are
seven and zero clutch games in this playoffs. Friday Night
(14:40):
is going to be fucking electric. I can already tell this.
The series is going to be classic, and oh boy,
the NBA is all the way back. Moving on Game
one of the Minnesota Timberwolves versus a thunder is in
the books. Okac took a close game at halftime they
were down for and then they just blew Minnesota's doors
(15:02):
off and Edwards looked bummy, looked like his ankle is
not good. Nos Reed continues to struggle. We're not getting
much out of Dante DiVincenzo. They outscored the Wolves by
fourteen points in the third and sixteen in the fourth,
and nos Reed, like I said, just is nowhere. He's
(15:22):
gotta go. He can't stay. We thought NOAs was an
important piece of this puzzle. Nas can't stay. He was
one for eleven from the field. You gotta go, sir,
you gotta go. Rudy Gobert was completely non existent as well.
You can't have your two bigs just go into the
ether against Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Hartenstein. Can't do it,
(15:44):
can't do it, and you have a bum ankle and Edwards,
your superstar is injured. That's three players you needed production
from that you didn't get any. Not sure you can
learn a lot because the Wolves have had bad game
ones in the playoffs. They lost last You look at
game one of the Golden State series. The Warriors starters
were a combined plus fifty six net rating in this game,
(16:07):
and the Warriors won going away in a game that
they led by twenty Ant shot twenty five percent from three,
and our dubs were like, Oh, this is gonna be easy,
and it wasn't. The Wolves blew their doors off four straight,
won the series in five. You look what game one
of the OKC series. OKAC starters were a combined plus
one plus sixty one net rating. Ant shot six three
(16:30):
for eight from three, And now everybody again is saying
that the Wolves are dead in the water. The Wolves
scored eighty five, eighty eight, and eighty eight points in
these three losses. Then they never scored less than one
hundred in any game after that. I like, Okay, see,
they're impressive, really good offense. Transition offense is electric, historically
(16:51):
good defense, multiple players who can shoot a bunch of threes,
but also their half court offense struggles at times. This
OKAC team had a hard time beating an underman Nuggets
team took them seven, should have lost the final two
against Memphis that was a walking hospital wing. They've got
the ability to be beat. If Minnesota wins Game two,
(17:14):
the pressure now falls on the Okay set thunder shoulders. Also,
let's talk about these refs. It's egregious, it's disgusting. Not
only is Shae getting to the line in ways that
sort of terrifies you, where he's barely getting touched, you
had door. It was so bad, Doris Burke called him
a foul merchant during the game on the broadcast. Shae,
(17:39):
I know people are saying, oh, Shay isn't getting as
many foul calls as so and so, or he's still
scoring twenty five a game without free throws. It doesn't
matter because the truth is the fouls that are getting
committed against the Timberwolves are fucking mob hits and not
getting called. And you barely scrape Shay's elbow and he
(18:02):
pushes off a lot and you get called for the foul,
and they're not calling the fouls that the Okacs is
committing pretty much all game. That's why they're such a
historically good defense is because their whole game plan is
we're going to just foul all game, and the refs
can't call us for everything. It's impossible to officiate that way. Yeah,
(18:24):
the way he gets whistles changes the game. He gives
the thunder a bunch of time stoppages that they wouldn't
get otherwise, they can be better rested, they can make
quick changes on the court. It changes everything. If you're
defending Shay and you know he's getting Tiki Took calls,
you're not gonna blankt him like you would normally. There's
a reason that Randall and Ant were laughing in their
(18:45):
postgame looking at SGA's foul shot stats. That's what they
were looking at. I don't care what people say, that's
what they were looking at. Everyone sees it. Everyone knows
it's happening, and nothing's changing. And I know the argument, Oh,
Julius Randall's a bigger guy, you can't officiate them. Those
two guys the same way. The guy is getting an
elbow to the forearm every single time down and you
(19:05):
can hear the slap. You should get to the free
throw line. This is like the Zion argument, where it's like, oh,
we can mug Zion because he's too ninety. Doesn't matter,
doesn't change anything in terms of his ability to get
to the room. That doesn't matter. It's contact. Contact is contact.
It's Trey Jung, it's Jalen Brunson, it is Shay Goojess Alexander,
(19:28):
It's Pete Harden, It's Dame Lillard. It's fucking annoying. We
all see it too. We all see it. Game two
is gonna be fascinating, and this series, I suspect might
go a lot longer than people think. That's all the
time that we have for this episode of the Heat Check.
Come back Tuesday for an all new episode, and check
out the feed for past episodes and many episodes which
(19:48):
may come expectedly to you, like plot twists in the
Apple series Surface.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Do not forget to follow the Heat Check all playoffs
longs that means delod subscribeing to your friends, all of them,
even though once you have talk to you in years,
and follow us on TikTok and at this key, checking
at Trister Creek on Twitter, Instagram and threads met his
new social media platform, We're Off posted every
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Day off see y'all guys, still enjoy the Playoffs
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