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00:00The advantage it felt that New York had, above all else, was the ability to close.
00:05Because Boston's championship run last year, the banner hangs forever, don't worry,
00:12was one of the main stories is how every single team they played was significantly mismatched
00:17through injury, not having their best player.
00:21You watch this series, and if the Knicks did not have Jalen Brunson, right?
00:25And the Knicks got contributions all over the court.
00:28But if they didn't have Brunson closing down the stretch, Brunson didn't even lead the comebacks.
00:33Brunson was on the bench during the comebacks.
00:35J.J. Redick must have been stunned.
00:37Like Tom Thibodeau was playing his guys less than J.J. Redick was.
00:41But then Brunson came out fresh and was nails as Boston was still scrambling for those answers.
00:49But what I thought the Knicks flashed in Game 6 was incredibly important for at least myself
00:56to trying to view them entering this series.
01:00Winning close is fantastic, but you cannot make a living doing it, in my opinion.
01:05And the Knicks, separating to the degree that they did against Boston in Game 6,
01:09shows that now it's a lot more than just we're having a great run.
01:14The Celtics, and now I will give you your time here, J.Y., or excuse me,
01:18the Knicks have to feel like we are actually playing our best basketball right now.
01:24It's the best 48 minutes the Knicks have played this postseason, and it wasn't even close.
01:31And going into Game 6, my actual thought process was,
01:35I don't want to see Jalen Brunson shoot the ball 25 times.
01:40I want to see if other guys get involved.
01:44What happens with the Knicks is when you have contributions up and down the starting line,
01:49they legitimately have five guys that can get you 20.
01:52Legitimately.
01:53I don't think people, you know, and that's maybe part of their problem,
01:56is the fact that they're so top-heavy.
01:59But when you have guys that are in rhythm, catching the ball, OG,
02:03Mikel Bridges has looked like in the last week found his mid-range game,
02:08and he looks more like the Phoenix Suns Mikel Bridges that we saw
02:13when he was the number three scorer and the pressure was off him.
02:17Cat played completely different in Game 6.
02:21They went small to guard him, and the big boy said,
02:23all right, you're going to take away the three.
02:25Now I'm just going to drive the ball to the basket.
02:27You don't have a rim protector there because obviously Porzingis is not himself,
02:31and I'm going to get to the rim.
02:32Josh Hart was Josh Hart.
02:34But to me, the two guys that brought so much energy last night
02:41were Deuce McBride and Mitchell Robinson.
02:43People looked at all series.
02:45And listen, I got caught with this myself as someone that said I liked the Celtics.
02:49I said I liked the Celtics.
02:50But one of the reasons why I thought New York was going to get at least two
02:54was because of the fact that the three games that the Knicks got blown at
02:57earlier in the year versus Boston, Mitchell Robinson was not there.
03:01He is such a big difference maker to what they do.
03:04There was a play, I want to say in the second quarter,
03:07where I saw Mitchell Robinson, as a coach,
03:09you talk about guys playing, doing multiple things, right?
03:13Multiple things, like close out, then go to someone else.
03:15It doesn't happen much.
03:16I think Mitchell Robinson guarded three people and one possession,
03:20and then took the ball from Jalen Brown in the corner and said,
03:23when I saw that, I was like, okay, well, this game looks different.
03:26But Deuce McBride, who struggled in the first-round series versus Detroit,
03:30shot really well when he hit that chase-down block.
03:36Yeah.
03:36At that point, I was like, this game is over.
03:38Because their energy levels were in another planet.
03:42Boston knew they were in trouble, Tom.
03:44But the most important thing is they fed off of their crowd,
03:48and in that third quarter, when Boston could have made a run,
03:51the Knicks just put that one last run together to put the game away.