The New York Knicks must have been licking their chops at the second-round series between the Detroit Pistons and Cleveland Cavaliers. Neither team looked prepared to take on a Knicks team that has found its mojo at just the right time of the season.
In the end, the Cavs took Game 7 from the Pistons, winning running away, 125-94, and embarrassing Detroit on its home floor. But does anyone really believe in Cleveland?
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What the Cavs took was an ugly series, one full of turnovers on both sides of the aisle, and spouts of porous defense, nothing like the extraordinary stretch we have seen from the Knicks in seven straight victories. And certainly nothing like the dominance we have seen from the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs in the West.
That’s the thing. If we were to power rank the four remaining teams in these NBA playoffs, it would pretty clearly be: 1) Thunder, 2) Spurs, 3) Knicks and 4) Cavaliers.
There seems to be a chasm between the top two teams out West — two talented, young, deep and hungry rosters — and the Knicks, a more seasoned bunch, but one with plenty of questions on both sides of the ball for their first 85 games of the year.
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The Knicks have found themselves over a stretch of seven games, running a free-flowing offense that features Karl-Anthony Towns as a focal point, and collectively playing the kind of defense that can contend for a championship … in most seasons.
Whether or not it can contend for a title this season is another matter. OKC and San Antonio have been that good, seizing the league with rare combinations of talent and energy, youth and poise, effort and execution. It is something special to watch.
The Thunder are a 64-win defending champion, boasting the NBA’s back-to-back MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who is quietly — or more loudly now — compiling the greatest guard career since Michael Jordan, and in some respects keeping pace with the GOAT at only 27 years old. Oklahoma City is also returning All-NBA talent Jalen Williams to a rotation that could probably win the whole thing without him.
And the Spurs are a 62-win rising juggernaut, featuring Victor Wembanyama, a 7-foot-something giant whose talent is so scary that, at 22 years old, if he were to win a championship this season, you would wonder when he will ever let go of the crown.
Can either the Knicks or Cavaliers compete with the juggernauts in the West? (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images)
(Jason Miller via Getty Images)
We already wonder if we are bound for a Thunder-Spurs takeover for a foreseeable future, since Wembanyama’s Spurs made light work of Anthony Edwards’ Minnesota Timberwolves, who made light work of Nikola Jokić’s Denver Nuggets. Meanwhile, SGA’s Thunder have not yet lost a game in these playoffs, mostly without Williams.
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The Knicks better hope they don’t lose the magic in a long layoff, as they have spent more than a week watching the Cavs and Pistons do whatever they just did over the course of three rather unattractive seven-game series. Cleveland struggled to put away the Toronto Raptors, as Detroit struggled to put away the Orlando Magic, and then the Pistons and Cavaliers struggled to put away each other. It was not pretty.
Sure, Cleveland hammered Detroit, or the Pistons laid down, in Game 7. Either way, neither team looked like the type of roster that can survive against the Knicks, and this may be the junior varsity side of the bracket anyway. What the Cavs put forward against the Pistons was miles from what we have seen from the Thunder and Spurs, and quite a ways from what we have seen from the Knicks in the past seven games.
Could the Cavaliers, now that they are here in the Eastern Conference finals, now that they can get a whiff of the NBA Finals, give themselves to the game, discover a collective identity, forego all ego in pursuit of a championship and play as one unit?
Can it not be Donovan Mitchell’s turn, or James Harden’s turn, or Evan Mobley’s turn, or Jarrett Allen’s turn, but can everyone feast at once on a Knicks team that is every bit as talented? That has looked far hungrier than the Cavs, who at various points of the first two rounds appeared ready for a complete reshuffling of the roster … again.
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Sure, the Cavs could find themselves, but the Knicks already have over the course of the last two series, while the Thunder and Spurs have not lost themselves all season.
Are we really going to bank on Mitchell, Mobley and Allen, making their first-ever conference finals appearances, and Harden, making his first since 2018, against a Knicks team that looks as starved as its fans for the Finals? Oddsmakers are not.
And are the Knicks and Cavs really the best the East has to offer to the Thunder or Spurs? The 2024 champion Boston Celtics could not survive the first round, and the 60-win Pistons looked vulnerable in the first round before bowing out in the second. So, I guess it is the Knicks, who have beaten the sixth-seeded Atlanta Hawks and seventh-seeded Philadelphia 76ers, and the Cavs, who have survived two Games 7.
But the East better put its best foot forward if it has any chance of competing in the Finals. So far, the best we’ve seen from the East is what the Knicks have put together in recent games. Are the Cavaliers really the tune-up they need to meet OKC and San Antonio where they are? Does it even matter? These are the questions the Thunder and Spurs have the East asking now. Can the conference produce a true competitor?
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
