Knicks vs Spurs | Opening Monologue | POSTGAME RECAP

0:00What's up, y'all? This NBA season, every shot you take with Fanatic Sportsbook puts points on the board. Earn up to 10% fancash on your bets, win or lose. So even if your bet misses, you're still scoring fancash. Unlock the world of fanatics with fancash for exclusive rewards like Authentic Apparel, Game Tickets, and Meeting Legends at Fanatic's events. Make the switch and turn every bet into a bucket with Fanatic Sportsbook. Winning, it's different here. The New York Knicks have ended the Spurs 11 Game Winning Street. A very impressive, mad nation lacking at the hands of the Diggs, 114-89, the final. A season low with points for the Spurs at a season high and turnovers. Welcome to the Diggs Film School Post Game. Show presented by Fanatic Sportsbook, got to take them seriously now.

1:08You got to take them seriously, that's just all there is to it. No matter what they've done, no matter how crazy they drive us when they don't show up for games that we would really, really like them to show up for, despite what I would term as manning and consistency from games to game, from week to week, from month to month. And despite the fact that there are so many occasions that they don't live up to what you would think the talent says they should consistently live up to, there is enough about this team that you just can't write them off. I wrote them off a couple of weeks ago, I said I couldn't wait to write them off for good and I was dead wrong. And that's the only way to say it, I was dead wrong because this team that they face today, like I know they're young and this, you could argue and I'm actually curious to get into this discussion.

2:08I'm looking forward to having it today about what kind of a matchup the Spurs are for the next because despite the fact that New York has just given them their second, like beating them pretty convincingly for a second time because I thought by the, by the time all was said and done in the NBA cup final, like that was a pretty convincing win, obviously 25 point victory today. And oh, by the way, you take away those last eight minutes against the Spurs on New Years Eve and the next were not dominating that game, but like they were, you know, on track to make it three and oh, despite the record, I actually think the Spurs can do a lot of things and we actually, we certainly saw those things that the Spurs can do and did right out of the gate against the Knicks or in particular, the Knicks starters will get into that too. The Spurs could do things, just like they could do things against most teams, they could do things to the Knicks that really challenge them.

3:08And I think you could argue that they're not a great matchup for the Knicks. So I don't want to hear that this is a matchup thing. The only thing I want to hear about today from anybody commenting on this. And again, we, I said it after the NBA cup. And I'll say it again now because we know what's going to be the case after the NBA cup, I predicted for you on the spot, people are going to make this about the Spurs and not the Knicks. People are going to say, oh, it's a nice win for the Knicks, but boy, oh boy, look at San Antonio, they're on the come up. Are they ready yet? Maybe they're still too young. Maybe they need another year of experience. What great experience. This is going to be yadda yadda and that was the conversation. And it's going to happen again after this. It's going to happen again after the Knicks just went into Madison Square Garden in a place that obviously they have a very good record this year, but it's not like when they step foot on their own court, it's an automatic win or even an automatic play good performance. We learned that against Detroit a couple of weeks ago.

4:10And they absolutely dominated this team. They dominated a team that had not lost in a month. They held a team to 89 points that have been averaging 125 points a game in February, a month in which again, they had not dropped a single game. This was the sort of performance that makes you believe. I mean, I feel like we've said it a hundred times. I guess this is going to be number 101. If this team forget even about firing on all cylinders because they weren't firing on all cylinders today. They ended up shooting 35% from three and 44% overall. This is a team that I think you could actually make the argument before this game that they had become too dependent on the three point shot. And if you go, you want to go look and sort their basketball reference game log by from lowest to highest, three point percentage, you're going to say a lot of wins up top and a lot of losses at the bottom. Like 35% is okay.

5:12I thought for a lot of this game, they were not shooting particularly well. They were shooting it around 30% at the half. They had a pretty good shooting performance in the third quarter, which over helped them overcome some, the one portion of the game was a little bit inconsistent from them on, again, out of the gate. We'll talk about that. We're going to talk about everything. But this was not them coming out there and just hitting a bunch of shots and beating this person that way. They outplayed this person, they out executed this person and perhaps in the most shocking statement that I have made, they're in a positive way at least in quite some time. They out defended this person and it wasn't close. I know this team and I think I wrote about, I think I mentioned this at the top of the newsletter after the win in Milwaukee on Friday night. We've been waiting for it. We've been waiting for it. It took 60 games, but the New York Knicks were finally a top 10 defense after that winning

6:16into the box. It's not like we're talking about a bad defense. You cannot accidentally trip and fall and smoke in mirrors your way into a top 10 defense after 60 games. No matter how many teams there are tanking in the league. For proof of that, just go look at what the next defensive rating was for that two and nine stretch when they were below all of those tanking teams. So the 10th and defense is real, but still this is a spurs team that like they don't put a bad defender on the floor, really at all, like everybody that they put on the floor is at least a capable defender and they have the best, most gifted defender in the sport, although I think the next did a pretty good job, not shying away from Victor and Minyama tonight and continuing to try to exploit San Antonio's attempt to their attempt to exploit the personnel that the Knicks had on the floor. And yes, I'm talking about Josh Hart and those lineups.

7:17But when he's the best defender in the league and he's backed up by all of these very gifted defenders, including by the way, Stefan Castle, who absolutely gave Jalen Brunson all that he could handle tonight. And the fact that Brunson still finished with 24 points on 16 shots is to test them into him. So many heroes for the next tonight, we're going to go through every one of them. But this Knicks team, for them to go out there and defend like that, where you want to talk about, it makes me think of the words of a former head coach who I was somewhat fond of, whenever things weren't working on defense and he would ask the question to himself, no one in particular, is the effort there and is the execution there. And if one of the questions was no, then I'm not going to change it. Well guess what, tonight, the execution was there and oh boy, you better believe it. The effort was there. Now was this one of San Antonio's better offensive performances of the season? No, absolutely not. And I guarantee you spurs, spurs, Twitter, spurs, you know, I don't know if there's a

8:20spurs, a film school out there, but whatever version of this there is in San Antonio, I'm sure they're not going to be happy tonight and I'm sure they're going to be blaming their own team for this loss. I think they're going to be looking at a lot of things starting with 22 turnovers, seven of which came from Victor Womanyama, he would get apparently do no wrong if you listen to the national broadcasts and the national media. So yeah, they're going to be lamenting that they're going to be lamenting nine of 34 from deep. All of that is fair and it's fair to point out that the spurs did not have their best game. And yet my favorite two words when I'm talking about this team in particular and yet this is the same spurs team that ended up scoring 89 points tonight and getting blown out by 25 that got out to double checking it right now. I'm pretty sure it was a 19 to seven lead. Yes it was a 19 to seven lead. So don't tell me that the spurs just didn't have it right off the bat today. They had it.

9:20I thought pretty well right out of the gate and by the way, yeah, they got out to a 19 to seven lead. The defense was great for a New York's part. This like right out of the gate. The defense was never a problem this entire game was the offense that was a problem for starters and then they figured out the spurs defense sum. But defensively from New York, you know, again, there's a little bit of, you know, was it the spurs being sloppy or was it the next defense? It's always going to be a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. I would very soon give the credit to New York's defense for taking advantage of any potential opportunities that the spurs offense gave them. And again, you cannot say that, oh, the spurs just had a brain fart today. They were due, you know, two days off. And I'm sure we're going to hear about two days off in New York. Sure, we're going to hear about a 1 p.m. game after two days off in New York. Sure, we're going to hear about all of that. Don't give me that bullshit because you know what?

10:22You can't give me that on one side of your mouth at one side of your mouth. And then out of the other side of your mouth, all of the stories that have been written about and all the podcasts that have been talked about the spurs over the last month, they're ready. They're professional. They take this stuff seriously where other young teams don't. They're more mature than your typical young team. Again, it was everything I was kind of lamenting before about what the talking points are going to be coming out of the cup out of this game. Don't give me all that bullshit. The mix came out there, overcame that 19 to seven lead and absolutely put it to this team in a way that I really don't think anyone has in a while. I mean, we could look really quickly about the spurs, worst losses of the season. I don't think you're going to find many worse than this in any case. So main point, got to take him seriously. There's going to be more games where they're not good. We know it. Because this is the team that they are. They are going to give us the mix back.

11:23But for me, and again, I've spoken about it so many times, I really don't want to talk about it anymore. It was, we know what it was. That piston game wasn't so much that I was just frustrated with the performance. It was that that game in my mind and that moment said something about their ceiling and it made me question their ceiling of the ceiling of a team that could not get it up. So don't put it in that game in that spot against that team. And you know what, I guess all that has to say, and I'm not saying it's because Detroit is some unholy bear of a match up that the next can't be because I refuse to believe that. I think what it says about this team is when they get up for games and when they don't, when they execute and when they don't, when they put forth, put forth peak effort and when they don't, it's, there's just no rhyme or reason to it. There's there because what you, what you can't say at this point, cannot capital C cannot

12:25say about this team at this point is that they're incapable of going all the way because they have wins, multiple wins against the San Antonio Spurs. They've beaten the Houston Rockets, they've beaten the Denver Nuggets, they've beaten the Minnesota Timberwolves, they've beaten the Los Angeles Lakers. I've just named two through six in the last, the only team I didn't name is Oklahoma City Thunder and this goes, they haven't played the Oklahoma City Thunder. And then going over to the East, yes, we know the story with the Detroit Pistons, they've beaten the Celtics twice, they've beaten the Cavs twice, they've beaten the Raptors twice, they've beaten the Sixers once, unless I'm forgetting one time, but they've beaten the Sixers, they beat them by 51 fucking points, maybe in the magic twice, if you still consider them a team to be reckoned with. So they've done it enough, oh, they did beat the Sixers twice, I'm forgetting, maybe the other game was earlier this season. So yeah, they've beaten every notable East team outside of Detroit multiple times.

13:27They have the resume, it isn't a perfect resume, we know that, but if that resume includes the sort of performance that we just saw, you can't toss it out, you have to leave it in the pile, you have to have it be one of the final candidates that you're considering for the position of 2026 NBA champion. And it's not a big pile, they have to be in there. And why do they have to be in there and now we can get into some of the specifics of this game. And I find it almost perfect because, look, there's been a lot of blame thrown around, but every time we really get into the deep dark depths of our feelings about why this team occasionally is not what we want it to be. We always go back to the same place. We always go back to the summer of 2024 and the decision to remake the team and go

14:31all in on this starting five. Part of that decision may have been a result of necessity because part and time was gone, which they knew, by the way, when that he was going to be gone, when they made the macabre just trade for anybody still under any misgivings about that. And they went all in on this starting five. And it changed the complexion of the team, it changed the character of the team, it changed the locker room certainly. And it also changed the talent and it added talent. And too often that talent has not lived up to their end of the bargain. And today, today not only did the talent live up to the bargain, they're under the bargain, but the extra stuff, the ethereal stuff that we've, that again, when we really get mad, the stuff that we're really missing. And for the talent portion, Macau Bridge is, you don't, you don't always show up to the party, but when you do man, you make a grand fucking entrance, 25 points on 17 shots

15:33that doesn't, that's that line is deceiving because it was, he had 25 points, it felt like he had closer to the 40 points that he had on Christmas day, a little bit more than a year ago. The biggest numbers for him are five, as in five May three pointers, five steals. And if you want to throw five rebounds in there as well, throw five rebounds in there as well, a team high plus 21, although there were a lot of good plus minuses tonight. It was as good a game as he's had all season long. And yes, I know that there is something about this matchup with San Antonio. I don't know what it is, whatever it is. He seems to like playing this team. That's fine. It's not that this is the only team he shows up against, but boy, you can count on good performance is from him when they face off against each other. I actually want to go, his whole game was amazing, defensively he was amazing, shot making

16:34he was amazing. He was the best player in the game for the next. I would argue he was the best player in the game overall when you consider victim where Minyama's seven turnovers. I want to go back because the thing that I think I accuse Macau Bridges of very often is sometimes when the team needs him to step up in a bigger way that that encompasses more than the little things, right? We know he does all the little things, but sometimes you need more than the little things. As I've been saying lately, sometimes you need the big stuff and look, no one's going to care about this basket when they see the final score and maybe it didn't end up mattering that much, but we as Nick fans have watched too many games and we are too well versed in this team to know what a third quarter of doom when we see it and when they came out there at the top of the third quarter, there was an unease about them on the

17:37offensive side that was unmistakable to me. And who scored the first basket of the third quarter? It was none other than Macau Bridges. It was a very quick release and how quick was this release? All game long, corner three after they had just made a very nice defensive play because again, the defense never let up, the defense never let up and he made it over the outstretched arms of Victor Romanyama. And if you want to know how difficult it is to shoot over the outstretched arms of Victor Romanyama, just go talk to Josh Hart and he'll tell you just how challenging that is. So it was like a very calming shot for me in the moment and he hit, it seemed like every time they needed a big three, he hit a big three. So that was awesome. The next guy that I want to talk about because it's the other side of the summer or 2024

18:41coin is Karl Anthony Towns. And I'm not saying the Karl Anthony Towns was the second best Nick tonight. I'm not saying he was the third best Nick tonight. I'm not even saying, well, yeah, I guess I am saying he was the fourth best Nick tonight. You're not going to know that from the stat line. You're not going to look at five for nine, 12 points. Yeah, 14 rebounds, but we know CAC can get his rebounds a lot. It's my theme of the season for CAC. And this is going to, this is what I was referring to when I was talking about that extra something, that's something that can't be quantified. That's something that you know it when you see it. There's something that I say a hard and Stein always brought, which is why there are people like me out there who are still pondering what would have happened if he hadn't played himself into that contract. Whatever that other stuff is, Karl Anthony Towns had it in spades today. Played within himself, did all the dirty work that the next needed him to do, did every

19:44little thing that they could have possibly asked of him defensively, never let up. I never for one second in this game was like, oh, we got to get Mitchell Robinson in there. We got to get Towns out. It's time to bear down on defense. CAC was awesome by his standard, certainly, on the defensive end. And then like you look at 14 rebounds and look, is Victor Romanyama a great rebound or at this point, even with his height? No, he's not. But to go out and have 14 rebounds, including five on the offensive glass against a team with that monster out there, and he did a 14 rebounds in 28 minutes. So like look, yeah, there was the little stretch there. And the early in the third quarter with the couple of offensive fouls, you're always going to get a couple of plays like that from CAC. Did he go out there and dominate the game offensive? I mean, I didn't dominate the game offensively, but if you better believe that the spurs were accounting for him on every single possession. And you know what we didn't get from CAC? We didn't get any periods in which he was actively detrimental by commandeering offensive

20:48possessions in a negative way. We didn't see any crazy offensive, you know, or any drives. There was one shot at the rim that I could not believe didn't go down, but that's a shot you want him taking every time. I thought CAC was phenomenal, 12 points in all. I thought CAC was phenomenal. And then in between my best and fourth best players of the game, of course, we're going to go Jalen Brunson and OJ and I want to be brief with talking about JB and OG because there's nothing to say. We know Jalen Brunson could be an incredibly gifted offensive player and the ways he was and I thought, again, go back to the first quarter when this thing was a ways away from being decided. What did the nicks need over the second half of that fourth quarter or first quarter? They needed someone to just get them some buckets because this offense didn't know it couldn't shoot its way out of a paperback. And Jalen Brunson was like, okay, don't worry. I got this, ended up scoring 11 consecutive points as part of a 15-to-2, Nick Run.

21:51I would argue it was the most important 11 points of the game because it really turned the game around. I mean, I had a five-point possession thanks to a couple of Dylan Harper Fals. Harper's going to be one L of the players, he's going to be an all-star, the whole thing. It's the guy a little bit to learn about defending the very best in the NBA. And then OGN and OB defensive player of the year level performance from him today. I thought he was, I thought McAlbridge is needed to do everything he did to overtake OG for me for player of the game because OG was that good defensively. To go out there and have to like wrap your mind around for a second. This spurs team, are they perfectly built? No. They're probably lacking a little bit of shooting, despite the fact that a lot of other guys are having very good shooting seasons. So it's not that they're impossible to guard even though they have average on 25 points

22:52of game in February. But they have paired the most, the single most devastating matchup nightmare in the sport in Victor-Women Yama with arguably the fastest guard with the ball on his hands at least in the sport in the Iron Fox. Sorry, I don't know, he's top two or three at this point. They can, those two guys can beat you in every different way possible. And OGN and OB spent time on both of them tonight. And that's all you got to know about OGN and OB. So between, and look, the formula for the next, we're talking about McAlbridge, we're talking about Carl and T-Towns, we're going to talk about Josh Hart and Muhammad D.O.R. and Landry, all these other guys in the second match of Robinson, very good game for Mitch Robinson, all that stuff. Their formula is so simple in some ways. It's Jalen Brunson being with the best offensive players in the sport, and OGN and OB being one of the best defensive players in the sport. If those two guys do those things and everybody else, more or less, does their job, then

23:53it should, they're going to win, I don't know, four or five times against good teams. So we got that tonight, and that was awesome. And let's finish up with two, I think of Zambia, I'll say, Shamit off night shooting, but I love what he gave them in every other facet of the game. Jose Alvarado, again, both him and Shamit today, proof of the old tips saying, you don't have to shoot well to play well. Shamit three of eight, Alvarado one of four, both of those guys were awesome. There was zero defensive drop off in terms of the intensity. Robinson, peak defensive, Mitch, I thought in a lot of ways, and they couldn't keep them off the offensive glass, even though you only got two offensive rebounds a lot of times. What teams put forth that effort to prevent Mitchell Robinson from getting offensive rebounds and opens up other things, and not a coincidence, the next as a team, as a team got 18 offensive rebounds today. Mitch's fingerprints are all over that, but let's finish up by talking about two guys

24:54who are very, very different and had very different games, and that's Josh Hart and Muhammad Dior. The Dior excitement, at this point, I'm not sure it has been higher. He had the higher scoring game earlier in the year. I think it was against the New Orleans Pelicans, if I'm not mistaken, where he came out and he had a bunch of the reason of the first quarter and he ran the score up, well, to respect that the fucking Pelicans doesn't matter, not that it doesn't matter, but to Pelicans. To go out there and do what he did in 15 minutes, all but the last, the way of which probably I guess we're garbage time, we're not garbage time, excuse me, so well, real minutes against these spurs and be a plus 18 and score 14 points. But yeah, he took a few, he took a few threes, but the most impressive thing to me about

25:55this kid is that he's a 51st fucking pick, the 50, not the 21st pick, not the 11th pick. Shit, if you're the first pick in the draft, I don't know that you're going out there and attempting 13 threes in 15 minutes against a team that was undefeated in the previous month. The confidence coursing through this kid's veins is absolutely off the charts and you cannot, to me, have a conversation about his ceiling, give me, give me all the points you want about it. I don't know if I still believe in the shot and the offensive game is maybe a little, you know, still needs some development. I'm here for all of that. If you give me this level of confidence and you give me the work ethic that based on everything we've seen and heard, the work ethic is absolutely there. You think back to Summer League, when what did he say when he was first asked about like, oh, you know, what, what are you, what are you thinking about? What are you concentrating on? He's like, yeah, I'm just trying to, I'm going to dive on the floor because, you know,

26:57defense is what's going to get me on the court. So when you have all those things, I'm buying, I'm buying any stock there is to buy, he was an incredible asset for the next tonight. Again, only 1 5 of 14 overall, only 1 4 13 from deep, but the 4 3 Z hitman, they were important. He makes stuff happen. He makes stuff happen on both sides of the floor, which absolutely love and that only leaves one player to talk about and that's Josh Hart. So the first five minutes of this game, six minutes, whatever it was, Josh Hart was in there. We're probably for me, the most painful six minutes of the season for Josh Hart. And he came, it was painful in all the ways that we've come to know it to be painful, where they didn't ignore them with Wembee, allowed Wembee to roam, completely cramped up anything else the next could potentially do on the offensive end.

27:58And then when Josh Hart got the ball, he shot it, shot didn't fall. And then once he very quickly lost confidence in the shot, tried to put the ball on the floor, committed a turnover to, attempted a two, I think that was blocked. I thought he came in in the second quarter, played better, he was making more of an impact on the game, but still he attempted a couple of middies that Wembee got a piece of, one, if not both of them, entered half time shooting 0 of seven from the field. And you're like, if it wasn't for Josh Hart having the half that he had, the next would be up by whatever, 16, 18 points in this game. Was Josh Hart's final style in any good? No, well, he actually almost had triple double, 10 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists. So I guess it was kind of good, one steal, only one turnover, so, but four or 14, you don't love that, one or six from three, you don't love that. But you watched Josh Hart go out there in the second half, and it wasn't just all about

28:58him, it was about, and I thought my favorite tweet that I saw during this game came from DJ Zulu, and I'm pulling it up right now because I retweeted it, where he said, the next might have to, oh, sorry, wrong, wrong tweet, DJ was on a lot of good tweets in this game, but he's basically saying that the thing with Josh Hart is you have to, he is worth the pain, and the reason he's worth the pain, here we go, Josh Hart is figuring this out as a driver and a passer, instead of benching the guy, take the gift of not being guarded and weaponize it. And it may be, it reminded me why even when Josh Hart has those stints where he, you absolutely feel like he's killing them in a way he is killing him. You're reminded why he is continued to, or he is worth the continued investment. And that is because he is not Tony Allen.

30:00He is not Andre Roberson, thank you, Andrew Claudio, who I needed to text to remind me what Andre Roberson's name was earlier tonight, he reminded me. But he's not a guy that has no offensive skill, and that when teams ignore him, it's just going to completely devastate your offense. There are times where he loses confidence and he loses poise when he could effectively look like Tony Allen or Andre Roberson. And then you get into the bad periods, but there are other times, like you saw in the second half, where he's able to take with the defense and the nicks you're able to take with the defense is giving them and actually use it for the advantages that it should be. Completely ignoring a player of Josh Hart's skill. Any good offensive team should be able to turn that around and take that as an advantage. And that's exactly what they did in the second half. And I give them a lot of credit. I give Jalen Brunson, who was the ballhander in a lot of those scenarios, if not all those scenarios, a lot of credit, and I give Josh Hart a lot of credit for working through those issues because the solution is not to mention Josh Hart.

31:01The solution, they'll always be conversations about the starting lineup as there should be, they are worthwhile conversations. But the notion that burying hard is the answer, that's not the answer. It might be the answer sometimes. There are times where you absolutely are going to want to put that fifth shooter on the floor. But the answer is the answer of like Josh Hart can't be part of the solution to this team and a big part of the solution for this team to achieve their goals. That's not it. He's too skilled. He's too valuable. He does too many things, even when teams are defending him the way they are and when they're defending him the way they are, there is no universe where the next shouldn't be able to figure out how to use that to their advantage, which is exactly what they did in the second half of this game. And I'm rolled for a lot of guys tonight. I'm thrilled for, I'm thrilled for Nick fans everywhere. I'm thrilled for myself that I got to experience that when I'm thrilled for Michal. I'm thrilled for the whole team. But the guy that I'm most happy for is Josh Hart that it didn't have to go down like

32:03it looked like it was going to go down. And that he reminded everybody like, look, I'm not a perfect player, but I'm still going to help this team win. And is it going to be an issue they're going to continue to have to grapple with moving forward? Yes, just because they kind of figured it out in the second half does not mean that they've solved this thing. Because other teams are going to do it and teams are going to throw wrinkles. So it's going to be up to the next to continue to roll with it. But they did a great job rolling with it tonight. They did a great job in basically every facet of the basketball game tonight. But then to start off like they did scoring five points in the first six plus minutes of this game and end up with 114 against that defense on a night when they shot 35% from three. And Jalen Brunson had a okay game offensively and Carlisle had any talents at 12 points. Like again, to borrow to borrow a quote about another popular team in the metropolitan area.

33:12You got to believe you have to believe in this team because they keep giving you enough reasons to believe to counteract the reasons they give you an optimal. And that's just who they are and that's who they're going to be. So we'll celebrate this one massive win, massive statement. And also last thing before we get to the next segment here, important for them to start off this really tough stretch because like this is a very tough stretch that they're embarking on right now with the thunder coming up and, you know, but like you could argue with how well this person has been playing that this was the toughest game of this little stretch right here with all due respect to the Oklahoma City Thunder who obviously are awesome. But you know, you're now two games up on Cleveland effectively three because of the tiebreaker and you're keeping, you know, lost in an arms like so you like that as well.

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