The Knicks are the favorites
The TrueHoop NBA Finals preview
If you’ve been missing the Thursday live videos we’ve been doing, you’re missing a lot. It’s fun. The next one is after Finals Game 1, at 10 am ET Thursday, and you can watch right here. We’ll also publish it on video after the fact, and on YouTube if you’re into that kind of thing, And as we’ve had a lot of questions from people wondering if they can listen to it as a podcast, the answer is yes, the RSS feed is here.
After Game 5, I, Henry, predicted that the Thunder would win the series, and I had my own rationale for that, but it roughly boils down to: I always predict the Thunder will win. And I was proved wrong—so that leaves us now feeling I would say mixed about my predictions. I’m pretty proud that before the playoffs began I said that I did not believe in Denver, and that one played out well. But here we are heading into what looks like it’s going to be an unbelievable Finals between the Spurs and Knicks (who did not lose a game in the month of May).
The Spurs are the favorites. They have a lot going for them, first and foremost, they beat the goddamned Thunder, the reigning champs and heavy favorites almost all season.
Everybody thought Victor Wembanyama’s time would come. They didn’t know we were already in it.
So the series begins on Wednesday, which is nice, and that there’s an imperfect amount of recuperation time for the Spurs—but at least a lot more than the Cavs got before they faced the Knicks. Also, the Spurs have home court advantage, so during this interim they won’t be flying anywhere, which should set this up to be an intense seesaw of a series.
We don’t have meaningful data about these two teams facing each other. They played three times. The Knicks won two blowouts while the Spurs had an incredible comeback squeaker. (Average of all that: Knicks win 123-112.) But we all know both teams are meaningfully different and better right now. Ordinarily, I’d expect teams to play how they normally play, but these two have been not doing that for the whole playoffs. There won’t be an overwhelming data argument either way.
So working largely off vibes, I will tell you that I’m picking the Spurs, because when I watched the Thunder-Spurs series, the level of defensive intensity from the Spurs doubled what the Cavs had to offer the Knicks. That matters twice. One, it might take the Knicks a minute to get accustomed to that level of intensity. Secondly, that “Victor Wembanyama and a pack of incredibly athletic defensive geniuses” might prove to be the most powerful force in the basketball universe, and I’m guessing it’ll win the Spurs a ring.
But I’ve been wrong before, and then I learned some very interesting counterpoints in a conversation with David Thorpe.
What do you see going into this series?
I’m very confident that a mildly healthy Thunder team, for instance with Jalen Williams back, would have won the West. And a fully healthy Thunder team would have won the series probably in five games.
Injuries are always part of the playoffs. This is no different than last year, the year before, and the year before, and this year those injuries just got in the Thunder’s way. J Dub’s hamstring robbed them of their best defender for Victor Wembanyama and their third-best playmaker. When Ajay Mitchell was missing they lost their best perimeter defender and their second-best playmaker. And even with all that the Thunder led 3-2.
With just Jalen Williams back (I don’t think Ajay Mitchell was close to returning) I would have favored the Thunder over the Knicks.
But now that the Spurs have won, I am picking the Knicks to win it all. It feels to me like New York has a better than fifty-five percent chance to win.
