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