The Knicks Are in the Finals. Their Owner Is Still the Villain in His Own Story.

The Knicks Are in the Finals. Their Owner Is Still the Villain in His Own Story.

Jalen Brunson sealed the Eastern Conference Finals on Cleveland's home court, and the first thing he did was credit a "winning culture that starts with Mr. Dolan." For anyone who lived through the last 27 years of Knicks basketball, that sentence lands like a punchline with no setup.

James Dolan inherited a multibillion-dollar cable TV and sports empire and spent decades turning the Knicks into a cautionary tale. Bleacher Report put it plainly in 2018: he was "masterful at destroying two beloved franchises" — the Knicks and the NHL's Rangers, who haven't won the Stanley Cup since 1994. Dolan once told ESPN's Ian O'Connor that Knicks fans who spotted him around town would "shout something horrible and run away. It's not fun." He traded Patrick Ewing in 2000 and spent the years that followed stuffing the roster with bad contracts that left the team in salary-cap purgatory so long that the iPhone and Facebook both came and went before the Knicks sniffed another Finals.

The margin this playoff run has been absurd — the Knicks posted a 22½-point average margin of victory over their 11-game winning streak. The team is legitimately great. The owner is still the owner. Brunson can call it whatever he wants; the rest of New York will take the trophy and quietly change the subject.

Gobble's Take: Winning cures most things — just not the memory of watching the Knicks for two and a half decades.

Source: Yahoo Sports NBA

Wemby Went 4-for-15 in Game 5. Now He Has to Win or Go Home.

Victor Wembanyama is about to play the highest-stakes game of his young life, and he's coming off his worst shooting night of the postseason. In Game 5, he went 4-for-15 from the field, with a lot of that offense starting at least 18 feet from the basket. The Spurs lost, and Wembanyama skipped the postgame media availability entirely.

Tonight is Game 6 in San Antonio, and the Spurs — down 2-3 in the Western Conference Finals — need to win two straight, including what would surely be a chaotic Game 7 on the road. Oklahoma City's Jalen Williams is listed day-to-day with a hamstring injury, and Ajay Mitchell is out with a calf issue. San Antonio will have a raucous home crowd behind them. The Spurs have surprised the entire NBA this postseason. The question is whether they have one more surprise in them.

Game 6 tips at 8:30 PM CT on NBC and Peacock.

Gobble's Take: Wembanyama has responded to adversity before. Tonight is his first career elimination game.

Source: Yahoo Sports NBA

In Case You Missed It

Yesterday's top stories:

• Spurs’ comeback dies in a whistle-blizzard, and the West Finals are now teetering