{"id":1968035,"date":"2026-06-02T14:00:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T11:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1968035"},"modified":"2026-06-02T14:00:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T11:00:02","slug":"the-bounce-5-pressing-questions-about-the-knicks-spurs-nba-finals-matchup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1968035","title":{"rendered":"The Bounce: 5 pressing questions about the Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals matchup"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Bounce Newslette<\/b>r<\/strong> \":basketball:\"<\/span> | This is The Athletic\u2019s<\/em> daily NBA newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> to receive The Bounce directly in your inbox.<\/p>\n

Today is the 50th birthday of Earl Boykins, the second-shortest player in NBA history. He stands just 5 feet 5, but he managed to play 652 games in 13 NBA seasons. Boykins averaged 8.9 points in 19.9 minutes for his career. His career best was 14.6 points per game in the 2006-07 season. He played for 10 different teams. He was incredible to watch<\/a>. He\u2019s a testament to heart and determination.<\/p>\n

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Finals preview<\/h3>\n

Pressing questions ahead of Knicks-Spurs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tomorrow at 8:30 p.m. ET, the NBA Finals will tip off on ABC between the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks. We\u2019re previewing this matchup today and tomorrow. The Knicks getting back to the finals for the first time since 1999 is a massive deal. The Spurs getting to the finals with Victor Wembanyama is gargantuan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time these two teams have played for a championship this season. That\u2019s right! Remember the NBA Cup final? That happened back in December in Las Vegas, with the Knicks walking away with a 124-113 win, an extra $500k per player, a banner in the rafters of Madison Square Garden and the NBA Cup itself.<\/p>\n

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (now hilariously) once said he has the answers to the test<\/a> but needs to know the questions. Well, I had some immediate questions about this finals matchup once we knew the Spurs were joining the Knicks, and we\u2019re going to try to figure out the answers together. By together, I mean I\u2019m going to talk to myself here, and you might read some of it!<\/p>\n

Can the Knicks actually win it all? <\/strong>Yes, absolutely. It doesn\u2019t take a lot of mental gymnastics either. I\u2019ve mentioned this before, but usually once we start getting three or four \u201cwhat ifs\u201d deep into The What If Game, then it\u2019s pretty difficult to take a team\u2019s chances seriously. Barring massive injury, of course. That\u2019s not what the Knicks are dealing with here. They\u2019ve established themselves as a legitimate title contender during these playoffs.<\/strong> It\u2019s not just because they\u2019re in the finals. It\u2019s because of the way they dominated on their way to the finals.<\/p>\n

Easy road or not, they\u2019re doing stuff no other team has done in NBA history. The Spurs have Wemby, and he\u2019s a nearly impossible player to plan for. But the Knicks have Jalen Brunson, a great offense, and more-than-capable role players playing peak basketball right now. Their offense is clicking. Their defense is stifling. And they\u2019ve made over 51 percent of their shots and 40 percent of their 3-pointers in the postseason so far. Now you just have to do it against Wemby.<\/p>\n

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What do the Knicks have to throw at Wemby?<\/strong> I\u2019d expect a rotation of three different defenders to guard Wembanyama, with lots of help running over to take away driving lanes. Karl-Anthony Towns is the easy option up front. His size and strength should keep Wemby relatively off-balance, but he\u2019ll need to stay away from the quick, dumb fouls. OG Anunoby will see a lot of time on him with KAT in help. Anunoby is strong and has incredible hands. He could force Wemby into some turnover situations, but the second Wemby gets a stop on him and Anunoby can\u2019t swipe the ball, it\u2019s going to be a shot attempt in the paint.<\/p>\n

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{“endpoint”:”https:\/\/api-prd-nyt.theathletic.com\/graphql”}<\/p>\n

Third up is Mitchell Robinson. He\u2019ll play sort of the Isaiah Hartenstein role but with slightly less physicality and more athleticism. Speaking of \u2026<\/p>\n

How big of a deal is Robinson\u2019s pinie injury? <\/strong>As long as Robinson plays, it\u2019s manageable<\/a>. You\u2019re not looking for a lot from him offensively when it comes to skills. It\u2019s not like he will cross over his defender or pull up from 25 feet to knock down a jumper. He has to guide the ball in on alley-oops. He mostly just has to be a force on the boards, especially on offense. He\u2019s one of the best offensive rebounders in NBA history, so his presence matters.<\/p>\n

Maybe he can just tape up the surgically repaired pinkie finger to the ring finger and gut through the pain. But they\u2019ll need him out there against Wemby for sure.<\/p>\n

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What do the Spurs have to throw at Brunson? <\/strong>There are a lot of potential defenders to try to wear down Brunson as he brings the ball up and gets the Knicks into their actions. Stephon Castle will spend a lot of time on Brunson. Castle is bigger, faster and more athletic than Brunson. Castle can hassle him quite a bit.<\/p>\n

The Spurs can also put De\u2019Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper on the job at times. Those guys have good size, great hands and can pressure the ball. With Wembanyama behind them, they can get even more aggressive on the perimeter. However, they have to keep themselves out of foul trouble, because Brunson is an expert at capitalizing on mistakes.<\/p>\n

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We have one more question, coming up after a few links \u2026<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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The last 24<\/h3>\n

\ud83c\udfc0 The pick is in.<\/strong> Our John Hollinger makes his pick for the finals. It <\/a>was a close call<\/a>.
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\ud83d\udcfa Under the spotlight. <\/strong>ESPN shook up its main NBA announcing team. Is it ready to meet this finals moment<\/a>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcb0 Steph signs. <\/strong>Steph Curry has been an intriguing shoe free agent this year. He just signed a new 10-year sneaker deal<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\ud83e\uddd1\u200d\u2696\ufe0f Aspiration sentencing. <\/strong>Remember the guy alleged to have helped funnel money to Kawhi? He was sentenced to 14 years in prison<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udea7 New digs? <\/strong>The Mavericks have settled on their site for the new arena. It\u2019s going to be in North Dallas<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd0a \u201cNBA Daily.\u201d <\/strong>Writers Jared Weiss and Fred Katz join the show to break down the finals matchup<\/a>.
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Stream the NBA on Fubo (<\/em>try it for free!<\/a>)<\/em>\u00a0and catch out-of-market games on\u00a0<\/em>League Pas<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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One more question<\/h3>\n

Knicks\u2019 offensive staple vs. Spurs\u2019 alien<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s get to our final pressing question about this finals matchup!<\/p>\n

Can the Knicks run this high-post offense against San Antonio? <\/strong>The Knicks may have had this in their back pocket to run so exquisitely at some point, but in their series against the Atlanta Hawks, they went to a deadly high-post offense. They\u2019d have Towns at the 3-point line on the wing. Then they\u2019d have Brunson come around Towns\u2019 hip on a fake handoff so he could set a backscreen on Anunoby in the corner. From there, immense problems existed.<\/p>\n

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Granted, this is horrendous help defense by Atlanta, but it\u2019s not much easier to defend when the guy is in proper weakside help. You\u2019re either leaving the far corner shooter open or getting a swing-swing from the paint to the corner to the right wing for a 3-point shot. This action could create big problems for the Spurs.<\/p>\n

To be fair, though, it will look a little different when Wembanyama is on the court to defend it. Here\u2019s a pretty sophisticated rendering:<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ll remind you that graphic design is my passion. Some will say it\u2019s AI, but there\u2019s no way AI is comprehensive enough to create that.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll continue to preview this series in tomorrow\u2019s Bounce!<\/p>\n

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Saying goodbye<\/h3>\n

The NBA loses another legendary coach<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rick Adelman was the second coach I ever covered during my (now) 19-year career writing about basketball. I moved to Minneapolis in the same year that he took over the Minnesota Timberwolves. I still had no idea what I was doing (some of you would argue that\u2019s continued to this day), and I was constantly trying to absorb as much as I could about the NBA game. Everybody \u201cknows basketball\u201d until they start trying to discuss it with the professionals who live it.<\/p>\n

Whenever I was in a media scrum with Adelman, I learned. In those brief moments I had a one-on-one exchange with him, I learned. As I watched how he navigated a severely detrimental general manager<\/a>meddling with his ego as a hurdle to actual basketball, I felt like I was taking a masterclass in the BS of the NBA. Adelman was always frustrated with anything that wasn\u2019t basketball-related, and he\u2019d often be irked by basketball played below its potential.<\/p>\n

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He used to echo an old coach saying, \u201cpotential gets coaches fired,\u201d as he tried to get a solidly talented Wolves team to break its playoff drought from 2011-14. The Wolves managed just a 97-133 record in his three-season tenure, which included a lockout-truncated campaign. But Adelman is a Hall of Famer after winning 1,042 games and 58.2 percent of his regular-season contests.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Adelman made his biggest impression on the NBA during his tenures with Portland and Sacramento. He had the Trail Blazers knocking on the door of a championship in 1990 and 1992. With the Kings from 1998 to 2004 (when they were contenders or working toward it), he created a beautiful brand of hooping with the help of Pete Carril and Elston Turner.<\/p>\n

Adelman died yesterday at the age of 79<\/a>. His son, David, is the current coach of the Denver Nuggets. I appreciated Adelman\u2019s dry wit, his incredible basketball acumen and his disdain for the stuff that didn\u2019t pertain to getting better on the court. The task of fixing a horribly run and highly flawed franchise is one of the tallest tasks you can undertake. Maybe he didn\u2019t fix the Wolves, but he left his imprint on guys such as Kevin Love, Ricky Rubio and dozens of players throughout his career. Over the years, his contemporaries have spoken highly of him <\/a>as a coach and as a human.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m so grateful to have gleaned a small amount of basketball understanding from watching him coach and listening to him explain the game. Rest in peace, Coach<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bounce Newsletter | This is The Athletic\u2019s daily NBA newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Bounce directly in your inbox. Today is the 50th birthday of Earl Boykins, the second-shortest player in NBA history. He stands just 5 feet 5, but he managed to play 652 games in 13 NBA seasons. Boykins averaged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1968035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1968035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1968035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1968035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1968035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}