New York (AFP) – The New York Knicks, who held off San Antonio in another instant NBA Finals classic to take a 2-0 lead in the championship series, are expecting the Spurs’ best shot in game three on Monday. “Every single day we chip away and try to be the best that we can be,” Knicks star Jalen Brunson said after New York held off the Spurs 105-104 on Friday to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven Finals.
The Knicks are just the third team—after Michael Jordan’s 1993 Chicago Bulls and the 1995 Houston Rockets—to win the first two games of the Finals on the road, and both those teams went on to lift the trophy. But Brunson and the Knicks won’t allow themselves to celebrate too soon despite the frenzy their success has sparked in New York City. “Even with the series (the way) it is now, next game, mindset has to be 0-0 again,” Brunson said. “It’s just how it has to be. You can’t be comfortable. You can’t be satisfied with anything. Just got to continue to push forward.”
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The Knicks have won 13 straight playoff games—the second-longest post-season streak ever—to close in on their first championship since 1973. Plenty of vocal Knicks fans packed San Antonio’s Frost Bank Center for games one and two, and ticket prices for games three and four at Madison Square Garden have soared. Some 6,000 people showed up for a game two watch party outside Madison Square Garden, with New York authorities reporting that a police officer was assaulted and 26 people arrested outside the fabled arena as raucous celebrations got out of hand.
But if New Yorkers are already envisioning a title, the Knicks are keeping a laser focus on the upstart Spurs, led by 22-year-old French star Victor Wembanyama. The young Spurs’ inexperience has showed in games one and two, but with Wembanyama leading them, they amassed the second-best regular-season record in the league and eventually dispatched the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in seven games in the Western Conference finals. “Knowing them, there’s going to be another level,” Brunson said. “We have to be prepared and be ready to match it and play for 48 minutes.”
The Spurs, for their part, are conceding nothing. “It was going to take everything to win the series anyway,” San Antonio guard Stephon Castle said. “Putting ourselves in this type of predicament is going to be tough, but I don’t think it’s anything we can’t handle.”
© 2024 AFP
