2000-Zero-Zero

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June 2, 2026
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This is it: it’s time for us to go to the wire. With one team having punched its ticket to the championship round over a week ago, and the other having had to punch its way through the widely-regarded toughest matchup in the league, the NBA Finals are finally set. For the first time since 2014, the San Antonio Spurs are returning to what’s become familiar ground since 1999.

At the same time, for these Spurs as well as the rest of the NBA, it is new territory because, for the eighth time in the last eight seasons, there will be a non-repeat NBA champion. None of the San Antonio players has even won a playoff series as a member of this franchise before this season. Parity being Adam Silver’s singular objective for the first decade of his stewardship of basketball bodes well for the league’s shift into international markets, at least as a roadmap. All anyone needs is a roadmap.

If Victor Wembanyama has anything to do with it, though, that tide may soon turn. Has he arrived ahead of schedule, or perhaps have his teammates? Is San Antonio going to auger in a new period of parity before it had a chance to launch? The short answer: not if Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks have anything to say about it in the next three weeks.

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The New York Knicks Are Going To The NBA Finals

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May 26, 2026
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The duality and imminent reality afoot is this: I can’t look at anybody and tell them that I didn’t think this was going to happen. I did; I wrote as much in October. This is the team, and this is their time.

This is it: the New York Knicks are going to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. On the other side of the table, now that we’re allowed to discuss the surreality we are all about to experience, remains a best-of-three series between increasingly battered squads, both of whom are playing some of the best basketball mere mortals have ever seen. 

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The Gravel Beneath You And The Limbs Above

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May 19, 2026
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AP/Tony Gutierrez

On the same night as the cocaine-parachute-helicopter experience that is overtime playoff hockey, a Game 7 no less, the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder began their long-anticipated Western Conference Finals series in tantamount fashion. On the same night, even, when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was celebrating his second consecutive NBA MVP, Victor Wembanyama showed why his bronze finish this year might be the lowest he turns in for the next decade, give or take.

Despite Chet Holmgren’s stunning block at the end of regulation on Victor, the latter had much of the final rire. Wemby finished with 41 points, 23 rebounds, three blocks, three assists and a game-high +16 in San Antonio’s 122-115 win in double-OT. Previously undefeated in the playoffs, the Thunder have run into a familiar pain, with no ideal salve in immediate sight.

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Straightening Up

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May 12, 2026
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In scoring 39 points in the second half of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ 112-103 Game 4 victory over the Detroit Pistons, Donovan Mitchell matched an NBA playoff record that he now shares with a Golden State Warrior: nope, it is not Wardell in this case. Sleepy Floyd, a Gastonia native who was once “misled” into a diplomatic trip to the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea with Dennis Rodman, posted the same number against the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers in the 1987 West Semis.

Sticking on the floor through the final buzzer just in case, Mitchell finished with 43 points after a down first half in which Detroit had him swimming around defenders. When Cleveland went on a 24-0 run splitting the halves, Don poured in 15, shifting into the playoff mode to which we have grown accustomed between Salt Lake and here.

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Dust My Broom

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May 10, 2026
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Sitting at a place around the corner early Sunday afternoon, I openly pondered whether I had been alive when the New York Knicks last swept a series. In a knowing nod to my predilection for superstition, the other party replied, “You shouldn’t have said that.” 

As it turns out, I was – a conference semis sweep over, of all teams, the Atlanta Hawks in 1999 –  but the feeling that accompanied the Knicks’ 144-114 Game 4 win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday is not at all what it feels like to be a Knicks fan generally. The Knicks don’t sweep series; they go down 2-1, like they did in the first round against those very Hawks, before making every subsequent brush with disaster the most heart-stopping affair possible. The Knicks play (and, recently anyway, win) close games. They don’t play close series.

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Veins Of What

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May 9, 2026
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“I am who I am. He is who he is, but that’s what makes us so dynamic. You can choose.” – Donovan Mitchell, on James Harden

Don is Jim’s teammate, so he might know better. Despite Kendrick Perkins’ assertions, James Harden’s veins are not flowing on Kool-Aid. With two minutes left down the stretch, and the Cleveland Cavaliers hanging on to anything like a possibility of what if, Harden drilled three shots. The Cavs nervously closed out of necessity over the Detroit Pistons, 116-109, to draw 2-1 overall.

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Morsels

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May 9, 2026
Basketball, NBA, Sports
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For the second time in three tries since, the Denver Nuggets won more games in the regular season than in the year they won the NBA championship. Also for the second time in three tries since that very same time, the Denver Nuggets lost in the playoffs to an empowered Minnesota Timberwolves team. 

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Game: A Recap

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May 1, 2026
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Since 1972, the same year in which The Omni opened in Atlanta, the taking (that is, the killing, capturing, selling, trading and/or transport) of protected migratory bird species without prior authorization by the Department of the Interior is prohibited under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, as amended via an agreement with Japan in 1972. First violation fines may reach $100k, maybe a year in prison if it suits you. 

Rather than leaving it to a federal approval that hmm might never arrive, the New York Knicks engaged in some taking (that is, killing, capturing, selling, trading and/or transport) of some old avian foes. While hawks are a protected species, the Atlanta Hawks knew no protection from OG Anunoby, who led the Knicks to an NBA playoff record 47-point halftime lead and, ultimately, a 140-89 series-clinching victory over the charred fowl.

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Prelude, 2026

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April 17, 2026
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On Tuesday night, the NBA put forth the best opening night of the play-in era by a considerable margin. Opening proceedings, the Miami Heat met the Charlotte Hornets, the former with its ostensibly altruistic #HeatCulture, the latter with a singularly special do-everything point guard who should possibly only drive and also never drive again. 

To the former: a last-second layup from LaMelo Ball extinguished the Heat, setting up a date with fellow division rivals the Orlando Magic, themselves at a team crossroads going into the summer. Charlotte enters ablaze. Well, the thing with Bam, whatever happened there–

In the late game, Jrue Holiday reminded you that he’s won NBA championships, plural, in past lives, delivering the Portland Trail Blazers to a land that nobody promised: the 7-seed, to face off against the San Antonio Spurs. Frustratingly, and despite their best efforts, the Phoenix Suns remain in the present. Courtesy of the Wednesday game, Phoenix now has the opportunity to face the Golden State Warriors, fresh off a deconstruction of Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Standing two games away from us, finally, are the NBA playoffs. Breathe in; exhale.

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Save Tomorrow For Tomorrow

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March 5, 2026
America, Basketball, NBA
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Did the Charlotte Hornets just beat the Boston Celtics so mercilessly on their own parquet that Jayson Tatum is rushing back from injury? If he shows his mug on Friday against the Dallas Mavericks – extremely unnecessarily given all of the smoke AND fire surrounding Achilles injuries and rushing back from them, paging Kevin Durant – then we’ll know: the Hornets let Boston know they are here.

Currently riding a six-game winning streak, each of which have been by 15 or more points[1], the Hornets are the NBA’s hottest team. They’ve also won ten straight on the road, a franchise record. In his second season at the helm, head coach Charles Lee has a healthy roster and a cohesive vision. So far, the players are following suit, and it is coming together. No team has been better in 2026 than the Charlotte Hornets.

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