Yesterday the meme at the top of this page was making the rounds of social media. It appears the gentleman formerly known as Robert Prevost, aka a darn accomplished 21st Century Chicago Cardinal (not the 20th century’s version Charley Tripper; Google him if you must), is an alumnus of Villanova University.
Well, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges and Jalen Brunson are also fellow Wildcats. And this week they’ve kinda experienced their own sort of anointing via the kind of experiences most fans could only ascribe to divine intervention. THE ATHLETIC’s resident Knick beat writer Fred Katz, who often has relegated his team to snarks and disbelief for errant game play, could only wax poetic:
Game 1 of the Knicks’ second-round series against the Boston Celtics… was (a) hideous experience: missed 3s, a squandered 20-point lead and enough grit to fill a Tom Thibodeau fever dream. And it concluded with (a) New York win…in overtime.
Two days after(wards). the Knicks reran the same episode against the Celtics: They fell down exactly 20 points on the road with a few minutes to go in the third quarter. They rushed back as the Celtics missed jumper after jumper on the way to 25-percent shooting from deep. And they deployed a tenacious Bridges to snatch the basketball away from an All-Star wing and seal the victory of a one-possession game.
Now, a team whose fortitude once came into question, one that went 0-8 against the Eastern Conference’s top two seeds during the regular season, has pulled off two historic comebacks against the defending champions.
These sorts of wins were not part of the Knicks’ identity heading into the postseason, but the playoffs will either expose your flaws or force you to evolve.
Meanwhile, the typically more religiously inclined Boston faithful are grasping at straws, or perhaps their beer steins, for answers, as CELTICS WIRE’s Justin Quinn reported this morning:
How do the Boston Celtics turn their series around against the New York Knicks? The Celtics now find themselves in a 0-2 hole vs. the Knicks in their 2025 NBA Eastern Conference Semifinals second round series currently underway, and will need to win four of the five remaining contests left in the East Semis series to advance to the 2025 NBA Eastern Conference Finals to face the winner of the concurrent Indiana Pacers – Cleveland Cavaliers East Semis series.
Is such an outcome realistic? Perhaps if Boston could get back to playing the way they played New York in the regular season — but will they be able to find their confidence (and more importantly, their long-distance shot) again?
Yes, these are NBA playoffs where road teams have ruled, in particular the Knicks, who won all three games in Detroit en route to eliminating the pesky Pistons in what was by far the closest Eastern Conference first round series. Brunson, of course, was a crucial contributor to those heroics, and the steadfast ability of Hart to play an elevated level of minutes allowed them to mount the kind of herculean comebacks they produced in Beantown. Coming back to Manhattan isn’t a guaranteed win.
Still, the level of support they will be returning to is already reaching levels of Biblical proportion, as FRONT OFFICE SPORTS’ Eric Fisher confirmed yesterday:
Madison Square Garden is poised for one of its most electric, and expensive, events in years with the Knicks’ playoff matchup Saturday against the Celtics.
That drama, along with the existing New York–Boston sports rivalry spanning multiple leagues and the Knicks seeking their first trip to the NBA conference finals in 25 years, has created a surge in ticket demand for Saturday.
Across several ticket-resale marketplaces, get-in prices for Game 3 are hovering around $700, before fees, while lower-level tickets in many instances are surpassing $2,000 each—a sum not dissimilar to the final pricing for Super Bowl LIX in February. The get-in figure is also more than double the $300 low-end cost for the initial second-round Knicks playoff home game against the Pacers last year.
Monday’s Game 4 and a May 16 Game 6, if it happens, have a similar dynamic, with get-in prices starting at around $600. All of these figures have risen by about half just since the start of the Knicks-Celtics series three days ago.
And with the Cleveland Cavaliers also down a surprising 0-2 having dropped their first two home games to the increasingly impressive Indiana Pacers, thereby calling their own playoff advancing into question, yet the Knicks owning the 2024-25 season series title against them averaging 124 points a game, that route to the promised land of the Finals–and let’s remember that last appearance occurred in a strike-shortened season where their regular season as an 8 seed was not all that exciting–all of a sudden seems a lot more possible than it did when this week started.
Especially when it looks like they may have at least the potential for a fan with some pretty high up connections.
Courage…