Moments after the buzzer sounded on Game 7 of the Western Conference finals, Victor Wembanyama couldn’t hold back tears and it was very telling to Josh Hart.
He had just led the Spurs past the reigning champion Thunder, and the young San Antonio team celebrated profusely — almost as if they had just won the NBA title.
And that’s when Hart knew the Spurs made a critical mistake ahead of their Finals clash with the Knicks.
“Everyone’s talking to them about, ‘Yo, they’ve got to beat OKC. OKC’s going to repeat,’” Hart said Friday during a live “The Roommates Show” episode with teammate Jalen Brunson at MSG. “They beat OKC. For a young team, I feel like that was the mountaintop for them.
“That’s when I looked at (Brunson) and I was like, ‘You see that reaction? Because like they think they’re going to win it. They think it’s over.’”
As every Knicks fan knows, the Finals were anything but over.
The experienced and underdog Knicks ultimately bested the Spurs in five games, rallying from double-digit deficits in all four games of their wins.
Perhaps the veteran poise ultimately mattered, with the Knicks excelling in crunch time — particularly in the record 29-point comeback in Game 4.
But, as Hart pointed out, the Knicks had a vastly different mentality than the Spurs after securing their first Finals bid in 27 years by sweeping the Cavaliers.
“You look at our reaction after we beat Cleveland it was tough to celebrate because we were like, ‘We got four more.’ Obviously winning the Eastern Conference is an amazing accomplishment, but we all looked at this like this is just a step. This isn’t the destination. This is just a step.
“The reaction after Game 4 in Cleveland like showed that.”
The Knicks ultimately kept that businesslike approach throughout the series, not getting ahead of themselves as they inched closer and closer to the franchise’s first title in 53 years.
When they finally did clinch the championships last Saturday night in San Antonio, that’s when they finally let all the emotions pour out.
Hart’s celebrations continued through Thursday’s parade, with the wing celebrating wildly with the fans and even firing off a rather raunchy tweet about his wife.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
