It's the Mike Francesa podcast on the Bet Rivers Network.

Hello, good, everybody, and welcome to the Mike Francesa podcast, part of the Bet Rivers Network.

We've got a lot to get to today, including some NFL stuff, big NFL stuff, which we'll get to on the back end.

Obviously, the storyline, and it will become a craze here in the next two weeks, is the NBA finals.

And I wanted to get Brian on because I was on his show with Jones on Saturday to get Eiler and Jones show on NBA radio.

And he was right.

He was all over the spurs.

I thought that Thunder would find a way at home to shoot the, you know, get a hit enough

threes to win the game. They didn't. I think the Thunder would have been a tougher

matchup for the Knicks and the Spurs for a couple of reasons, which we'll get to. But I

thought he'd be a good analyst to talk to about the finals because I got a feeling he likes

the Spurs. And he did pick them.

So you were right about him number one.

So congrats for that.

Number two, what's your opening thoughts on a series where clearly Spurs who are very, very young.

It doesn't mean young teams can't win because teams with big superstars

who are young have won before. Now, they're two to one favorites. They have the extra game at home.

Knicks are playing historic basketball against weak competition. What's your thoughts on the

finals? What's your first big picture thoughts on the finals? Okay. So, you know, Mike, I drilled down on matchups. I heard you say this yesterday, and you're 100% right. It's all about matchups. It's all about how you match up in certain spots. And if you look at what I think undid the thunder, and I think it's an important element when you're going to talk about what the Knicks need to do in this series to win it. It was the fact that they just live seven games where their best player,

the best player in the sport, the two-time MVP in last year's finals MVP, had to live with

Victor Wenbignama in his shadow for all the spots he wanted to get to. You look at how they

defended Wenbinyama, how to defend theade Gildes Alexander, and he was outstanding, I thought, in game seven. It was great. Right, but part of why he was outstanding, Mike, is he was hitting shots and spots. He doesn't normally hit shots from. And making tough shots, but, you know, they needed a weak side score and they didn't have one. Plus, Holmgram gave them, which I talked about with you that day, I thought was key to the game. Yep. They got a bad shooting game from Caruso in Game 70 played miserably. And they got nothing at a homegram who is the goat of the whole year for the thunder because he came up. I know they have a rivalry here and Wembe. I know what Wemby is, but Hongrum shrank to nothing in this series. Passing on shots in the second half. No shots in the, you're an all-star. You take no shots in game seven in the second half when the two other scorers options are out of the game?

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