ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
It's time now to talk basketball. The New York Knicks have made more big comebacks this post-season than any NBA team in almost 30 years, but they'll need their biggest comeback yet to keep their championship hopes alive. They are down 3 games to 1 to the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals, and across the bracket is another series with a 3-1 lead. NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan has been following this. Hey, Becky.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Hey there.
SHAPIRO: I think if the game were just about celebrities on the sidelines, the Knicks would be winning, right?
SULLIVAN: (Laughter).
SHAPIRO: Timothee Chalamet, Spike Lee, Ben Stiller - they were all at last night's game.
SULLIVAN: Yeah. But unfortunately, I must say, for the Knicks, the Pacers are winning the actual game (laughter). So they came - you know, really, this started right away. The Pacers came out and kind of seized the confidence away from the Knicks with this, like, devastating Game 1 comeback overtime win - and devastating for the Knicks, but incredible for the Pacers. And it gave us this - I think what is the most iconic moment we've seen yet in this whole year's NBA playoffs, when the Pacers' star point guard, Tyrese Haliburton, made this choke motion that was a reference to when Pacers star Reggie Miller made that motion back to Spike Lee all those years ago, during the Patrick Ewing Knicks years - 1994. Game 1 did feel a little premature for that...
(LAUGHTER)
SULLIVAN: ...I thought, but the Knicks seemingly sort of psychologically have not recovered from that loss. They are now, as you say, down 3 games to 1 with a series on the line tomorrow night in New York.
SHAPIRO: Is it a surprise that the Pacers are this good?
SULLIVAN: I think not. I think they really had come on strong over the second half of the season, and so I think a lot of people were expecting this to be competitive. And although it is a 3-game to 1 lead - let me put it a different way. Over the four games of this series so far, the Pacers have scored 482 points, the Knicks have scored 471 points. It's a difference of only 11 points.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
SULLIVAN: So a very closely matched series, and a lot of these games have really not been decided - all of them, in fact - until really the final minute or two. Like, I keep thinking, I keep watching - OK, the Pacers have finally put those guys away. That shot was the dagger. And then the Knicks hit a couple incredible shots, and you're like, OK, I guess they're still in it. And it just happens over and over and over again. And so I think, even for the guys on the court, they're experiencing it this way. So you had the Pacers' head coach Rick Carlisle talking about it like this after yesterday's game.
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RICK CARLISLE: Some of the shot-making in this series has been really beyond belief. These guys do amazing things. So when you can get a stop and a rebound, it's - it almost feels like an anomaly sometimes.
SULLIVAN: So, you know, could have easily a couple of these games' shots bounced a different way. Maybe it's the Knicks with the series advantage here. But unfortunately for them, in NBA playoff history, teams that are up 3 games to 1 have gone on to win that series more than 95% of the time. So for the Knicks to pull it off at this point, it would be truly historic.
SHAPIRO: All right, let's talk about the Western Conference Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder...
SULLIVAN: Yep.
SHAPIRO: ...And Minnesota Timberwolves. What's going on there?
SULLIVAN: Well - so we talked about sort of the points - the overall points of that series.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
SULLIVAN: This one is actually even closer by the points. The last one, that was 11-point difference. This is only a one-point difference over four games, but the games just haven't felt as close. So Monday night's was tight, but the other three games seems to have easily been won by one team or the other, I think.
SHAPIRO: So what's been the difference for the Thunder?
SULLIVAN: Well, I think they just have the best player on the floor. His name is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. We've talked about him before, but if that's an unfamiliar name to listeners, I think now is your chance to commit it to memory, or at least his initials - SGA. He's 26 years old. His sort of NBA origin story is that he was part of this blockbuster trade with the LA Clippers a few years back. And as the years have gone on since then, Gilgeous-Alexander has just gotten better and better and better, and it's become more and more clear every day just how lopsided, really, that trade ended up being in the Oklahoma City Thunder's favor. This was his best season yet. He led the league in scoring. He was just named the NBA's most valuable player. And the Thunder, to their credit, have built this stellar team around him. And so we have Game 5 tonight in Oklahoma, so that series could be wrapped up before all too long.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Becky Sullivan, thank you.
SULLIVAN: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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