Chris Webber Talks Spurs-Knicks NBA Finals Game 4 with Rich

Chris Webber came on the program a basketball purist still buzzing, and he did not hide which way the buzz cut. He admires the Knicks. He could not believe the Spurs.

"That was just probably the dumbest game and I like to say most arrogant game," Webber told Rich, putting San Antonio's Game 4 collapse on the record before anyone asked him to soften it. He nodded at Charles Barkley calling it dumb basketball, but the word he kept returning to was arrogant, and Rich pushed him to defend it.

So he did. Webber drew a line between the good kind of arrogance and the kind that loses you a Finals game. Forgetting your last mistake and trusting your next shot is positive, he said, the way a pitcher forgets the home run he just gave up. But when there is time, space, and game left, "you're supposed to not start milking the clock, but play deliberate, thoughtful basketball." The Spurs did the opposite. They came down and shot eight threes, took them early in the shot clock, settled for "Harden-like step backs and bad shots." A Hall of Fame coach texted Webber mid-game: "They're not playing against cones today." For a team with so many decision-makers on the floor, Webber called it unforgivable. Nobody said let's get a good shot. Nobody said go inside to the tallest player on the floor. "It just shows that there needs to be some common sense along with the wonderful skill that's in this game."

That mistake, Webber argued, will follow San Antonio. He thinks it resets the narrative in the West. Players notice this, he said, and players talk. "Teams in the West are going to look at this team differently." Guards will attack their guards differently. He even thinks it forces a rethink of "trading the big fella from OKC," and that Oklahoma City is "kicking themselves in the butt," because that is exactly the spot where a Shai Gilgeous-Alexander earns a foul, gets to the line, gets a layup. Rich noted the staggering math, a 46-point swing between halves, and asked if Sam Presti and the Nuggets and Lakers and Timberwolves really view the Spurs differently now. Webber's answer: the players do, and reputation is built on what you keep doing.

Then he gave the Knicks their due, and he gave it generously. Down 29 at halftime, with Wu-Tang performing and Method Man calling Knicks in five, New York refused to feel sorry for itself or look ahead to Game 5. "The heart that it took to come back in that game is incredible." Webber credited the Jose Alvarado insertion for unlocking ball movement, but he kept circling back to why it worked. San Antonio's lazy shot selection put zero pressure on New York's defense, which let the Knicks get out and run, get the crowd loud, get to the free-throw line, get the pace exactly where they wanted it. They stayed focused. They moved the ball. "It wasn't just one guy dribbling around." That momentum carried them to the final possession and OG Anunoby's tip-in, which Webber, watching how OG attacked the rim all night, said surprised no one.

He closed on Jalen Brunson, a player he has loved since playing with Brunson's father. "I knew he was a dog and to me that's the number one trait you have to have." Brunson is not a specialist, Webber said, he is a bucket getter, and he hoped a younger generation raised on private trainers and cones was watching. The hardest thing to stop in basketball, he said, is a guy who can take two dribbles and pull up, pump fake, get to the hole, take contact, and still shoot the three. The cones, Webber noted, never post up.