ESPN’s Mike Greenberg Talks Knicks, ‘This Was SportsCenter’ Pod & More w/Rich

Mike Greenberg woke up Tuesday and said the thing he had only said once before in a way he could remember: the Knicks are NBA champions. The ESPN "Get Up" host and lifelong Knicks fan joined Rich fresh off his morning set, and the conversation moved between two emotional poles, a title he wasn't sure how to process and a nostalgia project that turned his own career into a home movie.

On the Knicks, Greenberg was honest about being unmoored by it. "I don't know what to do," he told Rich. He grew up in a family that lived and died with the Knicks and the Jets, where names like Namath, DeBusschere, Bradley, Reed and Frazier "were gods." He watched Saturday's clincher alone in his apartment, kids asleep, and felt his building shake. "Who am I if my teams don't suck?" he said. "I don't know how to function in a world in which the Knicks have won the championship."

What pulled him through was the team itself. Greenberg argued this title is easy to embrace, and not only from a New York seat. "They're a collection of largely egoless or comparatively egoless players, almost all of whom had been cast away and given up on by other franchises, who came together and really truly played as a team," he said. "That's kind of what we all want in sports."

Rich brought the feeling back to the franchise's long-suffering greats, describing a photograph of Patrick Ewing holding the trophy beside Jalen Brunson, the kid he's known since Brunson was two. Greenberg matched it with a childhood detail that says everything about how deep this ran. His building didn't allow dogs, so he and his brother had hamsters, one named Bernard for Bernard King, one named Patrick for Patrick Ewing. He thought back to watching Marv Albert and Butch Beard call games on channel 9, to Hubie Brown's teams finally getting good, to John Starks dunking lefty over Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. "We've always had to celebrate something a little less than the ultimate prize," he said.

Greenberg also gave James Dolan credit for one thing, keeping former players in the fold. Seeing Ewing, Allan Houston and Walt Frazier woven into this run "created that bond for those of us who are old enough to remember all these generations of Knicks."

On the Spurs, Greenberg didn't hide a New York edge. There's "a very strong anti-Wemby feeling here," he said, and Victor Wembanyama became the arch-villain. He wouldn't defend walking off without shaking hands, but otherwise he likes his NBA stars testy. He thinks Wembanyama will be "ridiculously good" and that the trio of him, Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper will be tough to beat soon. His read on the series: Mike Brown outcoached Mitch Johnson, and a hobbled De'Aaron Fox, the guy San Antonio needed for late buckets, "proved to be a real detriment."

The visit was anchored to Rich's "This Was SportsCenter" project, the Friday nostalgia series, with a Greenberg episode part of the run. Greenberg called watching his own episode emotional, "30 years of my life pass before my eyes," and Rich praised coordinating producer Mike Hoskins by name. Greenberg laughed about his own evolving haircuts and sideburns "long after sideburns were cool." Rich, for his part, noted his own kids now wander into the kitchen quoting his first SportsCenter line: "Who am I and how did I get here?" The point of a nostalgia show, Rich said, is connection, and this one clearly connected.