ESPN’s Tim Legler Talks Spurs-Knicks NBA Finals with Rich

Tim Legler joined Rich live from the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, where he is calling the NBA Finals alongside Richard Jefferson and Mike Breen, ahead of a Game 5 with the series shifting on a stunning Game 4 finish. Legler admitted that even he had mentally penciled in a 2-2 series sitting in San Antonio, with neither team having won a home game, before everything flipped upside down.

Much of the conversation centered on De'Aaron Fox, who Legler said had been taking it nonstop for 48 hours over his late-game decision. On the play that swung the game, Legler argued the right move was to veer off, take the foul, eat clock, and go to the line to put his team up three, but Fox instead trusted his speed to get a hand on the ball and beat the trailer to the rim. The best and only thing Fox can do now, Legler said, is show up in a big way on Saturday.

Rich pressed Legler on the second-half collapse that Charles Barkley called "dumb" and Chris Webber called an "arrogant" game plan. Legler resisted both labels, instead framing it as a math problem San Antonio failed to read. After a historic 14-three first half, the Spurs kept hoisting quick threes well past the point where time and score demanded balance, getting their guards back in the paint and using Victor Wembanyama as a threat at the rim. By the time they tried to adjust, it was too late.

Legler pinpointed the turn at roughly the seven or eight minute mark of the fourth quarter, when an OG Anunoby three cut it to 11. That was the moment, he said, when the Knicks started to believe they could pull it off and the Spurs began to play with uncertainty they had not shown all night, with the crowd swelling behind New York.

On officiating, Legler gave a measured take rather than a clean verdict. He did not like the early bump call on Karl-Anthony Towns on a Fox drive, calling it a tone-setter, and felt the quick second foul was wrong because the initial clamp had released by the time Towns went up while Wembanyama kept selling it. Two early fouls, Legler explained, sap a big man's aggressiveness as a driver and a screener, the same thing that happened to Bridges a game earlier. He noted the Knicks still shot eight more free throws despite calls going against them early, and acknowledged the three officials are trying to maintain consistency across a series even when subjectivity creeps in.

None of it ultimately mattered, Legler said, because of the finish. He predicted that tip-in will open the NBA Finals broadcast 50 years from now, an iconic moment for the franchise and the market, especially if the Knicks close it out. With every game going down to the wire, he cautioned that San Antonio could still win three straight. Rich closed by ribbing Legler about cutting down NIT nets for LaSalle in the '80s, which Legler corrected was at the Meadowlands, the biggest basketball moment in that building's history, before hustling off so as not to keep Mike Breen waiting.