ESPN’s Vincent Goodwill Talks Spurs-Thunder, Knicks & More

Vincent Goodwill joined Suzy Shuster with a playoff chess match to break down, and he started with the move that matters most: what Victor Wembanyama has to do to force a game seven.

Mitch Johnson set the table by saying publicly that the Spurs need more from their 22-year-old star. Normally, Goodwill noted, you grant a fatigued young player some grace, especially in his first playoff run. Johnson did not. To Goodwill, that was a message about energy and desire, not just shot selection. Wembanyama cannot settle for 30-foot threes he can launch over anyone; he has to plant himself at the rim, where, as Goodwill put it, the only one who can touch the ball up there is God. The numbers explain the toll. Wembanyama averaged around 29 minutes a game in the regular season and is up to 38 in this series, more consecutive basketball than he has ever played. At this stage, Goodwill said, everyone is tired and it becomes a battle of wills, which is why he wants Wembanyama setting the tone on defense first. The offense will come.

When Suzy compared Johnson's method to Phil Jackson using the media to reach Shaq and Kobe, Goodwill was fascinated. Coaches usually protect a struggling player; Johnson, a coach just a year or two into the job, instead held his star publicly accountable the way Chuck Daly and Pat Riley once did. Asked about the officiating, Goodwill noted Suzy was "leading the witness," then conceded there were questionable moments, a denied challenge that drew a technical and a goaltend Oklahoma City got away with. His larger point was that champions earn latitude. The Thunder have established a style over three years, and the newer Spurs simply do not get the same grace yet, though it tends to even out over seven games.

So is the series effectively over? Goodwill leaned that way, and surprisingly, he started with SGA. He was not impressed by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's seven-of-19 night, well below the 52 or 53 percent he usually shoots, and called this an inefficient playoff overall for the MVP. With the Knicks resting, getting their manicures and pedicures, Goodwill said Oklahoma City needs to close this out rather than grind to a game seven that would shrink its Finals rest to maybe three days. No team has repeated since the 2017-18 Warriors of Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry, and these Thunder are not that, so they need everything in their favor, starting with an MVP-level game from SGA. Goodwill suspects the deciding moment already came in game five, when San Antonio made a run, could not get within five or six, and OKC kept answering. The Thunder, he said, simply have more answers, and the young Spurs may just be tired. He would not be shocked by a game seven, but he expects the first big scar to come at home.

Then came the Knicks, and whether their path has been too easy. Goodwill saw it both ways. New York is the only three seed since the bracket expanded in 1984 to reach the Finals without beating a one or two seed, which is not their fault, and the Cavaliers, in his words, absolutely quit after game one. The danger is sticker shock. The Knicks have destroyed Philadelphia and Cleveland, but they have not faced anyone at the altitude the rested West teams have been trading blows at, and that could bite early.

On Brunson's place in Knicks history, Goodwill pushed back on the idea of a crowded Mount Rushmore. New York has had splotches of greatness, the Frazier and Willis Reed teams that won titles, the Ewing era, with Patrick Ewing probably the greatest Knick ever despite no ring. If Brunson wins a title, Goodwill said, echoing Mike Greenberg, he becomes Joe Namath, a man who never pays for a meal in New York again and slides into that top-four conversation. He explained Brunson through the men around him, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, the offensive line protecting a quarterback who is not a perfect superstar but is built for New York's pressure, godfather Leon Rose and father Rick Brunson notwithstanding.

Would Goodwill be surprised if the Knicks won it all? Not anymore. With how they are playing, he said, their internal expectation should be a championship, no matter who survives the West.