Is Knicks Fan Rich More Excited or Nervous ahead of NBA Finals Game 3 vs the Spurs?

Excited or nervous? For a lifelong Knicks fan heading into Game 3 of the NBA Finals, Rich landed firmly on excited, and Game 2 was the reason why.

He set the scene from his couch. The Knicks were up double digits in the fourth quarter, and he was already feeling it. Then the Spurs decided not yet. They ripped off a massive run and took the lead, Victor Wembanyama drawing and-ones, the San Antonio crowd in turquoise going crazy. Jalen Brunson finally snapped the run to tie it, got the ball back with under 10 seconds, and missed the shot.

What happened next is why the Knicks are up 2-0. Wembanyama grabbed the rebound, looked toward the middle of the floor, and threw a pass meant for a teammate that Brunson read and stepped in front of. Brunson accepted the gimme turnover, drew a foul on Wembanyama, and went to the line, where he missed the free throw to keep it a one-point game with San Antonio holding the ball and seconds left. Rich figured De'Aaron Fox would take the last shot after a 20-point night, or maybe Dylan Harper, or Wembanyama bullying his way into the paint. Instead, as Rich put it from a Knicks fan's chair, Wembanyama settled for an 18-footer. No good. Knicks survive.

The history is staggering, and Rich rattled it off. This is the exact opposite of the 1999 Finals, when the Spurs took the first two in the Garden and closed it out in five. The Knicks are only the third team in Finals history to take a 2-0 lead on the road, and no team that has dropped its first two at home has ever climbed out of that hole to win it. New York has not lost since the first night of the NBA draft, which Rich attended in Pittsburgh. They have won 13 straight playoff games with a combined margin of 273 points. "I have never seen a Knicks team play like this," he said.

Across the way, the Spurs are treating this as a must-win. Coach Mitch Johnson talked about making sure the ball finds Wembanyama, whose handful of shot attempts in the loss was a number Johnson called not acceptable on this stage. Wembanyama himself sounded unbothered, telling reporters the key is acceptance and that this is what he is built for. Rich noted he even spent his Sunday off drawing a statue in Gramercy Park. Calm as he is, Rich doubts he has ever faced a crowd like the one waiting at Madison Square Garden.

That crowd is the whole point. Rich explained that the Knicks are the rare New York team almost everyone roots for, the shared love across Yankees and Mets fans, Giants and Jets fans alike. He and his brother Jeff sit on opposite sides of the Yankees-Mets divide and do not like each other's baseball teams, yet after Game 2 he called Jeff just to say, how about those Knicks.

The avatar for all of it is Brunson, the guy the Knicks landed after they could not buy a superstar, not Durant, not LeBron. A second-round pick playing with a chip he has never set down, Brunson is so private that he does not even want to be seen near the Larry O'Brien trophy until he can hold one, a detail Malika Andrews surfaced to his audible surprise. Asked what was underestimated about him in the draft, his answer was one word: "Everything." Rich could not get enough of it. Brunson is two wins from a chip, and Rich simply cannot wait.