“UNBELIEVABLE!!!” – Knicks Fan Rich on New York’s Stunning 4th-Quarter Comeback vs the Cavs

Rich opened the show with the math that should not have produced a Knicks win. With 7:50 left in the fourth quarter, the Cleveland Cavaliers led 93 to 71. ESPN's win probability gave Cleveland 99.9%. Anthony Edwards, Rich joked, would have already gone over and shaken hands with the Cavs the way the Wolves did in their famous concession moment.

The Knicks did not pull their starters. Jalen Brunson did not stop.

What followed was a 44-11 Knicks run for the rest of the game, including overtime. Brunson at one point hit five straight field goals to cut the lead from a blowout to single digits. He went 16-of-38 from the field, with 16 of his 38 in the fourth quarter alone. Mike Breen, on the call, started referring to it as the Brunson Burner.

"Hero ball returned," Rich said. "He put on a cape, and is exactly why he's one of the greatest Knicks of all time."

The personal layer came next. Rich confessed he had given up on the franchise for years during James Dolan's worst stretches. He used the metric that gives the moment its weight.

"I was more out than Charles Oakley," Rich said.

Brunson, in Rich's accounting, is the player who pulled him back. He had been the guy the franchise had been chasing for years, when every veteran star was passing on Dolan's money. Then he showed up, and stuck.

The supporting cast did just enough. Mikal Bridges hit big shots. Landry Shamet hit big shots. OG Anunoby, back from injury, contributed drives. Shamet, after one of his late threes, even pointed up to the rafters in the direction of Reggie Miller's old choke sign, the one Miller had aimed at the Knicks during last year's collapse against Tyrese Haliburton.

The Cavs side of the box score was the real story. Donovan Mitchell and James Harden combined to go 1-for-10 from the field, 0-for-5 from three, with three total points and two turnovers during the Knicks' 44-11 run. The Cavaliers shot 29.4% as a team in the fourth quarter. They went 0-for-7 in overtime.

The conversation Rich kept circling back to was the Harden defensive assignment. Mike Brown said after the game that Harden's defensive matchup was the target.

"There is no secret, we were attacking Harden," Brown said.

The All NBA podcast tracked it. Harden was isolated nine times in the fourth quarter. He was the screen defender on 21 on-ball picks in the fourth quarter and overtime. The Knicks averaged nearly two points per possession when those screens cleared. Brunson went 7-of-11 when Harden was the primary defender. He went 8-of-18 against everyone else.

Brown then revealed a piece of his coaching past. When Brown was on the Warriors staff, the team used to count Harden's dribbles in playoff series, charting how many times per game he handled the ball as a way of wearing him down mentally and physically over a series.

"I don't know," Brown said with a smile. "I mean, we did it. He's always like, hey, they try to do it on Jaylen. And we feel like he's got the guy to kind of, you know, spoon it back in their direction."

Harden's postgame answer was the line that will live online for a while.

"Anybody on the island is going to be difficult," Harden said. "We got to do a better job of making sure he sees bodies."

Translation, the room concluded, was simple. Brunson made some tough ones. The cast piled on. Maybe, one of them suggested, Harden should not have been the one guarding him.

"Are we talking James Harden or the entire Cavs?" Chris asked.

Donovan Mitchell, asked what his message to the team is for Game 2, took the high road and owned the night.

"We lost. We blew it," Mitchell said.

The cast wanted to call the series. Rich, for once, would not.

"No chance," he said. "The Cavs were down 0-2 to 60-win Detroit. The Knicks aren't, in my estimation, as well as they're playing, that good to just wrap it up after one game."

For one night, though, Rich was allowed to enjoy it.