Why Heat Fan/NBA Conspiracy Theorist Eric Andre is Rooting for the Knicks

Eric Andre came on the show to promote Little Brother, his Netflix film with John Cena, Michelle Monaghan, and Christopher Meloni streaming June 26th. He left having delivered a full conspiracy theory about the NBA Finals.

It started with a grievance about the officiating. Andre had seen the same numbers everyone else had, and he did not like them. The Spurs shot 32 free throws. The Knicks shot 22. The second half was worse: 24 trips to the line for San Antonio, eight for New York.

"That's suspicious to me," Andre said.

Rich asked him to go there. What did he mean by suspicious? Andre was happy to oblige. In basketball, he explained, a referee can call a foul on every single play. The players are gracefully touching each other constantly, trying to stop each other from scoring, and a whistle is always available. So when the disparity gets that lopsided, he sees a hand on the scale.

His theory runs all the way to the top. "I just feel like the commissioner calls the refs," Andre said, before doing the voice. "This is what I'm saying. And I won't be stopped." The refs, in his telling, simply answer, "You got it, boss." The motive is money. The league makes more on a seven-game series than a four-game sweep, and in Andre's mind that means it is not in the NBA's interest to watch the Knicks roll.

He was careful to say he was not accusing any particular team. Just the entire National Basketball Association. And he worried the bit might cost him. "I may never be invited back to basketball games," he said, which is a different thing from never being invited back to the show. Rich assured him the latter was safe.

The strange part is that Andre, a self-described Miami Heat fan, has come around on New York anyway. "I've never rooted for the Knicks until now," he said. "You have to root for this team."

What does he like about them? Not the polish. "They don't look like a winning team," he said, crediting them with a Bad News Bears quality, a bunch of doughy guys who look like they play dominoes outside a barber shop. Then the athleticism, the chemistry, and the bench turn out to be unbelievable. The bench, he stressed, not even the main group.

Then came the history, by way of some loose chronology. The Knicks, Andre insisted, had not won since the steam engine was invented. He reached for the Tesla coil too, which he placed at 1891, before conceding the steam engine was the older reference he actually wanted. Hyperbole, he admitted. Rich credited him with excellent use of it.

Andre's deepest cut was about Madison Square Garden itself. When the Knicks honor a player from the last championship team, he said, they wheel out a 99-year-old man who looks like Sidney Poitier, the crowd squints, and someone explains he is from the last title squad before the footage rolls in black and white like a silent film.

His standard for what counts as a flagrant foul was equally generous. A real flagrant, in the Andre handbook, is Ron Artest going into the stands. Big chops. Elbows. Not a foot sliding under a jump shooter, a rule he is convinced nobody actually knows, left over from when the game was played at the YMCA with a wicker basket and a ladder.

By the end, the math still bothered him. The movie comes out June 26th. The conspiracy is ongoing.