NBA PLAYOFFS 2026 WRAP-UP

What a weird and entertaining NBA Play-offs we were treated to this year! I’m literally exhausted from it.

Of course, I had very many thoughts as the competitions went along. I tweeted many of them during the proceedings, so you can still read those there, @MajorCelebrity, because I have so much else to say that I’m repeating very few of them here.

First of all, I must congratulate the Knicks. Along with most of the rest of the world, I absolutely did not see their Championship coming. My two teams were the Cleveland Cavaliers, (because I love Donovan Mitchell so much,) and the Denver Nuggets, (because I admire them all, even though their coach is the image of Gollum!)

I have to admit that I did not root for the Knicks this postseason, at all. I have nothing against the team—it’s their uber-rude fans I can’t stand! I hate that many of them travel to different cities for the play-offs, which ruins everything for the other home teams and their fans. And some of their celebrities who cheer for the Knicks are too “extra.” And what the heck was creepy full-of-herself Taylor Swift doing there?! She’s not from New York, does not really live there, (she does own a place there, but that’s along with another seven or so abodes around the country, among which she divides her time,) and her boyfriend is a fan of the Cavs! So own could surmise that she showed up to a Finals game for her own aggrandizement.

Mr. X gets annoyed with me for not rooting the Knicks, even though I’m a New Yorker, but I choose my team each year based on their personnel. I like the guys on the Kinks, except for Jose Alvarado, but none of them get to my heart, except for Karl-Anthony Towns, in a bit of a way. My heart always breaks for him because he lost his beloved mother, along with at least six other relatives, to Covid. I cry just about every time I hear him speak.

And, I am happy for the Knicks on a few levels, especially because they deserved the victory. They really buckled down and came back several times for their wins. Some of their comebacks, most notably the one from twenty-nine points down to the Spurs, were truly amazing. They came back in every game of the Finals except the third, which is the one they lost to the Spurs. Their entire playoffs was one of the most impressive runs in history!

But I still don’t know how they did it. They were a very different team in the playoffs than they were during the regular season. The whole thing boggles my mind. The defending champs Oklahoma City Thunder were the best team in the NBA all season! They won sixty-four games, which is amazing! But then the up-and-coming, very young, second-place-in-the-West, (and in the entire league, actually,) San Antonio Spurs came up with sixty-two wins! That was also amazing. And the lowly Knicks were back in third place in the East, and sixth place overall, with only fifty-three wins! So no one, not even Spike Lee, expected this level of greatness from them.

Well, perhaps handsome former Villanova coach Jay Wright saw it coming for a few years. That’s because he coached now-Knicks Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and Mikal Bridges in college, and won two Championships (in 2016 and 2018) with a combo of them! (Josh Hart left for the NBA before the second victory.) So, I’m very happy for Jay, too—he taught his college men well!

Two last thoughts on these players. One is that Jalen Brunson wasn’t drafted until the second round, so that means that no one thought he’d become as good as he is. He just won MVP of the NBA Finals, for goodness sake! Not only that late number pick by the Dallas Mavericks, but it was done so that Jalen would be the back-up to star player Luka Dončić, and not be a starter himself! And then they traded Brunson to the Knicks. And then a few years later, the idiot in charge of these things for the Mavs, Nico Harrison, traded Luka away, too! (For the already-ineffective, always-injured, and in-the-twilight-of-his-ball-playing years Anthony Davis!!!) Boy, was that Dallas exec a jerk to get rid of them both! (He did finally get fired this year, thank goodness.)

The other thing is one that sort-of tickles me—Knicks player Jermey Sochan would have received a Championship even if the Spurs had won! Can you guess why? Ready? It’s because he was a Spur for the first half of the season before they waived him and he was picked-up by the Knicks. And he played exactly three minutes and eight seconds in the Finals. Good deal for him.

And now here are some of my musings on the rest of the play-offs:

This one is for the fans: How stupid do you have to be to have your baby be in the front row!!! And especially with no headphones to shield them from the noise! If a ball or player hits the baby, it can very possibly result in instant brain damage, if not death. If you can afford floor seats, you can afford a babysitter!!! Idiots. The league should protect the children if their self-absorbed parents won’t. They need to make a rule “No Babies In The Front Row!!!”

All the sideline reporters ask the stupidest, most pat questions.

In Game 4 of the Cleveland vs. Toronto series, Mr. X insisted that it could not be the halftime, (as opposed to after one quarter of the game,) because both teams’ scores were in the 30s, which is very low!

Mr. X asked for whom I’m rooting in the playoffs. My answer was, “Whatever team Donovan Mitchell is on is the one I root for.” And nothing has changed since then.

Something hit me in the middle of the first round—I’ve got to give the foreign-born players tons of credit for speaking English so well! Philadelphia 76er star Joel Embid especially—he gave one of the best, most thoughtful answers in Game 5 of the first round. Really.

Occasional color commentator PJ Carlissimo kept calling Donovan Mitchell “Dun”ovan! It’s “Don,” you idiot! Don’t you know the difference between “o” and “u” sounds???

At one point in an earlier play-off game, the Knicks were up fifty points with 5:15 to go in the 2nd!!! What was going on there???

Even though I like Knicks star Josh Hart, I feel that pro athletes should not be doing ads for alcohol! It sends an awful message to young people, who will think he looks cool drinking it, so they will want to emulate him. In reality, it’s definitely uncool! (On a side note, his three-year-old twin sons are adorable!!!)

At one point, Kenny Smith said, “The conversations he and I had last week…,” about Shaq and him. I love that he didn’t say the illiterate, “me and him,” as so many morons people do these days.

I was, (and still am!,) appalled by how rude the Mayor of San Antonio, Gina Ortiz Jones, was to Charles Barkley on Inside The NBA! He sometimes jokes around about the “big ole women” in that city, so when Ortiz appeared on their show as a guest, the first thing she said was, “I learned a long time ago you can’t teach courage, you can’t teach class, and Mr. Barkley reminds us of that.” How downright rude of her! (And what did courage have to do with anything?!) But Chuck handled it so well. Jones proved that she’s the one with no class.

Play-by-play guy Mike Breen said that the games are “broadcasted!” As a very long-time broadcaster, how does he not know the word is just “broadcast” with no added “ed”???”

I love ESPN’s sideline reporter Malika Andrews. Besides that she’s adorable and gives excellent reports, there is no one on earth, not even my own literate self, who enunciates as perfectly as she does!!! We never need the captions to know what she’s saying.

Now I’m moving on to the NBA Draft next week. At this point, there’s much drama and intrigue expected. And I’ve already begun watching every Yankees game that I can. And to that end, I’m going to keep an eye on the MLB Draft for the first time in…ever! And that’s because I recently became aware of Georgia Tech player, Vahn Lackey, who actually played all eight positions, (outside of pitcher,) in a game on March 10th! That’s unheard of. So now I’m rooting for him to go first. And, of course, Wimbledon starts in a week and a half.

So, in other words, there will still be plenty of opportunities for me to be hurt by sports other than basketball. Bite my tongue, but just calling it like I see it.