Stephen A. is ON THE RECORD: Golden State Warriors can WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP 🏆 | First Take

Stephen A. is ON THE RECORD: Golden State Warriors can WIN THE CHAMPIONSHIP 🏆 | First Take

The Thunder took game one personally and came out in game two on fire. They scored a playoff record 87 points in the first half and tied up the series with a dominating win over the Nuggets 149 to 106. Stephen A, what was your biggest takeaway from this game? Well, uh, clearly clearly the Denver Nuggets did not show up. I mean, what an atrocity to give up damn near 90 points in the first half. I mean, they clearly had no interest in playing game two. They came and got what they wanted in game one and they took game two off because there’s no team in history that has been that atrocious defensively in a half that I can recall. Having said that, this is a team as great as Joic is, as great as Jamal Murray can be in the postseason. I cannot stop giving love to Russell Westbrook because I know that brother with that fire in his belly is going to have these brothers ready to fight. They will not resemble this team in game three. And Shay Gil just Alexander is just so special. He’s so smooth. He’s just he’s he’s something to behold, no doubt. And he’ll be rightfully crowned MVP uh in the next couple of weeks or so. He is special. But this is going to be uh that that last night was not indicative of how this series will go. The games will be tighter, far more competitive than what we saw last night. What I saw is a different level of physicality. I saw Oklahoma City come out and get on Denver ass like cheap toilet paper. That’s what I saw. I saw the physicality from Isel Hardenstein and Chad Homegr on Joic. I saw the other Jaylen Williams coming in off the bench mixing it up down there in the trenches causing havoc. I saw active hands activity deflections getting out in transition. That is going to travel. They know the worst thing that happened for the Denver Nuggets was how they won game one. the that left for sour taste and OKC mouth. They’re going to that defense, that tenacity, that leadership by Shay is going to carry over into Denver. The two games in Denver are enormous. Obviously, um last year the Thunder were the higher seed. They went to Dallas and Luca the the the best what ended up being the best player in the in the series ended up getting control. Does Joic get control or do the Thunder maintain it? To me, it’ll define this uh this year for the Thunder how they handle this next two games. Would it be a disappointment if Anthony Edwards doesn’t win the next three games with Steph Curry sidelined? Absolutely. A major disappointment. Not just the next three games, but he should take control and win this series. There’s nowhere in hell Anthony Edwards should not be the best player in this series with Steph Curry being out. There’s nowhere in hell that an Anthony Edwards should allow Jimmy Butler to come in and outplay him. This is not a knock on Jimmy Butler, but we’re talking about a Jimmy that’s 36 years of age. I believe it is. Jimmy Butler still got a lot left in the tank, but he’s not Anthony Edwards. and the pieces around him right now without without Golden State uh having Steph Curry are better pieces. Julius Randall, Nas Reed, Rudy, Mike Connley, like you have a golden opportunity to get back to where you were last year. Hell, I don’t just see it. Your coach see it as well. Your coach called you out, Coach Finch after game one called Anthony El was out, which I love, by the way, because he is the heart and soul of this team. He does make this team go. They feed off of his energy. He does give them swag. And so when you look at Anthony Elvis’s history, Joic, Kevin Durant, LeBron, Luca, now you got a Golden State without Steph, you should be the best player and you should definitely win this series. Lead your team to win this series, advancing to the Western Conference. Well, let’s not think about the series for a second, Perk. Let’s just think about the next three games because that’s what we’re working on based off of the diagnosis that we received that Steph Curry’s got a grade one sprain and as a result he’s going to miss the next three games. So, chances are whenever he returns the series still, excuse me, won’t be over. Okay, here’s what I would tell you. I’m not going to go as far as saying that he needs to win all three games. He definitely needs to win two of them. There’s no excuse for him to lose two of three or all three games in this series against the Golden State Warriors. But it’s one of those scenarios where we’re talking about Jimmy Buckets. We’re talking about a four-time champion in Draymond Green who let’s pause for a second. This is the brother that opened his mouth, said we’re going to win the championship, and then in the biggest games in the playoffs, this brother has shown up. And I religiously stated that if the Draymond Green that had showed up that showed up in game seven of the 20 uh of the 2016 NBA Finals when LeBron James was given that stimulus package by the league in terms of get Draymond suspended for that game five and then Bogurt and Eagle Dollar get hurt and then obviously they’re compromised for the rest of the series. If y’all remember Draymond dropped like damn near I think about 30 that game and hit like seven three-pointers. If Draymond Green shows up and is hitting open perimeter shots, I want to be on the record that the Golden State Warriors could win the championship. They could actually win the championship if that brother’s hitting open threes because people leave him open. And if you leave him open and he’s drilling those shots, the Golden State Warriors are a different threat entirely. Having said that, because of how he has stepped up, because of what we know Buckets can do, because of the way Buddy Heield has looked like the reincarnation of Klay Thompson for crying out loud, it is not beyond the pale that the Golden State Warriors can win another game. And in the event that Steph Curry comes back after game four that the series is tied 2-2, okay? Or even if, you know, Minnesota’s up 3-2 after five games, I think we’ll see Steph Curry by game six. But if you’re Ant-Man, here’s where it gets interesting. And Perk, I think I’m even going to convince you to agree with me on this one. We didn’t believe Ant-Man when he said he didn’t want to be the face of the league. What we said was, you don’t want the headache off the court. You want to live your life. You don’t want to be bothered. But on the court, you don’t mind that smoke. We know who he is and how he embraces challenge. He took out Kevin Durant, Book, and Bill. Took out Joic and Murray. Okay. lost to Luca and Kyrie before taking out LeBron and Luca, you know, in the first round of these playoffs. And now he got an opportunity to take out Steph and Jimmy Buckets. We know what kind of smoke Anthony Edwards wants on the court. He probably doesn’t want to be the face of the league because of the off the court responsibilities that come with it and he wasn’t ready to have that microscope on his life. Fair enough. But if he loses, like if Steph Curry don’t even have to come back and the Golden State Warriors managed to take Minnesota out without him, that is egregious. And everything that we have been saying about Anthony Edwards goes out the window. Now we believe him. You really didn’t want to be the face. you really didn’t want this because there’s no excuse for this Minnesota Timberwolves team with the way Julius Randall has been playing, the way Jada McDaniels has been playing, the way Rudy Goar and the kind of impact he had leading into this series. Okay, what you’ve seen from them, if Ant-Man is that dude, there is no way in hell you lose two games or more to the Golden State Warriors without Steph Curry. If that happens and you’re looking the way that he looked in game one, then we believe him. Oh, you didn’t want it. You You really weren’t lying. You really didn’t want it because there’s no reason. There’s no way. I don’t give a damn. Look, Jimmy Buckers is that dude, the brother special. Draymond Green, he was my defensive player of the year. He got my vote. Okay, I look at Pajinsky and healed and the way that they’ve been playing. I got and Steve Kerr’s one of the top six greatest coaches in the history of basketball. There’s nothing to debate here. We understand who they are. But if you’re Ant-Man, you can’t look the way that you looked in game one. If that happens and they end up losing this series without Steph Curry, we we won’t look at Ant-Man the same. As young as he is, even at 23, we will hold on to that for a very long period of time because it will go against everything that he has represented on the basketball court in his short yet relatively illustrious career. We expect more. We expect him to exploit and take advantage of the Golden State Warriors without Steph Curry. And he damn well had better do it. Here’s the deal, Peter. Here’s the deal. To call Anthony Towns deal, you got to continue to play well because of the way Julius Randle has looked in Minnesota. Like we talked about his game has elevated in the postse. We never saw Julius Randle play like that as a New York Knick in the postseason. Okay. The way he’s looked thus far. So I got that part. Here’s where it gets interesting. Muel Bridges, you gave up five first round picks, four of them unprotected, plus a swap plus a second rounder. That’s a lot. Especially when you consider the fact that the Lakers didn’t have to come close to giving anything like that up. Not that they could have, but they didn’t have to come close to giving anything like that up for Luca Donuch. So knowing that you did this for a dude who has never been an allstar, that’s a lot. That’s a lot. And especially when you consider the fact that it potentially gets in the way of you being able to go out and get somebody like a Giannis because you don’t have the assets. You see what I’m saying? So looking at it from that perspective and put perk on the screen, please. Looking at it from that perspective, it doesn’t look great until last night when we saw Muel Bridges show up in the fourth quarter the way that he did. Now, if you Muel Bridges has to understand, you have to be that guy. We understand and understand this. It’s not like Leon Rose got hoes or something like that. It’s an unwritten rule. Perk knows this, Peter. It’s an unwritten rule in the NBA. Brooklyn doesn’t do business with the Knicks under normal circumstances because they’re the rival. You trying to get you trying to have your own inroads and you’re not trying to help the local franchise that is the New York Knicks. So there was no way they were going to get a Muel Bridges who’s a champion in collegiately and a personal friend of Jaylen Brunson who is the face of the New York Knicks franchise. They did it for him. And you also have to remember that Jaylen Brunson, okay, could have waited a year and got an additional hundred million from the Knicks. He didn’t do that. So considering what his level of production was along with the financial sacrifice that he made for the New York Knicks, if you Leon Rose and him, you had to go out and do what they did. And there was no way that you were going to get him from the Nets unless you gave them the farm. So knowing that it’s up to Mikuel Bridges to make sure he’s that dude to make sure, yeah, you don’t have to be an all-star. You don’t have to be a 25 game scorer. Perk said it very, very astutely the other day. Don’t be the dude that was on the Brooklyn Nets. Be the dude that was on the Phoenix Suns that went to the finals with Chris Paul and Deon Book and those brothers. That’s who Muel Bridges needs to be. He needs to be reliable. He needs to be good for 19 to 20 a night. He needs to be somebody whose perimeter shots you can rely upon and whose defense you lean on along with that of Anobi as well because that’s going to elevate the New York Knicks defensively. He has to be that guy on a consistent basis for years to come in order to justify all they had to give up for him. Even though we understand the reason they had to give it up is because they were doing business with the Brooklyn Nets, their cross town rival, not a rival, but you know, the cross town team that ain’t trying to look to help you at all. We understand it. That’s what comes with it. But the only way to validate this is for Muel Bridges to look a hell of a lot like he looked last night in game two to look like that significantly more frequently throughout his career with the New York Knicks for the foreseeable future. Who’s crit who’s criticizing right now? Nobody. Nobody. Nobody’s saying a damn word. Stephen A’s happy. Tracy Morgan happy. Fat Joe is happy. Everybody’s happy around the city of New York, right? Mikuel Bridges again. The Phoenix Suns. Muel Bridges in back-to back games. Crucial still by on Jaylen Brown. Don’t even let let don’t even let him get a shot of tip up. Crucial steel active hands on Jason Tatum game seal and steel big corner threes big fourth quarter game two like he’s having those impactful moments that you want to see and I still think you could get more out of him and I believe you’re going to get more if you’re a New York Knicks fan out of him once he get Madison Square Garden Anthony Towns has been balling this team is not only on the verge and I believe is going to the Eastern the conference. But I say, let’s be real here. They about to knock off the NBA champions. This team got a legit shot at winning the NBA championship, dog. Like, think about this. If if things play the way that it look like it’s trending, it’s looking like the Knicks versus the Pacers. The Knicks got a shot at beating the Pacers. Okay, you get to the finals, the good, the go. The Pacers are good. the pay. I’m just saying. So, yes, they have silenced the critics because no one’s complaining in New York City. Now, for the Knicks, don’t get comfortable. It’s a must-win for Boston, but it’s also a must win for Knicks. If you want to put serious pressure on the champs, game three is a must for the Knicks. 30-7 in the fourth quarter. So, let me let me take that for a second. He is 100% correct. This going to sound stupid. Game three is a must win for the Knicks because if they get back because because game four because Boston’s got a better team. They’ve been up 20, but I’m telling you been in that situation twice. You got to win that third game. All right, Stephen A. Is game three a must win for the Knicks or is game three a must win for the Celtics? I’m going to say the Knicks. Um I’m going to say also it’s breaking news that Charles Barkley and Shaq agree on something. Uh it’s very very nice to see. I don’t know why the hell Shaq sounding all horse and everything. I mean, we got to talk about that. I’m gonna give him a call in a little while. I don’t know why his voice was sounding like that, trying to be like Barry White or something. But the bottom line is is that uh they they do make a very very valid point. Boston has overcome an 03 deficit before. You know, they could do it again. The New York Knicks to be in this position. Oh, no. You can’t you can’t go on the road beat Boston in Boston twice and then think that game three is just blasze pass a and we can afford to lose that. Can’t do that. Got to win. I I I I I just think they got to get one. I mean I think they just got to get one. Three or four to be honest. It’s about being even kill. We hear that term so much Peter Stephen A. We hear that all the time. And it’s not getting too high, not getting too low. And it would be easy for the Knicks right now to be on an all-time high. The city is lit up. You just won two games on the road against the defending champs after being down 20. But you heard Carl Anthony Towns message in the locker room. He’s been in that position before last year against the Nuggets and they were up 20 and they lost two straight at home. So, keeping that locker room levelheaded, but I would say at worst you want to split. And if you have to go back to Boston for a game five, you need it to be 3-1. Well, my concern is that if they lose game three, uh, Boston will have momentum, and that’s not good. No doubt.

Stephen A. Smith, Brian Windhorst and Kendrick Perkins join Peter Schrager on First Take to discuss news and notes around the semifinals of the 2025 NBA Playoffs.

0:00 Oklahoma City Thunder’s dominant win vs. Denver Nuggets
2:59 Anthony Edwards’ chances with Steph Curry out
5:13 Stephen A. thinks Minnesota Timberwolves need 2 wins
9:10 Have the New York Knicks silenced critics?
12:30 Perk on Mikal Bridges
14:14 TNT guys on Knicks-Celtics Game 3

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