On Mon.'s No Dunks, the guys discuss Karl-Anthony Towns saving the Knicks' season, why early foul trouble actually worked in Thibs' favor, Nesmith's ankle injury, Mitchell Robinson getting the start in place of Josh Hart, and why this Knicks-Pacers ECF series rules. That, plus All-NBA takeaways, what to watch in tonight's Thunder-Wolves, a scary Indy 500 rabbit hole, 'Mission: Impossible' reviews, and more.▶️ Join No Dunks on Playback : https://www.playback.tv/nodunks👕 Fix up, look sharp in some No Dunks merch: https://nodunks.com📈 Subscribe to No Dunks on YouTube: YouTube.com/nodunksinc𝕏 Follow No Dunks on Twitter/X: https://x.com/NoDunksInc🥶 Cold open: @nonames_memes: https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ8i2TMOqqd/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: How did Karl-Anthony Towns save the Knicks' season?
Good morning, sweet world, and welcome to the No Dunks podcast presented by Amazon Prime. It's Monday, May 26th, 2025. I'm J.E. Skeets here in the Classic Factory, and alongside me, as always, Tass Mellis.
I'm Tass Mellis, and I'm glad I'm not a Knicks fan.
Next to him, it's the bearded one, my top shot hot boy, Trey Kirby. Ayo! And last but not least, over yonder, making the magic happen, Super Producer JD.
Hello.
There he is. Here we are on today's show. We're going to take a look at the All-NBA teams that were announced late last week. We'll tee up tonight's Big Game 4 in Minnesota between the Thunder and Wolves. But first, the New York Knicks remain alive. Tass Mellis in the Eastern Conference Finals. Carl Anthony Towns. Say his full name.
Scored 20 of his 24 points in the fourth quarter as the Knicks came back from 20 points down to beat the Pacers 106-100 in Game 3 on Sunday. He saved their season. Carl Anthony Towns.
He 100% saved their season. Saved the day. Coming into the fourth quarter, Carl Anthony Towns had four points on two of eight field goal shooting. It was looking like things could go poorly. You know, Jalen Brunson was in foul trouble. He would come back in the fourth quarter, pick up his fifth in this one as well. But in the fourth. Cat went off 20 points, 8 rebounds, 3 threes, and an assist.
He was aggressive looking for his threes. One came off an offensive rebound. One came off a screen. One came him handling the ball in a pick and roll, popping over the top. That's the three kinds of three-pointers there are. He was driving. He started the fourth quarter with that three-pointer off the offensive rebound. Then he catches the ball in the corner with Turner on him.
Reggie thought he was going to shoot a three. Couple of jab steps, couple of jab steps. Really hard drive into Turner's body. Drop steps him. Finishes over the top. Then he got DeLon Wright underneath, bringing the ball up in a transition situation. And then another transition, running the court, finishes at the hoop, goes into the stanchion.
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Chapter 2: What were the key takeaways from the All-NBA teams?
Kudos to Tibbs for trying it out in a series where, I mean, coming into this series, they were bad. With Carl Anthony Towns as the five, they're minus 4.7 per 100 possessions in the first two rounds against Detroit and in that miracle series against Boston because they somehow come back. This is what this team does. They get back somehow.
I mean, all of the good lineups for them are when Towns sits even, even Hart sits even, but those are just... They are. It's a small sample. And it works out perfectly that he plays most of the minutes and Mitch just plays some of the minutes because he saw it out there. I mean, Mitch was amazing on the offensive boards, but the guy can't do it for many, many minutes at a time.
We always go through the scenarios of his past where he gets injured. And so, you know, he can't do it for 48 minutes. That being said, Pacers fans are looking at that third to fourth quarter. Obviously, Aaron Neesmith went down for a good chunk. That changed momentum. It did. It did. And I watched every single Pacers possession. Was it them or was it the Knicks?
Really, the Knicks dialed in big time. And I think Deuce McBride on the defensive side was a little bit of a... A blessing because Jalen Brunson was out. Deuce McBride fights so well over screens just to keep that defense going. He does it better than Mikkel Bridges even. He really, really fights for a little teeny tiny guy. So that helped out.
I just think, in general, the Knicks were ready to scrap. And the Pacers didn't even have an assist. Pacers didn't have an assist in the fourth quarter. The first quarter. All year. All playoffs. All regular season, which was weird. But the Knicks were dialed in for this one. They get down, that's when they play, man.
They need to start games down 20 points, and then they give themselves a better chance. Yeah, they were scrambling much better on defense. Part of that was personnel. The other part of this was Deuce McBride picking up three fouls in, like, what was it? 80 seconds, whatever the hell it was. It was so damn quick. You're like, what? He's got three already. He comes out.
And then instead of campaign, Tibbs pushed the right button. Instead went with DeLon Wright. Glad I held on to some DeLon Wright stock. Been a big fan of his. But he gave him a little something more defensively. And then Landry Schammett got in there as well and actually helped as well. Didn't kill him. Had that corner three.
And those guys were playing at least hard defensively and really helping on the scrambling part. Because, yeah, the Pacers just did not, for the first time in a long time, look like the Pacers did. In that second half, I was like, well, this is a different squad here. This is not the free wheel. And I thought Tyrese Halliburton, too.
If you went back and looked at the game tape, he could have been more aggressive. He was getting switches. He was even getting the spots. And he was just sort of still playmaking a little too much. He gets compared to Steve Nash a lot of times, and I see it. And that was like sort of the bad version of Nash where you're like, maybe try and take over here, man.
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Chapter 3: What to expect in the Thunder-Wolves matchup?
Game to game. Quarter to quarter. Quarter to quarter. That's what I meant to say.
This guy got benched in the fourth quarter of game two. And if he would have played similarly in the fourth quarter, he is the number one scapegoat for the New York Knicks, I think, after the way games one and two went and then... If he would have continued playing four points for two for eight shooting through the first three quarters. And then he just completely caught fire. It was crazy.
Tibbs completely outcoached Rick Carlisle in this one. Like there are ways to not let Carl Anthony Towns be the only guy scoring. When Reggie Miller is calling it out, it's because you look at the lineups and like literally who is going to score. Now, Reggie was saying it when the Pacers had Siakam and Halliburton on the court. Who's going to score? I don't know. Maybe they're two leading scorers.
But I did agree with him on the Knicks side of things.
Yeah, Siakam, the guy who scored 39 in game number two.
Who's going to score for the Pacers here? Well, I don't know. They're top two guys, maybe.
But they didn't.
He was right.
Yeah, and Kudos Towns, obviously, for picking up for Jalen Brunson, who had a bad night. Mikkel Burgess, who had a bad night overall. Both 6 of 18 in this game. And OG, who never really gets talked about, although we talked about his block. The guy came through with big threes in this game. He was good.
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Chapter 4: What were the highlights of the Indy 500 rabbit hole?
Obviously, it generally comes back, but that guy's going through it right now. Sorry to interrupt.
Oh, no, that's all right. Done with that one. Jimmy Goldstein, again, sitting courtside. That guy comes to every basketball game. And our friends at The Athletic have pointed out that he flies commercial, but he also flies coach. You'd think a guy who's obviously incredibly rich would either fly private or fly first class. The guy flies coach every single time, and that's how he's rich, I guess.
Oh, he's saving money.
Yeah. How much money has he saved by flying coach? You know, he seems like a smaller gentleman, so I'm sure he can fit in coach pretty well. It shouldn't be a problem.
But here's my question. What does he do with his hat? On a plane. That's one of the most complicated things. Have you ever seen him without a hat? That cowboy hat? So does he take it off, put it up in the storage compartment? Interesting. Or does he wear it, like puts it over his face, like to snooze?
Now, of course, I follow Jimmy Goldstein on Instagram. Okay. Why wouldn't you? He does wear different hats. Okay. So... So maybe he's wearing a ball cap. Yeah, he has like a baseball travel cap would be my guess. And when he lands, he gets his hat box from the overhead storage container and puts it on. Okay. Travel hat off, business hat on, and the business hat is a leather fedora, of course.
Of course, as it always is. Yes, yes, yes.
Also sitting courtside, Kevin Harlan started the game with, from racers to pacers, showing the Indy 500, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, straight to Cambridge Fieldhouse. Then they had Alex Pillow, the winner of the Indy 500 there, showing his, I don't know, what do they give him, a wreath? Yeah, basically, he's like a horse. He's like a horse, man.
So he was there, which confused a lot of people because there was a guy sitting courtside right behind Rick Carlisle, I think, that was dressed in a full driver's costume. He had a helmet! Holding a helmet! I know! Commitment to the bit. I loved it. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: How did the Knicks overcome their challenges in Game 3?
Each lap of the oval track is two and a half miles. So, yeah. So, it was like a mile on each straightaway. It's huge.
It is big. It's huge. Yeah. Yeah, because it was like people were like, you can put Yankee Stadium there and it takes up like no space within the infield. You know what I mean? Cool.
oh that's pretty cool that's cool okay uh speaking of uh cool did you like the vroom baby t-shirts that they uh handed out golden blue t-shirts for for game three yeah i'd like it yeah boom baby's their thing right that's right and come on it's a indie 500 day this is good vroom baby i i mean i immediately thought of our uh fast friends podcast vroom vroom yeah vroom vroom we would always say when we would do our uh our rewatch of all the sleeves
So there was that. I got a few other random notes. One of the most hilarious turnovers of the season so far, there was like a weird deflection and it went to half court and Matherin tried to save it, but he sort of like fumbled it going out of bounds and it started to like go into the back court, but he couldn't touch it again. So he just like decides to block Josh Hart from getting at it.
I watched Turner come flying in here to sort of try and save it, but the shot clock expired. My favorite part is Harlan didn't even know what to do. He just remained silent for eight seconds. That was a pretty funny play. Because it was sort of a weird one.
Because if Matherin touches it, it's Nick's ball, okay. Yeah, why is Miles Turner trying to save it? There's nothing to save. I know, I know.
Well, in his defense, if there was more time on the clock, he could have tipped it, and then Matherin could have picked it up, and they could have gone. Because that would have been fine. Oh, wait.
Maybe it was over and back. As soon as you touch it in the backcourt, it's over. Miles Turner was confused, too.
There was going to be two violations. You're right. It was going to be over and back or travel on Matherin, right? Because he had the ball. He did touch it last. Anyway, very weird is my point.
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Chapter 6: What impact did foul trouble have on the game?
It's like, okay, that's pretty good. All right, let's pivot from All-NBA Talk to Thunderwolves Game 4. That tips tonight in Minnesota after two convincing wins in Games 1 and 2. OKC couldn't keep it going on the road. Minnesota dominated the Thunder on Saturday night, 143-101. It was a beatdown. Minnesota coming out with some energy, obviously led by Ant with 16 points in the first quarter.
But what's something you're watching for in tonight's Game 4 or any takeaways from Game 3 over the weekend to you, Tess?
Well, Game 3 was excellent in terms of how those Wolves were out on every possession to a guard. I mean, as simple as that. Really, it did help out to figure out how to guard Shea either dropping back or as soon as he got into that mid-range, you're dropping back, but you jump out there to try and throw him off a little bit.
Rudy Gobert stripped him.
Rudy Gobert is crazy to see. That was, yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, the Shea in the space is definitely important, and just the three-point making from the Minnesota Timberwolves.
It was good to see a guy like Nas Reed, who was balling the first two series, 50% in series number one, then 43% in series number two, and then he missed all 12 of his first threes through the first two games, and then bang, bang, bang, bang, bang in game number three. So they were alive. And then he had a lefty hook. A lefty hook in a basketball game.
So I'm not going to get too into what's going on. I will just say, yeah, I think the Thunder will be a little bit more ready to take their mid shots and ready at this zone that's being flown at them in different ways. And that's that. Game three was game three. This is going to be very different.
I actually thought OKC played the least amount of zone they have so far in this series. They basically admitted to it afterwards. Chris Finch is like, yeah, we were trying to do what Denver was doing and having success, but instead we decided to play like we play and play physical basketball. They won the turnover battle for the first time against the Thunder in literally months.
I think March is the last time the Thunder lost the turnover battle. 15-10 for Minnesota. That's huge. You factor in 20 for 43-point shooting. That's also huge.
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