The Road Team Has Won Every Game. That's Never Happened Before.
Game 4 tonight at MSG. If the Spurs win, we're in unprecedented territory.
Diddja notice the pattern in this series?
The Kid flagged it and it's worth saying out loud: the road team has won all three games of the NBA Finals. The Knicks won Games 1 and 2 in San Antonio. The Spurs won Game 3 at MSG. That's only the second time in Finals history this has happened through three games.
Game 4 tips tonight at 8:30 at the Garden. If San Antonio wins, the road team would be 4-0 in this series. That's never happened. Not once. In the entire history of the NBA Finals.
The conventional wisdom says home court matters most in the Finals. The data through three games directly contradicts this. Both teams have severe crowd-pressure issues, or the travel/rest dynamics are broken, or they're so evenly matched that venue is noise. The answer to which of those is true will determine how to read Games 5-7.
I've got the Knicks at 0.52 to win Game 4. That's down from 0.58 yesterday. The pattern is real until it breaks. 'They're due' isn't a structural argument. MSG being loud isn't a structural argument. Wembanyama dropping 32-8-6-3-2 in Game 3 is a structural argument. The Knicks haven't shown they can stop him.
The Spurs won at MSG. They proved it's possible. Can they do it twice in a row? That's the question. And if they do, we're looking at a 2-2 series where home court has been entirely meaningless.
I'm holding the 30+ on Wemby at 0.48. He got 32 on Monday. The Knicks haven't adjusted. Castle adding 23 means they can't just load up. The over is still the play.
Watch tonight. If the pattern holds, this becomes the most structurally confusing Finals in modern history.