Donovan Mitchell stood at the podium and called Game 1 'just one loss'. Kendrick Perkins, watching from the SportsCenter with SVP set in Bristol, listened to him say it and then pushed back.
"He's right, it is just one loss," Perkins said. "But it's a loss that's going to cost them this series. They're going to look back at this game and when this series is over, when they lose this series, and say, 'Man, we let one slip away.' And they're going to regret every single minute, every single second of that fourth quarter."
It was a sharper read than the Cleveland room was willing to deliver itself. The Cavaliers had been outscored 44 to 11 in the closing eleven and a half minutes of the second-largest fourth-quarter collapse in NBA playoff history. Perkins zeroed in on the precise moment the game tilted, and on what he believes is a Basketball 101 violation that head coach Kenny Atkinson should not have allowed to happen.
"Despite how awful they were offensively and not getting Donovan Mitchell involved or trying to get Evan Mobley on the mismatch in the low post, they still were up double digits," Perkins said. "At the end of the day, all you had to do was get stops. All you had to do was find some type of pride, have somebody on the floor to show some type of leadership and say, hey guys, let's buckle down and show some type of grit. Let's show some type of heart and let's defend at a high level."
The specific play Perkins flagged, frame-by-frame, was Mikal Bridges' corner three with the Cavaliers up six and time running.
"The IQ of James Harden — when Mikal Bridges hit that three in the corner, that was James Harden helping off the strong-side corner, just making up stuff at the fly," Perkins said. "That's rule number one in everyone's locker room. Scott, never help off the strong-side corner. Easy pass by Jaylen Brunson. Easy knockdown three by Mikal Bridges."
From there, Perkins shifted the responsibility upward. Cleveland's head coach had Dennis Schroder available on the bench, an option built specifically to plug the kind of leak Harden was springing on the defensive end.
"Kenny Atkinson continued to roll with James Harden when he saw that they were searching him out," Perkins said. "You have a guy like Dennis Schroder who's on the bench, that could come in and provide that tenacity that you were lacking in the fourth quarter. But instead, you let James Harden sink the ship for your whole entire ball club."
Host Scott Van Pelt tried to offer the gentler frame — that the Cavs played awful offensively for the last seven minutes and still nearly survived. Perkins shut it down by reframing the variance the other way.
"The Knicks aren't going to start 4-of-24 from three ever again," Perkins said. "This was your chance. They made six of their last eight because they just decided they weren't going to miss at the end."
Tim Legler, joining the show courtside at the Garden, picked up where Perkins left off. He focused on the part of the Knicks' identity the Cavs had no answer for once the game tightened.
"We've made so much about the Knicks offence and changing it up and putting Carl Anthony Towns more at the top and facilitating, and a lot of that is true during this run they've had over the last seven games," Legler said. "But when push came to shove and Game 1 was on the line, they went back to Jaylen Brunson, middle of the floor, hunt who you want."
Legler's read was that the Knicks closed the game with a New York 2010s identity even as they have been winning all year with a new one — and that the Cavaliers were never able to switch coverages fast enough to stop it. Perkins backed him with body-language tape.
"I've been in a situation like this in the 2008 Finals," Perkins said. "When we were on the road, we were down double digits, Scott, and we had to go get that game. It was a possession-by-possession game. You could see and feel the energy, the spirit. I'm a huge body-language guy. I'm always looking at body language. At no point throughout the course of that game did I feel like the Knicks felt like they were going to lose or that they were out of it. I didn't see any complaining. I didn't see any dropping of the head or pointing the finger. They just kept chipping away, making runs."
The other player Perkins kept circling back to was Karl-Anthony Towns. The Knicks' bigman, who has spent most of the postseason being praised for his offensive facilitation, drew Perkins' praise on the defensive end.
"I can't give enough praise to Carl Anthony Towns and how he stepped up his defence," Perkins said. "They didn't need Mitchell Robinson, because Carl Anthony Towns has been doing an outstanding job of anchoring that defence and cleaning up that glass like a fresh bottle of Windex."
Game 2 is Thursday at Madison Square Garden. The Cavs spent Monday calling it a one-game thing. By the time Perkins and Legler signed off, it was no longer clear they would get the chance to prove it.
