After 4: NYK/DET, BOS/ORL, IND/MKE, SMB

NEW YORK 3, DETROIT 1

Unfortunate that any referee's call or non-call mars a terrific series, so I won't let it. I'm the guy that fast-forwards through replays and reviews, I don't care about the outcome nor how the outcome got there, I'll figure it out when I see someone shooting free throws.

Or not shooting them. In retrospect, we should want Tim Hardaway Jr. earning that whistle. This series deserves a 2-2 setting, a best-of three, not a deadening, 3-1 Knick advantage heading back to Manhattan.

This thing would fit wonderfully inside seven games. These two teams are ornery and sick of each other but they've also developed their length and particular touch and timing against one another. It feels like an NBA practice, limited free throws, superior and slightly inferior players effectively neutralized through repetition.

The only person sticking out is the kid, Ron Holland. Ron? You will know it is time to fight once the adults begin fighting.

This is a marvelous series, not a slugfest. Slugfests feature long rebounds, misspent possessions, exhibition-level awareness. Detroit's turned it over a little, I submit. Detroit also let Jalen Brunson completely fake and then fool the Pistons on the penultimate possession of Game 4, a real Little League goof, but Brunson blew the layup.

The Pistons have no excuse for biffing two games at home, the team turned the ball over and missed open jumpers. This is, as the French would say, how the hoops happen.

The Pistons have no reason to feel bad for Karl-Anthony Towns giving Detroit The Kawhi and then The Dirk down the stretch of a close game on the road. No human can guard such things. New York will play better at home but Detroit can play much, much better than Detroit done did in Game 3 and 4. Games in which they played pretty well, and against these very Knicks.

This is an even series, the mark on the wall ("3-1") is a drag but the Pistons are back at Madison Square Garden soon, a place the Pistons won both regular season meetings plus the last game they played in the building. We don't need to talk about the game before that.

Cade Cunningham had a 25-point triple-double on Sunday and it looked like it. The numbers weren't blown up by extra threes (he missed all three) or D-Wade-styled free throw feints (3-4 from the stripe) or outsized pace. Game 4 featured 93 possessions, slower than any team in 2024-25, same speed as the Derek Fisher/Kurt Rambis-led 2016 Knicks, but faster than the league-leading 94.7 possessions per game of the George Irvine-led 2000-01 Detroit Pistons.

"Irvine" as in "win," Zander Hollander reminds me.

It can't be enough to do the same. Home team will play like it in New York, Detroit's efforts displayed in Games 3 and 4, provably, were not enough. Three-pointers not falling? There's a Jalen Duren lob out there, somewhere, go find it. Maybe a spot-up for Cade, for once in his career.

Knicks show up and do their job? Tom Thibodeau's plan plays out in real life, even if Precious Achiuwa inexplicably sits the entire time again? New York moves on.

Game 5 in New York on April 29 at 7:30 PM Eastern on TNT

BOSTON 3, ORLANDO 1

Orlando impressed with its Game 3 win, mostly because the Celtics acted like they had it. Boston didn't act like it had it in bag, rather, Boston began earning the bag. Orlando saw that strain of professionalism, urgency even after a championship, and rose to the example.

Then, on Sunday, damn near rose to it again. But for a few makes, spinning out and turning into misses.

Boston wanted to end it in Friday's Game 3 and tried, worked for scores and moved defensively in spots where other favorites would reach for big hits before literally reaching on defense. Not the champs.

Orlando was down 10 at the half in Game 3 and the Magic coaches did what they had to do, stripping Friday night's basic cable reality to its essence. These men will try to end your season in the next hour and what are you going to do about it? Can you outscore them by 11 points?

Yes, they could, and did, and had Kristaps Porziņģis and Jaylen Brown kvetching immediately.

Boston responded. KP split a pair of dunk attempts down the stretch of Game 4, raising his average on two-pointers in the series to 14-32, 43.8 percent. Meanwhile Al Horford, who was starting in March Madness games televised nationally in 2005, two decades ago, slaps shots out of the sky. Eight blocks for this guy.

Boston is fine, Orlando can't score. The Magic can play annoyingly-perfect basketball. Cory Joseph does nothing in the spots where Cole Anthony would do most things wrong.

The Magic put the champs through the paces like the best sparring partner the ol' Leprechaun could ask for. Boston's late-game ability to clear scoring room for its particulars features 1990s spacing but don't trust it, gosh darn house of mirrors, one guy might be going for the Jordan-styled fadeaway but everyone else is only here for threes and dunks. And the C's get to practice this against a top-flight defense, a team modeled in Boston's form.

The Celtics knew Cleveland was after them from the moment Kenny Atkinson became a Cav last summer, they watched Cleveland all fall and all winter and all season and the Celtics watched all of Game 3 in Miami. Boston knows it is weeks away from Cleveland, weeks, and Boston is the only group in this 16-team bracket which knows exactly how these weeks go.

Not Luka and LeBron, Jimmy and the Warriors, all recently-sutured leftovers. Not Oklahoma City, not Cleveland. There is a reason I keep calling them "the champs," because no other team in the NBA would hold up as well to the way Orlando played ball through the first four games.

Game 5 in Boston at 8:30 PM Eastern on NBA TV

'JUNGLE LOVE' BY THE STEVE MILLER BAND

When everyone started fake-whistling in Minnesota over the weekend I was reminded, for the second time in a basketball-viewing day, of the song 'Jungle Love' by the Steve Miller Band. Not written by Steve Miller, but by a guy who was about to leave the Steve Miller Band. The resulting live performances of the song are distinctly inferior to the original.

Anyway, I could swear the Orlando Magic play the song's synth intro during in-game action more times in the postseason than they do in the regular season, and they do it a lot during the regular season, since the 1990s.

For those of us who grew up on classic rock radio, it grabs your attention. Are they using that synth intro as a cool sound between ads, you'd lean forward, expecting another song besides 'Jungle Love' by the Steve Miller Band, or are they about to play 'Jungle Love' by the Steve Miller Band? And then they play 'Jungle Love,' by the Steve Miller Band.

You can tell by the whistle.

INDIANA 3, MILWAUKEE 1

The Damian Lillard setback doesn't dull what was another sparkling Pacer win in Game 4. It is true, the Pacers were playing through ghosts in green most of Sunday evening, but one can't help but acknowledge Indiana, its ascent resembling the arc of Milwaukee's descent, Dame's sad injury finally putting an end to the posturing between the teams. The Bucks weren't going anywhere with Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kyle Kuzma. No team ever goes anywhere with Kyle Kuzma in the first paragraph.

It isn't Kuzma's fault, nor the front office's. The title defense didn't work out, but Milwaukee won an NBA championship in an era which collectively bargained against back-to-back rings. More charmingly, the Buck rise from NBA oddity to playoff stalwart to untouchable champion is one of the silliest, most satisfying vaults in league history. Even if we underemphasize Mr. Antetokounmpo's once-in-a-lifetime story.

This was the project team, Jason Kidd and Jabari Parker and what's that guy's name, Thon Maker. The 2024-25 season was supposed to be the point in Giannis' championship story when longtime teammate Michael Carter-Williams started showing his age, not video game addition Damian Lillard.

The NBA changed when it flattened lottery odds and added the Play-In, international and stateside talent is growing but prime professional contributors are finite. The Bucks stretched, did what they could, it didn't work out, heroes come and go. The Lakers dropped Robert Horry because he stunk in the 2003 playoffs, missed more than two-thirds his attempts through a dozen games. Bob signed with the Spurs and won two rings, Horry a combined 18-49 from deep in the 2005 and 2007 Finals.

I listened to Milwaukee's radio audio in Game 4 and the coverage didn't rue a lost Bucks ring for 2024-25, rather, a single satisfactory title defense. I couldn't tell if anyone was shaking fists at the sky because, again, radio feed.

The sad point sustains. Milwaukee won in 2021. The 2022 turn splayed on the wet floor of Milwaukee's own arena, badly spraining Khris Middleton's knee, 2023 never took off because of Antetokounmpo bleeped up his back, 2024 was similarly Giannis-lite. Jrue Holiday combined to shoot less than 40 from the field in in the 2022 and 2023 postseasons, who knows how these Horrys go, Donte DiVincenzo was let loose in exchange for Serge Ibaka and the right not to pay Donte DiVincenzo. Pat Connaughton lost his hops, none of the draft picks hit, they rarely do when you're one of the best teams in the NBA. So the Bucks never got their Mark Madsen, so they never secured a Jason Maxiell.

There is no great urge to defend the ownership group and front office who decided signing Kevin Porter Jr. was a strong idea (worth it, guys?). Yet, this is a best effort.

Jrue Holiday's move from Milwaukee to Boston was an all-time who-knew, but at the same all-time an utterly offensive professional blunder. You need a staff to remind that dominoes could turn in the direction of the closest rival. You also need staff to explain how dominoes work.

There was a desperation in Milwaukee's moves that I cannot claim for Denver, where Calvin Booth busted his ass to spite shyte ownership, who treats Nikola Jokic as if he were long destined for Denver via divine birthright.

The Bucks would do well to unleash Kevin Porter Jr. in Game 5, it is a bid to save the season and buckets are buckets, right guys? Milwaukee absolutely has the talent and long-range ability to stretch the series to its length, and without the Pacers playing down to the competition. The Bucks are good and capable and also not good enough, the drive makes up the difference.

Do the Bucks have it? Against Indiana, surely. The way the Bucks see it, Indiana ended Milwaukee's last season amid injury caveats and the Pacers are about to end this season with the same gimmick. Milwaukee does not have a rotation to outlast the Pacers, but I'd be shocked if the Bucks didn't try to disprove the nagging feeling that tells them the Pacers are better, even at Milwaukee's fullest strength. Maybe kick a little tail, maybe even extend a little season, it's only three hours.

Let's not let Milwaukee's slow march toward summer get in the way of what the Pacers are up to, those ol' ploughboys. Game 3 was a blip, the Pacers forgot to get in everyone's way. They'll be at attention at home.

DOUBLEBACK ALLEY

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