Knicks Upset Helping Health of Basketball

Nick Wright believes a New York Knicks victory would be just right for the state of the NBA.

The Fox Sports analyst offered a unique take on the Knicks' improbable 2-0 series lead on the defending champion Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference semifinals, claiming that finishing off the upset would be a triumph for not only the Knicks but the future of pro basketball as a whole.

"It has the potential to be an all-time loss,” Wright said on his web series "What's Wright" this week. “It also has the potential to maybe stem the tide a bit against professional basketball simply being a three-point shooting contest.”

To Wright's point, the series has been partly defined by Boston's struggles from deep: through the first two games of the series, the Celtics are 25-of-100 with an extra point on the line, setting a record for most misfires in a two-game playoff span. The Knicks have taken advantage to the tune of comebacks from 20 points down in each of the two showings at TD Garden.

The trend is hardly exclusive to Beantown, as many complaints about the modern NBA center on teams' propensity to take excessive three-pointers. But the Celtics took things to a whole new level this season, setting a new NBA record for three-pointers in their latest championship defense. In fact, the campaign began with a single-game record-tying tally of 29 in the opening night win over the Knicks back in October.

Wright believes that if Boston is dealt a reality check against the Knicks, it could start flipping the script back toward a more balanced game.

“The Boston Celtics breaking every record for three-point attempts, if they ended up cruising to a championship, then until the rules change, everyone’s an idiot for not playing that way,” Wright noted. "But if in the small sample size of a series, the Celtics get whacked by what most people agree is a clearly inferior team … whether it should or shouldn’t change teams’ philosophies and approaches, pro sports are reactionary ... So yeah, I’ll say it. For the health of basketball, it’s good if this doesn’t work for Boston.”

For their part, the Knicks have maintained more of a traditional attack on offense: New York ranked 27th in three-point tries per game during the regular season and is currently 14th among all playoff contenders.

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