Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks have been rolling of late, picking up a blowout win on Thursday night on the road vs the Boston Celtics that raised eyebrows across the NBA landscape. Brunson has been a fringe MVP candidate throughout the duration of the campaign, and the Knicks don't appear to have missed a beat despite the recent news that All-Star power forward Julius Randle would miss the remainder of the season due to a shoulder injury sustained in late January at home in a win vs the Miami Heat.
Still, not everyone is so convinced that the Knicks are going to make it very far in the upcoming NBA playoffs. The way things stand now, the Knicks would be slated to take on the Indiana Pacers in a first round playoff series, with New York holding home court advantage for the proceedings. Recently, former NBA MVP and current analyst Charles Barkley dropped a prediction for that hypothetical series that had Knicks fans seething.
“The Pacers, they will beat the Knicks if they play in the playoffs,” said Barkley on TNT's show Inside the NBA, per New York Basketball on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter.
One of those seething Knicks fans was none other than celebrity actor and Madison Square Garden frequenter Ben Stiller, who took to his own account on X, to politely disagree with Barkley's assertion.
“Huge Charles fan. Charles is a brilliant basketball mind and television personality I could watch all day. Charles is incorrect,” wrote Stiller bluntly.
How far can the Knicks go?
The Knicks have a chance to get as high as number two in the vaunted Eastern Conference playoff picture before the postseason begins, although whether they should actually want that distinction is a different question altogether. As things stand now, the number two seed is likely to take on either the Philadelphia 76ers or Miami Heat, two teams with a plethora of postseason experience, in the first round due to those teams currently being matched up for the upcoming NBA Play-In tournament, with the winner getting the number seven seed.
Meanwhile, the third seed winner will likely get a date with the Pacers in round one, who, although dangerous, do not necessarily strike the fear into an opponent's heart that Jimmy Butler or Joel Embiid does.
The Knicks are looking to break through to their first Eastern Conference Finals in quite a long time this year. New York got within two games of that milestone last year but ultimately bowed out in six games to the Miami Heat in the second round, a memory still fresh in the minds of Knicks fans everywhere.
Even with Randle out of the lineup, New York has looked dangerous since the trade deadline acquisition of OG Anunoby, as well as shooters off of the bench like Bojan Bogdanovic.
In any case, New York will finish out their regular season slate at home vs the Chicago Bulls on Sunday afternoon from Madison Square Garden.
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