Spike Eskin, on his last day at WFAN, joined BT and Sal on Monday to leave them with some parting thoughts on a potential first-round matchup between the Knicks and 76ers.
Simply put, Spike says New York should have taken its foot off the gas and settled for the third seed instead of the No. 2 spot in the Eastern Conference to avoid playing the Sixers.
“You should have lost that game [Sunday],” Spike said.
Spike says the Sixers have the best player in the planet in Joel Embiid, and despite Jalen Brunson’s stardom, he doesn’t see the Knicks point guard holding up in a hard-fought series.
“The amount of effort and energy he has to put into every single game this entire season, there is no way that guy isn’t feeling it at this point. It happens all the time,” Spike said. “When the entire offense is based around him, they get to the playoffs, and it doesn’t continue to work.”
Spike even went as far as to say there were only two teams in the conference that he wouldn’t have wanted to play in the first round other than the Knicks.
“I would pick the Knicks over everyone in the conference outside of Boston, and if Milwaukee was healthy, I would pick Milwaukee,” Spike said. “But aside from that, I’d pick the Knicks.
“The Sixers won 47 games while missing nine weeks of Joel Embiid. There’s no way they don’t win 55-56 games if Joel Embiid was healthy…the Knicks are good, I just don’t think, when healthy, they are on the same level of the Sixers.”