The Buddies are celebrating their hometown New York Knicks, who won the 2025 NBA Cup on Tuesday night!
The Budster and I are in a celebratory mood after the New York Knicks defeated the San Antonio Spurs to win the 2025 NBA Cup Championship!
The NBA Cup is a mid-season tournament, now in its second year, that serves as an early indicator of league balance, team resilience and talent, and a championship in its own right.
It’s not an NBA championship, and to be clear the team has a long road ahead with some extremely dangerous teams — including the 24-2 Oklahoma City Thunder — to contend with en route to the goal of a ring, but every contender had its eye on the NBA Cup trophy, and the Knicks came out on top. That bodes well for them.
The Knicks sit at 18-7 in the standings (19-7 total) with the best points margin in the NBA’s Eastern Conference, and are currently third in betting markets to win it all in the postseason. Not bad for a bunch of guys casually dismissed as non-factors just a year ago.
For now, it’s time to enjoy the win and hope the momentum carries forward for a team that has made basketball exciting in New York again.
Thirty years after the Knicks suffered one of the most humiliating losses in basketball history, it happened again…
The image of Reggie Miller running up and down the court at Madison Square Garden, both hands around his own neck, gleefully screeching “Chokers! Chokers!” is indelibly burned into my brain.
It was May 7, 1995. The Knicks were leading the Indiana Pacers by six points with 18.7 seconds to go. The game was essentially over.
Even though Miller was an excellent shooter, a three-pointer would still leave the Pacers short and the Knicks with a win in the Eastern Conference Finals.
What happened next is still hard to believe all these years later.
Miller hit a three pointer, stole the ball on the inbound pass, bolted back behind the three-point line and hit another three-pointer, tying the game. After two missed free throws and a missed shot by the Knicks, Miller was fouled, made two free throws, and the Pacers won the game.
Miller had just scored 8 points in 8.9 seconds, a feat widely considered impossible, to turn a six-point deficit into a two-point win.
This was the kind of thing that might happen in a video game, not real life.
As a young Knicks fan, I was devastated. Kids raged the next morning as we gathered before the first bell at school. Miller was public enemy number one.
That was 30 years ago, or 10,972 days if you prefer.
Tonight, with Miller calling the game from the broadcast booth, the Knicks and Pacers met once again for game one of the Eastern Conference Finals at Madison Square Garden, just like they did 30 years ago.
New York had a 14-point lead with about two and a half minutes to go. Victory was assured.
Then the Pacers came storming back with three pointer after three pointer, cutting the lead to two. With seconds left on the game clock, the Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton launched a three pointer, which bounced off the rim high into the air…and came down clean through the hoop.
Just like Miller had three decades ago, Haliburton ran the court at MSG with his hands around his neck, yelling “Chokers!”
It was deja vu. It was a nightmare.
As “luck” would have it, Haliburton’s toe was on the three-point line, rendering his basket a two-pointer that sent the game to overtime.
The crowd tried to rally the Knicks and broke into chants of “F— you, Reggie!” as if to ward off a repeat of history. It didn’t matter. Indiana had all the momentum, and the stunned Knicks couldn’t hold on despite a combined 78 points from the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Absolutely brutal. To rub salt in the wound, my cousins gleefully texted me with taunts like “Oh, the pain of it all!” A small text group consisting of me, my brother and one of our closest childhood friends turned somber. We couldn’t believe this was happening again.
Haliburton, top, and Miller, both mocked the Knicks after improbable wins 30 years apart.
I don’t usually blog about sports, but I feel like I have to release some of this pent up energy. I’d already showered treats upon Bud in celebration and had just given him catnip during a commercial break. We were playing a wand toy game. The mood was jubilant, then it wasn’t. I’m sure little man was confused, but he knows I wasn’t upset at him. Besides, I laughed at how absurd the whole situation was.
After the game, Charles Barkley, legend of the court and the booth, summed up his feelings after watching the ridiculous spectacle: “We get to watch this for our jobs. We’re the luckiest guys on Earth.”
He’s right, although as a lifelong Knicks fan, I don’t feel particularly lucky right now. Let’s hope Lady Luck finally smiles upon a franchise that hasn’t won a damn thing in 50 years and the Knicks turn tonight into nothing more than a bad memory en route to the NBA Finals.
The series, and the rivalry, resumes Friday night at 8 p.m. Whichever team wins the seven-game series will go on to the NBA Finals.
El Capitan, also known as Captain Clutch and The Maestro: Jalen Brunson had 43 points tonight, but it wasn’t enough.
Hart and Soul of the Knicks, Josh Hart, pulled down 13 rebounds and dished out 7 assists in game one of the Eastern Conference Finals.
Knicks commentator Clyde Frazier called Buddy’s performance “a grandilomentitudinous clinic in splendiferousness.”
NEW YORK — With less than four minutes on the clock in the fourth quarter and the Knicks down two, New York point guard Jalen Brunson drove the lane, then kicked the ball out as the defense collapsed, finding an open Buddy the Cat in the corner.
With Boston forward Jason Tatum closing the distance, Buddy slid both feet behind the three-point line and sank a clutch shot, giving the Knicks their first lead since the second quarter.
The Madison Square Garden crowd, already boisterous, launched into a deafening cheer.
“MVP! MVP! MVP!” Knicks fans chanted, dubbing the superstar feline the league’s Meowst Valuable Player.
New York guard RJ Barrett found Buddy with a no-look pass on the next possession and the 10lb cat sailed through traffic toward the rim, banking a layup to put his team up by three.
“Buddy now, driving and conniving, dishing and swishing at the basket,” Knicks color commentator Walt “Clyde” Frazier said. “A serendipitous fourth for the frisky feline.”
Earning defensive stops on the next two possessions, the Knicks extended their lead to six on a three-pointer by forward Julius Randle, forcing the Celtics to foul Buddy on the next possession to stop the Knicks running down the shot clock.
Buddy iced the free throws, then sank another pair after a Boston timeout to give him a career-high 47 points to go with one rebound, eight assists and 11 steals.
Initially picked in the second round of the 2020 NBA draft, Buddy the Cat has become an impact player and fan favorite.
“If you’re [Knicks coach] Tom Thibodeaux, you’ve gotta like what you’re seeing from Buddy the Cat,” play-by-play man Mike Breen said.
Frazier agreed, piling on the superlatives.
“Buddy’s been magnetic and energetic, giving the Knicks strong two-way play with the matador D and splendiferous form as he displays omnipotence on the offensive end,” Frazier said.
The tabby cat’s career performance earned accolades from Knicks fans and players alike on Twitter.
“Buddy the Cat straight cookin’ the Celtics!” Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell tweeted.
“Y’all see this cat? Unreal!!!” tweeted Ja Morant, the explosive point guard for the Memphis Grizzlies.
Not every player in the league was impressed, however.
“Let him try that move toward the rim on me,” said Lakers forward Lebron James, who has a 6 foot height advantage on the tabby. “I’ll swat that ball all the way to Chairman Xi’s house in Beijing.”
Frazier, who was the floor general for the Knicks the last time the franchise won an NBA championship in the 1970s, said Buddy is an essential component in the team’s promising core of young players.
“You don’t see a player like that every day, folks,” Frazier said. “A grandilomentitudinous performance that thrillified Knicks fans!”
Buddy is averaging 20.7 points, 0.7 rebounds, 6.5 assists and 6.2 steals per game on the season, and is currently the top-rated player at his position in fantasy basketball rankings.
Pain In The Bud 