Following Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, it was hard to tell who had the worse night, the Boston Celtics or NBA on TNT’s Reggie Miller.
Now, Reggie Miller isn’t exactly beloved by New York Knicks fans. That’s putting it mildly, or in journalistic terms, we’re essentially burying the lede here. There’s bad blood. There always has been. Miller might want Knicks fans to leave him alone. Still, in the same breath, he’ll playfully refer to himself as the “Boogeyman” while attempting to absolve himself of any Indiana Pacers bias.
He trolls the Knicks and their fans, and they respond in kind, as Josh Hart informed him last year.
But these are this year’s playoffs, and Reggie Miller had a rough fourth quarter in Monday’s Game 1.
Miller missed the mark in two of the game’s pivotal plays.
First, he made Jalen Brunson’s missed shot at the end of regulation sound like a routine layup, even though it was a tough attempt with a defender right in front of him.
And as Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina pointed out, Miller’s biggest blunder came in overtime. He wrongly claimed that the Knicks, up by three, had fouled Jaylen Brown in the act of shooting, which would’ve granted him three free throws. But it wasn’t even close to being a shooting foul. Karl-Anthony Towns took a take foul up 3, clearly pushing the Cal product before he went into his shooting motion.
It ended up being a smart foul, allowing Mikal Bridges — and the Knicks — to steal Game 1 from the Celtics.
But Miller did anything but steal the show on Monday night, and social media let him know about it.
Much of the above commentary should be taken with a grain of salt, as both Miller and Knicks fans came into Monday night’s contest with preconceived notions of one another. That said, Reggie Miller is objectively good at his job, but he was objectively underwhelming in the closing seconds of both the fourth quarter and overtime. Two things can be true, and it’s why he’ll play a significant role in the NBA’s relaunch on NBC.
But just like the Celtics, Reggie Miller should flush Game 1 out of his system.