By now, we’ve all heard that teams overcoming a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Playoffs is rare —like 4.4% rare— but every year, fans get some hope as one team finds some last-minute resolve.
This season, it’s the New York Knicks who found themselves in a hole against the Indiana Pacers, and were able to pull out a 111-94 win in front of the star-studded Madison Square Garden crowd for Game 5.
But that win rightfully left the Pacers salty, who were hoping it’d be a closeout game and they’d get a few days of rest before taking on the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Finals.
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So when Indianapolis Star columnist Gregg Doyel asked Pascal Siakam about why they let the Knicks outplay them in a post-game interview, he was a bit frustrated. “They played harder than us, loose balls, rebounds, all that. We gotta be able to win that battle,” Siakam responds.“What do you mean? What’re you talking about?”He adds, “They played harder than us. It’s OK. We played hard, but they played harder. What’s your point? I don’t get it.”Later, with a bewildered look on his face, he asked Doyel, “You good, bro?”“Who is this guy? What’s your name, bro?” The big man asks as the exchange comes to an end.This isn’t the first time Doyel’s had an interesting interview with an Indiana sports star. He had a creepy exchange with Caitlin Clark during her introduction at the Indiana Fever press conference prior to her first season.
He made a heart-shaped gesture with his hand at her, to which she responded, “You like that?”
Doyel responded, “I like that you’re here, I like that you’re here.”Clark explained that she makes the gesture at her family after every game, and Doyel responded, “Start doing it to me and we’ll get along just fine.”
The crowd can be heard laughing, but that response was soon eclipsed when Doyel apologized for his notoriously “brashly conversational” behavior in a column, calling himself an “insensitive man” and an “idiot.”“I’m devastated to realize I’m part of the problem,” Doyel wrote. “I screwed up Wednesday during my first interaction with No. 1 overall draft pick Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever.”Doyel was suspended for two weeks and banned from attending Clark’s game for the entire season.See the social media response to the Siakam exchange below.
