I mean, this is the rub, right? If the Knicks win tonight, the series isn’t officially over, but, well, come on, the series is effectively over. No NBA team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in a best of seven series (I don’t think anyone’s come back from a 3-0 deficit in a nine-game series, or whatever weird formats baseball used to play in its early days). It’s only happened once in baseball, and I think twice in hockey.
So yeah, tonight is huge. As Pat Riley always used to say, a series doesn’t really begin until the home team loses a game (so if the home team wins all of its home games, and wins the series in seven games, does Riley think that the series didn’t actually start yet?