Best of the week on The Herd

We opened with a curveball: the NFL’s hottest jerseys don’t include a single Cowboy in the top twenty, and Dak Prescott isn’t even top fifty, which tells you winning big still drives demand.

Dallas drafts well and has plenty of advantages, but Jerry’s blind spot is going bargain on head coaches and hogging the credit; the only two heavyweights he hired, Parcells and Jimmy, didn’t stick around.

About last night: San Antonio raced to a massive halftime lead, then kept firing threes while in the bonus, got only one paint shot in the final eight minutes, rode Wemby to exhaustion, and let De’Aaron Fox dominate touches while Dylan Harper didn’t get a look for the last ten minutes.

They’re painfully young, the coach is green, and the Knicks’ poise keeps flipping these games; this series feels as much about Spurs collapses as New York’s resilience.

OG Anunoby was the hinge: a huge three, a signature block, then the last-second tip that felt storybook, and even after that, Brunson kept it humble, which is the ethos of this Knicks group.

Wemby logged forty-four minutes, played almost the whole second half, looked spent, and missed all his free throws while the team missed only three total.

With dominant bigs, you steal rest around quarter breaks to create an eight-minute recovery window; San Antonio never did it and paid the price.

Jason Timpf jumped in: what were the unforgivable decisions late?

Trapping Brunson on the final trips created a four-on-three rebounding contest that let OG sprint in uncontested, and then they asked a small lefty to lob over Karl-Anthony Towns while Mitch bodied Wemby, which is asking for failure.

Harper’s late-game freeze-out was the other killer; play him with the two guards to force Jose Alvarado onto him and attack that, instead of letting Fox repeatedly go at OG, one of the best stoppers alive.

Why do the Spurs start so hot and keep getting favored at home?

Their best groups have more creators and length, Wemby anchors everything, they screen with pace, and those early catch-and-shoot looks snowball; New York’s answer was pairing Alvarado with Brunson to drag Wemby from the rim.

San Antonio must keep Wemby near the basket and get back to downhill guard play; they had zero paint points in the third and lost the half-court tug-of-war.

Grade Wemby so far?

His impact is undeniable—plus double digits when he’s on, big negative when he sits—but KAT has taken away his isolation game, and he needs an over-the-top counter and better conditioning.

The whistles aren’t the story; close games favor the Knicks’ maturity, though San Antonio still has a path at home if they clean up late-game decisions.

This has Warriors-over-Celtics vibes: the older, steadier group beating the more talented but greener one, and the coaching gap is part of it.

This is where a young team needs the coach to script the endgame—get Harper on Alvarado, stop the Fox-on-OG isos, and be intentional because Fox’s ankle has clearly sapped his burst.

Fox looked shaky and the big contract starts soon, but on a young roster you can weather one bad deal; last night, he stalled them.

Switching gears, the United States opens the World Cup in Los Angeles with a real squad now—average age twenty-six, thirteen with tournament reps—and the sport’s truth still applies: stars swing outcomes, so set Christian Pulisic up and everything flows.

Paraguay is older and rugged, will pack it in, and a one-nil grind would be just fine to start.

Pulisic’s a careful listener who needed trust early; our job was to ease the pressure and put a game-changer in spots where he could tilt matches.

He struggled late at Milan but found the net recently, and tonight sets up for a bruising match where keeping him healthy and dangerous is the ballgame.

Back to hoops: Game Three drew the biggest Finals audience since the late nineties, and it’s the cocktail of New York’s stage with Wemby’s singular pull, a big who actually moves ratings by making stars retreat at the rim.

He shoots too many threes for my taste, but the novelty is real—think early LeBron chase-downs or Tiger’s first Masters—and the league doesn’t need him to win yet for the story to soar.

Long term, he has to be conditioned for forty-plus in these spots because everything collapses when he sits, which is true of every apex star.

Final note on tonight: Paraguay will try to turn it into a street fight and target Pulisic, but we have more creators, and that building in L.A. will be rocking.

The slate’s loaded and the crowd energy is going to be fierce; I’m hyped for USA.

Seventy thousand plus in Los Angeles—expect a wild scene.