Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks have been on a rampage as of late, pulling off a blowout win Thursday night on the road against the Boston Celtics that raised eyebrows across the NBA landscape. Brunson has been a fringe MVP candidate throughout the season, and the Knicks don’t appear to have missed a beat despite the recent news that All-Star forward Julius Randle would miss the remainder of the season due to injury to the shoulder. sustained at the end of January at home by winning against the Miami Heat.
However, not everyone is so convinced that the Knicks will make it very far in the upcoming NBA playoffs. As things stand now, the Knicks are expected to face the Indiana Pacers in a first-round playoff series, with New York retaining home-court advantage for proceedings. Recently, former NBA MVP and current analyst Charles Barkley dropped a prediction for that hypothetical series that has Knicks fans seething.
“The Pacers will beat the Knicks if they play in the playoffs,” Barkley said on the TNT show Inside the NBA , for New York Basketball on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter.
One of those buzzing Knicks fans was none other than famed actor and Madison Square Garden regular Ben Stiller, who took to his account on X, to politely disagree with Barkley’s statement.
“Big fan of Charles. Charles is a brilliant basketball mind and a television personality I could watch all day. Charles is wrong,” Stiller wrote bluntly.