I’d like to think that it was something Tom Thibodeau said on Monday or Wednesday that ignited the Knicks to those miracle comebacks, halftime speeches that inspired them toward greatness. Except there are two problems with that: 

1. The Knicks played worse in the minutes after halftime in both games that at any other time in those games. So unless he saved his best stuff for random timeouts late in the third quarter, that probably didn’t happen. 

2. Real life doesn’t allow for a lot of inspirational pep talks. That’s generally the purview of movie screens. 

And here’s the thing: A really good locker room talk, delivered by an actor who knows how to make the words dance and sing, is about as good as sports movies get. You suspend disbelief so often when you watch a movie anyway, so why should it matter that none of these would actually happen in real life?