Ernie Johnson set the question carefully on Inside The NBA. The Cleveland Cavaliers had just blown a 22-point fourth-quarter lead at Madison Square Garden, losing Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals 115-104 in overtime. Was this a choke job, or just a great comeback? Charles Barkley did not need a second to answer.
"Hell yeah, that was a choke job," Barkley said. "No, that was a choke job. They start taking air at the ball with six minutes to go like dummies."
It set the tone for a half-hour postgame that pulled no punches. The Cavaliers, the one seed in the East and the defending favourite to come out of the conference, had outscored New York 93 to 71 with eleven and a half minutes to play. They were then outscored 44 to 11 the rest of the way. The Knicks finished the game 6-of-8 from the floor in clutch time. Cleveland scored just six points in the fourth quarter and never recovered.
Barkley refused to soften the assessment, even after Shaq tried to credit the Knicks instead.
"I take my job very serious, and I don't like to get on TV and say people choked, but that was a damn choke job," he said. "I'm very selective when I say that."
Kenny Smith, who normally pushes back on Barkley's harshest takes, agreed with the criticism but pointed at the bench instead of the floor.
"I don't think the coaches from the Cavaliers had great use of timeouts," Smith said. "Me and Chuck was in there screaming, 'Timeout, call timeout.' They let the lead go from 20 to like six. They never called the timeout."
The shot data backed the panel up. Cleveland's first three quarters were full of ball movement and easy looks for Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley. The fourth quarter became a string of one-on-one possessions with the shot clock leaking down, capped by James Harden offering nothing on defence when New York hunted him. Barkley made the same point.
"If you go back and look at the first six or eight minutes of that fourth quarter, they were just going one-on-one," Barkley said. "The shot clock was on their back every single time."
Shaquille O'Neal eventually offered the most generous read of the night, but he also could not make it sound clean.
"I give Brunson a lot of credit, he was fantastic and the other guys chipped in," Shaq said. "But that was a damn gag job right there."
The panel's hardest disagreement came over what the loss means going forward. Kenny Smith argued that one game on the road is one game, and that the Cavaliers had been the better team for three quarters. Barkley would not move.
"This was a bad loss," Barkley said. "Because now the Knicks feel like they stole one at home. They got away with one and now they're going to come out like they hadn't played basketball in all those days. I'm saying if I'm Cleveland, I'm deflated. They can say anything they want to. They're gonna put on the smooth, because let me tell you, that next game is huge."
There was one number that lifted his argument off the floor. In the last 30 postseasons, teams that led by 22 or more points in the fourth quarter were 594 and one before Monday night. The one — the 2012 Los Angeles Clippers over Memphis. The Knicks made it 594 and two.
"This is going to energize the Knicks in my opinion," Barkley said. "They're going to be like, 'Man, we can't come out like that again. We hadn't played, and you know they're going to be ready in Game 2.' So I think that was a really bad loss."
Game 2 tips Thursday night at Madison Square Garden.
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*Originally published on [NBA News Global](https://nbanews.global/article/inside-the-nba-cavs-choke-job-knicks-comeback-ecf-game-1-may-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
