The Pulse Newsletter 📣 | This is The Athletic’s daily sports newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Pulse directly in your inbox. Good morning! Tie your series today. There is no better time for flaming hot takes that could soon become irrelevant than right now. In both basketball and hockey, we are done with Game 2s in multiple playoff series. For teams down 2-0, it feels like all is lost, though we’ve seen plenty of groups come back emphatically. For those series tied 1-1, a fluke here could make us think it’s an even series when it’s not.