After 27 years away, the Knicks are back in the NBA Finals with a historic playoff run

Today, there’s no need for caution or hesitation. The New York Knicks are officially back.

One of the NBA’s founding franchises has finally emerged from decades of frustration. Twenty-seven years had passed since the Knicks last reached the NBA Finals in 1999. During that drought, 17 of the league’s other 29 franchises made it to the championship stage at least once. For a city like New York, a sports capital that lives and breathes its teams unlike almost anywhere else in America, the absence had become almost surreal.

That nightmare ended Tuesday night in Cleveland.

Inside Rocket Arena, thousands of Knicks fans made the nearly 500-mile trip from Manhattan and beyond to witness something generations of New Yorkers had waited their entire lives to see: the Knicks crowned Eastern Conference champions once again.

The Knicks: an unstoppable playoff steamroller

This game barely felt competitive, much like the series itself after Cleveland blew a 22-point fourth-quarter lead in Game 1 at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks stole that opener in overtime, and from that moment on, the Cavaliers never recovered.

New York completely overwhelmed Cleveland the rest of the way.

A devastating 20-0 run spanning the end of the first quarter and start of the second put the Knicks ahead by 24 before halftime. The lead eventually ballooned to 45 points in the fourth quarter before New York closed out a dominant 130-93 victory.

It was their third straight blowout win of the series and their 11th consecutive playoff victory overall. The Knicks have not lost in more than a month, dating back to April 24, when the Atlanta Hawks took a dangerous 2-1 series lead in the opening round.

Since then, New York has looked almost untouchable.

The Knicks are now just the fourth team in NBA history to start a postseason run 11-0. The last team to do it was the 2017 Golden State Warriors, who famously opened those playoffs 15-0 on their way to a championship.

Even more staggering is the margin of dominance. Across those 11 wins, against Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Cleveland, the Knicks have outscored opponents by a combined 262 points. No team in NBA history, regular season or playoffs, has ever produced a better point differential during an 11-game winning streak.

That says plenty about how terrifyingly good the Knicks have become at exactly the right time.

It also says something about the weakness of the Eastern Conference this season. Cleveland and Philadelphia, teams that looked dangerous earlier in the playoffs, were simply obliterated by New York. Meanwhile, supposed contenders like the Celtics and Pistons never proved capable of reaching anything close to this level.

Has Cleveland’s Harden gamble backfired?

For the Cavaliers, this offseason now arrives with difficult questions.

Reaching the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since LeBron James left in 2018 should have been a major accomplishment. Instead, it feels more like the bare minimum for a team built to win immediately.

And the manner of this collapse makes everything harder to ignore.

Cleveland pushed all its chips to the center of the table before February’s trade deadline by acquiring James Harden and breaking up its young core, sending Darius Garland away in the process. The move was designed for one reason only: to win a championship now.

Without Harden, they probably do not reach this stage. But at 36 years old, with 37 approaching in August, the future Hall of Famer has increasingly become a major defensive liability.

Donovan Mitchell delivered his usual scoring numbers again Tuesday night with 31 points, but he still struggled to elevate the players around him. And perhaps most concerning of all is Evan Mobley, once viewed as a future superstar, but now a player many around the league no longer expect to become the face of a contender.

That is a harsh reality for a 24-year-old who entered the NBA with enormous expectations.

Jalen Brunson has changed everything in New York

Across the floor stood the clearest proof that smart team-building still matters in the NBA.

The Knicks’ decision to bet on Jalen Brunson has become the franchise’s best move in decades.

Brunson received the Eastern Conference Finals MVP trophy from Knicks legends Walt Frazier and Patrick Ewing, a symbolic passing of the torch for a player who has transformed basketball in New York.

At 6-foot-2, Brunson is now chasing a place alongside Isiah Thomas, Tony Parker, and Stephen Curry as the only players under 6-foot-3 to serve as the defining superstar of an NBA championship team and win Finals MVP.

When Brunson arrived from Dallas in 2022, he looked like a strong addition. Nobody truly expected him to become the centerpiece of a title contender.

That changed quickly.

The Knicks front office spent the next several years building perfectly around him. Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, and OG Anunoby cover for Brunson defensively, while Karl-Anthony Towns stretches the floor and creates the spacing needed for Brunson to dominate in isolation and from the midrange.

Now, the Knicks’ unquestioned leader looks like a player who believes absolutely anything is possible.

The final challenge awaits

The Knicks now get more than a week off before the NBA Finals begin on June 3, a massive advantage after tearing through the Eastern Conference with minimal resistance.

And they will need every bit of that rest.

Because whoever emerges from the Western Conference will represent an entirely different level of challenge.

Whether it is the Oklahoma City Thunder or the San Antonio Spurs, the Finals will feature what many consider the two best teams in basketball this season. Their series, tied 2-2, has already become one of the most physical and emotionally draining playoff battles in recent memory.

That matters.

By the time the Finals begin, the Western Conference champion could arrive battered and exhausted, while the Knicks enter fresher than they have been at any point all postseason.

This will be New York’s third NBA Finals appearance since winning the title in 1973. In 1994, the Knicks lost in seven games to Hakeem Olajuwon and the Houston Rockets. In 1999, they fell in six games to the Spurs at the beginning of the Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich dynasty.

This time will not be easy either.

In fact, the Knicks probably will not even open the Finals as favorites.

But right now, they look like a runaway train, and somebody is going to have to find a way to stop it.

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