The New York Knicks are having what is, at least purely statistically, one of the greatest postseason runs in NBA history. The numbers are absolutely jarring. As Nate Duncan has been tracking throughout the playoffs, the Knicks now have the most lopsided three-, four-, five, six-, seven-, eight-, nine-, 10-, 11-, 12- and 13-game point differentials in playoff history. Their +18.7 net rating is not only the best in playoff history, but would beat any regular season any team has ever had in NBA history as well. Their current 10-game winning streak is just the fifth 10-game playoff winning streak in NBA history, according to The Athletic.
What we’re witnessing here is an almost unparalleled run of playoff dominance. Between Game 4 of their first-round series with the Atlanta Hawks and Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the New York Knicks have been arguably the greatest statistical playoff team the NBA has ever seen. They can make it 11 in a row, finish off a sweep of the Cavs and make their first NBA Finals since 1999 on Monday night.
Yet it’s their impending Finals competition getting a majority of the buzz. The Knicks currently have the most efficient offense in playoff history at 124.1 points per 100 possessions. However, up until Sunday, they had been No. 2. Their historic run was overshadowed by an Oklahoma City Thunder team that had been scoring more up until they were forced to play Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals without secondary shot-creators Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell.
It summed up the Knicks’ position in the discourse nicely. No matter how well they play, they will be little more than cannon fodder for the Thunder in the NBA Finals. If it’s not them, it’ll be the San Antonio Spurs.
That’s the prevailing sentiment surrounding the Knicks in this moment. The real NBA Finals are taking place on the other side of the country. The Knicks are running through the junior varsity conference. They didn’t even have to play the top two seeds within that conference, as the Celtics and Pistons bowed out early. This is fake, and once the Knicks encounter a real contender, all of those historic numbers are going to go up in smoke.
Yes, the East is weak, but…
We can at least acknowledge the grains of truth in that argument. The Knicks have now played three playoff rounds without seeing a defense ranked higher than No. 10 in the regular season. That’s a rarity. They haven’t seen a top-five offense either. Cleveland is ranked No. 6, but has had unusually poor shooting luck in the Eastern Conference Finals, making only 32.1% of their wide-open 3s thus far in the series.
Maybe if Sam Merrill’s half-bang 3 goes in at the end of Game 1, this series looks different. Maybe Philadelphia is more competitive with New York if Joel Embiid were healthier. Maybe the entire path looks different if Cleveland hadn’t tanked its way into the No. 4 seed down the stretch in the regular season. The Knicks have played a relatively weak set of playoff opponents. There’s no getting around that.
But to dismiss what the Knicks are doing on the basis of the teams they’re playing would be enormously reductive. LeBron James won this conference nine times. He never did so in quite such dominating fashion, and while he was often a Finals underdog, his teams were never dismissed to the degree that the Knicks have been this season. The Eastern Conference has been worse than the West for the better part of three decades now, yet eight of the past 20 champions have come from the East.
The competition here may be weak comparatively, but these are still playoff teams, and the Knicks are crushing them. They’d be hearing less of this if the Celtics and Pistons had held up their end of the bargain in the earlier rounds. They didn’t. They lost as higher seeds, and the Knicks have killed the teams that beat them. You have little control over who you play but quite a bit of control over how you play. This may have been a relatively weak path through the Eastern Conference, but it’s not overwhelmingly weaker than the Eastern Conferences other finalists have faced. If these statistical heights were so easily reachable, someone else would have done this.
The Knicks can have the highest of highs
This isn’t just a small-sample fluke, either. Though the Knicks hit another gear in Game 4 against Atlanta when they rebalanced their offensive approach, they’ve been pretty close to the Spurs and Thunder statistically for months now. From the end of December through Jan. 20, the Knicks went on a disastrous 2-9 stretch that likely inspired a lot of this mistrust. From that point through the end of the regular season, the Knicks had a better defensive rating than the Spurs and a better offensive rating than the Thunder. Only the Spurs and Hornets had better net ratings in that window.
Those earlier games do count, obviously, but recent history suggests that they’re far less indicative of playoff quality than the later ones. The Indiana Pacers were below .500 on New Year’s Day last season. They went 34-14 from there, won the East, and may have beaten the Thunder if Tyrese Haliburton hadn’t torn his Achilles in Game 7 of the Finals. A similar story played out for Dallas in 2024. The Mavericks were the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference as late as Feb. 13. They closed the season on a 24-10 run and wound up reaching the Finals.
When the Knicks have played the Thunder and Spurs head-to-head, the games have all been close. They lost by three and 11 to the Thunder. They beat the Spurs twice and lost their third game against them by two. You might argue that Jalen Williams missed the closer Thunder game, and that Victor Wembanyama’s minute total was still being managed closely in two of the Spurs matchups.
But injuries are a part of the game, and they’re going to factor into the Finals. If the Knicks finish their sweep of the Cavaliers on Monday, they’ll have a substantial rest advantage over the Western Conference champion. Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell are currently hurt for the Thunder. De’Aaron Fox missed the first two games of the Western Conference Finals for San Antonio, and Dylan Harper is playing through an adductor injury. This is one of the most physical series in recent playoff history. The winner is coming out of it bloodied and bruised.
They still might win. Even if the “real Finals” talking points are a bit exaggerated, the Thunder and Spurs had the best wire-to-wire résumés in the NBA. They have the two best players in the league. They are entirely justifiable favorites over the Knicks.
But the notion that the Larry O’Brien trophy is effectively getting handed out at the end of the Thunder-Spurs series is just getting out of hand. The Knicks have been playing at a championship level for four months now. They’ve played these teams competitively all year, they’re destroying everyone the East puts in front of them, and they’ll probably be the fresher team when the Finals ultimately arrive. There’s just too much evidence supporting the idea that the Knicks are genuinely capable of winning the NBA championship at this point to treat this as a fluke.
