{"id":1986546,"date":"2026-06-12T12:45:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T09:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1986546"},"modified":"2026-06-12T12:45:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T09:45:53","slug":"miracle-knicks-underscore-the-changing-nature-of-nba-title-contention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1986546","title":{"rendered":"Miracle Knicks underscore the changing nature of NBA title contention"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NEW YORK \u2014 Nobody wanted to leave.<\/p>\n

The one thing I will remember most about being in Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night is not the New York Knicks\u2019 comeback itself, or even the tip-in by OG Anunoby, but the communal joy in the immediate aftermath of the Knicks\u2019 stunning 29-point rally to beat the San Antonio Spurs 107-106 in Game 4 of the NBA Finals.<\/p>\n

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Emotionally, MSG became 20,000 Kelly Slaters riding a perfect barrel on the North Shore, and they weren\u2019t bailing on that wave of euphoria until they got every last carve of the ride.<\/p>\n

From the biggest celebrity in the building to the most remote nosebleeds in what might technically have been New Jersey, they stayed and soaked it all in. Nobody was leaving, the late hour on a school night be damned. Not Taylor Swift, who was dancing in her in seat well after the buzzer went off, not the other courtside fans and celebs who melded into a sea of Knicks players and staffers on the floor and certainly not the working Joes in the nosebleeds near my media seats, who had to be politely told by ushers near midnight, 45 minutes after the game ended, that they needed to leave.<\/p>\n

Nearly an hour after the game ended, fans were still chanting \u201cOG! OG!\u2019 in a line for the men\u2019s restroom in the 400 section.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could feel the abundance of joy from everyone at one time,\u201d Knicks big man Karl-Anthony Towns said. \u201cThe collective joy that came out of everybody for that one moment, to hear the buzzer going off and not to see the ball go in the basket, I think we all felt something, like that emotion that was special.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something that MSG hasn\u2019t had, that kind of moment, in a long time, so shoutout to our fans for real.\u201d<\/p>\n

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If the Knicks win one of their next three games and claim the championship, then the Game 4 comeback becomes etched in history as one of the most significant and memorable games in league annals \u2014 with Anunoby\u2019s tip-in<\/a> a \u201cWhere were you when \u2026 ?\u201d moment on par with the Ray Allen shot, Michael Jordan\u2019s walk-off, Bam Adebayo\u2019s 83-point game,<\/s>\u00a0Kobe Bryant\u2019s 81-point game and Kawhi Leonard\u2019s four-bouncer.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

So while New Yorkers revel in ecstasy for at least one more day, let\u2019s talk a little about what it signifies. One reason New Yorkers are reacting to this playoff run with such unbridled joy is that it seems so unexpected, given fans\u2019 prior beliefs about what championship-caliber teams look like.<\/p>\n

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These Knicks \u2014 along with a few of their brethren from the past half-decade \u2014 might cause us to adjust our assumptions about title contention.<\/p>\n

For starters, there\u2019s the distinct possibility that Anunoby \u2014 generally considered New York\u2019s third-best player, and one whom I said was \u201cOG Anonymous\u201d<\/a> as recently as two weeks ago \u2014 could win NBA Finals MVP. Deservedly<\/i>, he\u2019s had an amazing series and made his greatest impact in the highest-leverage moments.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, here\u2019s an amazing stat: Of the 18 players who have played at least 20 minutes in this series, the lowest offensive rebound rate belongs to \u2026 Anunoby. It was zero<\/i> until the final two seconds of Game 4.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s a relatively low-usage player, and his winning finals MVP would be quite unusual over the last four decades of the NBA.<\/p>\n

Anunoby would be the first zero-time All-Star to win since the Detroit Pistons\u2019 Joe Dumars in 1989 and only the third ever. If he doesn\u2019t get selected in the future, he would be the first never-All-Star to be finals MVP since the Boston Celtics\u2019 Cedric \u201cCornbread\u201d Maxwell in 1981.<\/p>\n

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Which takes us to my second point about the Knicks, and about several teams like them in recent years who have either climbed to the top of the mountain or come tantalizingly close.<\/p>\n

As I noted<\/a> when the series started, New York doesn\u2019t have a dominant alpha player dragging it to greatness. While its best players (Towns, Jalen Brunson and Anunoby) are very good, none of them have made first team All-NBA. In fact, no Knicks player received a single vote for MVP this season \u2026 not even for fifth place.<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s strength also didn\u2019t manifest too heavily in the regular season. While the Knicks technically meet my minimum historical bar for a champion \u2014 a top-3 seed with at least 52 regular-season wins \u2014 they barely clear the hurdle at 53.<\/p>\n

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This is not an isolated incident, either. The Indiana Pacers, a 50-win and No. 4-seeded team, were one Achilles tendon away from winning the crown in 2025.<\/p>\n

Check out other recent champs: The 2023 Denver Nuggets won only 53 games, as did the Golden State Warriors in 2022; both played teams that won 51 or fewer games in the finals. The 2021 Milwaukee Bucks were prorated to just 52.3 wins (that regular season was limited to 72 games because of the pandemic).<\/p>\n

We haven\u2019t had a finals in which both teams won at least 54 games since 2019, something that in the past represented a modest floor for contention. In fact, if the Knicks end up winning this week, only two of the last six champions will have won 54 or more regular-season games.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t always like that, even in recent history. The 14 champions from 2007 to 2020 all won at least 57 games, prorated for an 82-game season. Most of their finals opponents did, too.<\/p>\n

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A New York win would also be another blow for the Great Bracket Breakdown. The post-COVID-19 NBA has been much less chalky in the postseason than it used to be. My historical benchmark of 3 1\/2 playoff upsets per spring (\u201cupset\u2019 being a team without home-court advantage winning the series) has struggled to hit the under lately.<\/p>\n

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What You Should Read Next<\/div>\n
\n \"The<\/p>\n
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\n The Knicks, one win from NBA championship, really look like a team of destiny\n <\/div>\n
\n The Knicks are the chosen ones. It’s just a matter of when, not if.\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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A Knicks win would make this another five-upset year (New York over San Antonio in the finals; San Antonio over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals; the Cleveland Cavaliers over Detroit in the second round; Minnesota Timberwolves over Denver; Philadelphia 76ers over Boston in Round 1), and cement the trend line.<\/p>\n

In 2025, there were six, and Tyrese Haliburton might have made it seven if he\u2019d been able to. The six years from 2020 to 2025 had 31; we\u2019re averaging over five of these a year. The 2020 Miami Heat, 2023 Dallas Mavericks and 2024 Heat made the finals without home-court advantage in any round (although the 2020 Heat technically had no home-court advantage in the NBA bubble).<\/p>\n

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Again, it wasn\u2019t always like that. The six years pre-COVID-19 produced only 20 upsets, lower than my benchmark of 3 1\/2. The 1997 postseason gave us zero<\/i>; <\/i>several other seasons between then and 2015 had only two.<\/p>\n

Those playoff upsets result in clashes of No. 1 seeds in the finals less often than we used to see; that trend was already underway pre-COVID-19. We haven\u2019t had two top seeds meet since \u2026 2016! Before that, it was in 2008. This year\u2019s finals didn\u2019t have either No. 1 seed, marking the third time in six years that\u2019s happened (Oklahoma City and Detroit are meeting in some other, parallel-universe finals on the planet Kepler-22b).<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not getting where I\u2019m going yet, let me lay it out for you: The model of having a dominant regular season built around an alpha star seems to have much less championship equity than it used to. That equity is instead flowing to bracket-breaking squads innocently hiding in the middle of the standings, like the Pacers and Knicks.<\/p>\n

While teams built around a demigod-tier superstar always have a chance \u2014 the 2025 Thunder are one obvious recent example, and the 2026 Spurs could still be \u2014 the Knicks\u2019 success underscores that something else is at work.<\/p>\n

That mechanism, one that also worked for the Pacers in 2025, the Celtics in 2024 and even the Nikola Joki\u0107-driven Nuggets in 2023, is that the NBA is becoming more of a \u201cweak link\u201d league. Superstars will always matter, but in a structure where defenses switch nearly everything and offenses go matchup hunting with ruthless efficiency, an MVP-and-four-guys-from-the-Y roster construction hits a ceiling fast.<\/p>\n

Matchups matter, and so does being able to match up different ways each round depending on what the opponent throws at you. Having the least-bad weakest link can and does matter as much as, or even more than, having the best superstar.<\/p>\n

Look again at the first four games. The Spurs have the best player on the court (even if he hasn\u2019t always played like it in the highest-leverage moments) and a talented group of guards, but the Knicks\u2019 superpower is that all five starters give them something. They have a mix of sizes and skill sets that lets them match up different ways.<\/p>\n

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Sometimes the weakest link is Josh Hart (wiping his brow after his final minute in Game 4 was erased by Anunoby\u2019s heroics); sometimes it\u2019s Mikal Bridges (whom we didn\u2019t see much of in the fourth quarter in Game 4); and sometimes it\u2019s a sub like Game 4 hero Jose Alvarado or conference finals ace marksman Landry Shamet.<\/p>\n

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However, with big forwards like Anunoby and Bridges, two centers they trust (except for foul shots) and go-to guys both big and small in Brunson and Towns, the Knicks can throw more things at opponents and handle more body blows coming back at them.<\/p>\n

Compare that to the Spurs, who have a six-player circle of trust that only includes two players taller than 6 foot 5. When \u2014 lacking an Anunoby of their own \u2014 San Antonio played four guards on the Knicks\u2019 last play of Game 4, and Brunson drew Wembanyama away from the hoop, the board was open for Anunoby\u2019s heroics.<\/p>\n

Yes, it was only one moment in one game in a series that has turned on razor-thin margins, so I\u2019m leery of extrapolating too much from it in a vacuum. But this is a trend we\u2019ve seen for six years now, and it shows no sign of abating. The question \u201cWhat does a championship team look like?\u201d \u2014 an important one if you work in a front office \u2014 has a very different answer now than it did in 2019. The Knicks are just the latest example.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Nobody wanted to leave. The one thing I will remember most about being in Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night is not the New York Knicks\u2019 comeback itself, or even the tip-in by OG Anunoby, but the communal joy in the immediate aftermath of the Knicks\u2019 stunning 29-point rally to beat the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1986546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1986546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1986546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1986546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1986546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1986546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}