New York Knicks Are One Win Away From Ending a 27-Year NBA Finals Drought

It has been 11,761 days since the following sentence has been written:

The New York Knicks have a chance to clinch an NBA Finals berth tonight.

Frankly, the above sentence should read “The New York Knicks are going to clinch an NBA Finals berth tonight.”

The Knicks closing out a four-game sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers tonight has been a fait accomplish since last Tuesday night, when the Knicks overcame a 22-point deficit with under eight minutes to play to stun the Cavaliers 115-104 in overtime.

But for the sake of factual accuracy and not assuming anything, let’s just stick with stating the Knicks have a chance to clinch an NBA Finals berth tonight for the first time since June 11, 1999, when they beat the Indiana Pacers 90-82 in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals.

Frankly, qualifying the statement gives us all more time to wrap our heads around the idea of the Knicks making the NBA Finals.

That’s how bad the Knicks have been this century. Just the idea of them having a CHANCE to play for a championship — something that should be close to a baseline expectation at least once every half-decade for a Big Apple-based team — has been inconceivable, never mind the idea of actually winning it all.

Six of the other eight New York-area teams in the four major pro sports leagues — the Yankees, Mets, Giants, Nets, Rangers and Devils — have combined to make 17 appearances in the championship round since the Knicks last made the NBA Finals.

And the other two have gotten to the winner-take-all doorstep at least once. The Jets fell in the AFC Championship Game in 2008 and 2009 while the Islanders lost Game 7 of the NHL semifinals in 2021.

The Knicks? They were an iconic franchise in name only and the worst team in the NBA from 1999-2000 through the 2019-20 season, a span in which they went 693-997 (a .410 winning percentage) while winning just three playoff series, including one from 2001 through 2020.

And even that doesn’t properly summarize how poorly they were run. I tried summing it up during last year’s Eastern Conference finals!

Even with their recent success — five playoff berths in the last six years — their .448 regular season winning percentage over the last 27 seasons is the fourth-worst in the league ahead of only the Nets, Charlotte Hornets and Washington Wizards.

But all that’s become ancient history during perhaps the best and most surreal month in franchise history. The Knicks have won 10 straight games since Apr. 23, when they suffered a 109-108 loss to the Atlanta Hawks to fall into a two games to one hole in their first-round series. They have outscored the Hawks, Philadelphia 76ers and Cavaliers by 225 points in those 10 wins — the most lopsided 10-game run in NBA history.

The dominant run has crystalized the sum-is-better-than-the-parts vision of Leon Rose, the one-time super agent who has built the Knicks almost entirely via free agency (Jalen Brunson) and trades (OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart, Karl-Anthony Towns). It has also validated his controversial decision last summer to fire Tom Thibodeau days after he brought the Knicks to the conference finals for the first time since 2000 and replacing him with Mike Brown.

Everything coming together in unprecedented fashion has Knicks fans walking around in a dazed state of delirium, unable to believe their good fortune and wondering if they’ll be too stunned to cry tears of joy upon tonight’s series-clinching win. Even non-Knicks fans are getting into it, understanding we’re all witnessing one of the coolest moments in New York sports history in real time.

Fans or not, we’d all better get used to the idea of the Knicks playing in the NBA Finals against either the Oklahoma City Thunder or San Antonio Spurs. Because there’s a really good chance the math we did to figure out the last time the Knicks had a chance to clinch a berth in the Finals will be dwarfed by the math we’ll do next month trying to figure out how many days have elapsed since May 10, 1973 — the date the Knicks won their most recent NBA title.