The Knicks may be on the longest nine game streak in NBA history as they take care of business in the weak East

The New York Knicks defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers on Thursday night, 109-93, to take a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals series. This is not a big surprise. The Knicks are a better team than the Cavs in every area. The Cavaliers let Game 1 slip through their fingers by blowing a 22-point lead with seven minutes to play. The chances of them pulling themselves off the mats after that kind of emotional punch and coming back to win Game 2 were slim to none.

So the Knicks won the game, and will likely win the series to advance to their first NBA Finals since 1999 in search of their first championship since 1973. Good. This is a very good team when it clicks, and to say the Knicks were clicking would be an understatement.

Thursday’s win was the ninth in a row in the tournament. That doesn’t happen very often. After a 2-1 loss to the Hawks in a first-round series that seemed to have all the signs of what could have been a disaster, the Knicks shut out Atlanta with three straight wins, swept the Sixers, and are now up 2-0 on the Cavs.

In that time, they have outscored their opponents by 212 points. That’s the most point differential of any nine-game stretch by any team in NBA history. Not just for the finals. Because anywhere nine games. That’s crazy.

Of the nine

The team’s best point differential over any nine-game period (regular season or playoffs) in NBA history

And here’s how those games break down.

New York is nine

Look at those numbers. These are the explosion. Against playoff competition. It is arguably the best nine games in NBA history.

And yet, the question must be asked: How much of this is indicative of the relative weakness of the Eastern Conference?

I understand that I will not be a popular man among the New York faithful for even asking this question, and I want to be clear that I do not know the answer. I’m just wondering. That’s all. We all know that the East has been weaker than the West, by an impressive margin, for decades. I’m not going down the rabbit hole, that’s just the way it is. LeBron James is not going to eight consecutive Finals in the West. That’s all there is to it.

That said, having a few successful contenders, or even one of them, can create the illusion of conference balance. And maybe the Knicks are that team. They certainly look like a team that can win everything. They have had many talents over the years. But now that talent feels, I don’t know, somehow strong. Built to withstand the rigors of the postseason. A team that wipes out big tracks rather than coughing them up.

Jalen Brunson is an excellent host. Karl-Anthony Towns does it all. Mikal Bridges went from a tough guy at the start of the Atlanta series to averaging 18.7 points on a 68/50/100 split. Josh Hart defines the winning player; the Cavs tried to beat them on Thursday, and he was forced to 26 points and five 3. OG Anunoby is healthy and a perfect player to play.

They are deep. They protect. They shoot. They lead the fourth quarter. Over the past nine games they have shot 53.6% as a team with a 61.7 percent effective field goal percentage. That number one streak spanned nine games since the 1987 Lakers. Number two is the best of all. You have to squint to find anything resembling a real weakness in this group.

However, they did it in Mpumalanga. The Hawks aren’t some kind of honest measure of an opponent. The Sixers were a playoff team. The Cavs needed seven games to get past the Raptors, and are only here because they played an injured Pistons team that counted Tobias Harris as their second big weapon and should have lost in the first round to the Magic. Maybe Boston would give the Knicks a real fight in the second round, but they couldn’t hold a 3-1 lead against the play-in Sixers.

I know how it works, that you can only play who’s in front of you and all that, but I’m looking at a team like Minnesota that will be completely forgotten because they had to play the Nuggets and the Spurs in these championships. This is absolutely wrong. I have long believed that conferences should be a thing of the past as we move into the 1-16 postseason bracket. It will open up all kinds of new matchups. It would eliminate inequality.

That won’t happen. I get it. So we’re left with trying to assess the suitability of these teams in the Eastern Conference using a relative lens. Take last year’s Pacers. They became a formidable team. They probably would have beaten the Thunder if Tyrese Haliburton hadn’t sprained his Achilles. But that’s not really the point. Once you get to the finals, anyone can win one series. It’s the way it is that I wonder about.

Right now I’m watching the Spurs and Thunder beat the hell out of each other over in the Westand I don’t think there’s a sane NBA fan anywhere outside of New York right now who wouldn’t agree that whoever makes it out of this series will have a lot more wear and tear on their bodies than the Knicks will after the way these past nine games have gone. The Knicks are on an easy road right now.

Maybe that’s a credit to how good they are. I’ll say it again, they look terrible. I just don’t know how much to trust the competition. I think they’ll make it to the finals, and that’s where we’ll get the real deal.