The Knicks’ Game 1 comeback against the Cavaliers could prove they are the team of the end
I indulged a bit, I’m about to fall in love with basketball. The best teams in the NBA often operate on the same two tracks. There is an obvious, outwardly driven pursuit of heroism, which boils down to beating the team in front of you. Then there’s the quiet, internal pursuit of what a team finds best for itself. Figuring out how it should play and who needs to take what roles before reaching a rare form of basketball consensus.
Not all champions get there. You can be talented on your way to the title. Not all contestants make it there and become champions. The Pacers last season comes to mind as one of the all-time “greater than the sum of its parts” teams in league history. When you get both, you achieve a kind of basketball Nirvana. Think of the 2014 San Antonio Spurs and their whirlwind of ball movement or the 2011 Dallas Mavericks digging deep enough to defeat a great Miami Heat team. These teams are not just champions. They are honored years after their departure, reaching the level of basketball immortality reserved for the most beloved teams in history.
We have a long way to go. Seven straight wins, four of which would need to be against the heavily favored Western Conference champion. But with each passing game, it’s starting to feel like the New York Knicks could be that kind of team. That they find themselves in the middle of the playoffs and emerge as the team of the future in 2026.
The ball started rolling after Game 3 of New York’s first-round series against Atlanta. Karl-Anthony Towns has spent the year expressing frustration with his role. Everything clicked into place for him in Game 4. Mike Brown began using him more effectively as a scoring center, working as a passer behind the arc, and the entire offense stepped up. With Towns playing the best defense of his career and the rest of the team locked in around him, New York won its next seven games by a combined 185 points. These are 2014 Spurs-esque games, albeit admittedly against much lesser opposition. They are the ones who make you feel like the Knicks are playing a different game than their opponent.
That wasn’t Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. The Knicks, coming off a nine-day layoff that was longer than the 2026 All-Star break, were flat for three and a half quarters. Trailed by 22 points with about seven minutes left on the clock. But the Knicks didn’t take their foot off the gas.
They couldn’t, because last year, they were on the other side of a game like this. The Pacers led by 14 with 2:51 left in the fourth quarter of Game 1 of last year’s Eastern Conference Finals. We know how the game went. Aaron Nesmith’s avalanche 3s. Lazy Knicks offense that leads to turnovers and bad misses. Missed free throws. Tyrese Haliburton’s miraculous jump shot over the backboard at the buzzer to send the game into overtime. One of the worst in franchise history.
Although the series would go on for five more games, that game was the death knell of the old Knicks, a loss that cost Tom Thibodeau his job. He built a culture that got them there, but he couldn’t adapt to get them over the line. The correction he refused to make is the one that swung this game for the Knicks.
Josh Hart promised to come off the bench before Game 6 of New York’s second-round series against Boston last season. Thibodeau declined the offer despite mountains of ineffective data suggesting he should make the switch. New York lost Games 1 and 2 against Indiana largely because of minutes lost by their starters. He took out Hart in Game 3, but backed up center Mitchell Robinson. Despite having a full-time shooting guard in the City, Thibodeau refuses to count on the five-man roster to be unstoppable.
Cleveland didn’t guard Hart all night. He made just one of five 3-point attempts. With 9:59 left in the fourth quarter, he was ejected for the final time. With 7:52 left in the fourth quarter, the Browns finally pulled the plug on the fix fans had been waiting two years for: four starters and a top shooter (this time, Landry Shamet). From there, the Knicks outscored the Cavaliers 44-11.
The strategy was not only simple but familiar. For the past several years, the Knicks have easily reverted to the Jalen Brunson-ball, allowing him to dominate the offense at everyone else’s expense. The whole group lost its rhythm. It went into their defense. Everyone seemed unhappy.
The Knicks didn’t face that at the end of Game 1 on Tuesday night. The team knew the job and executed with anticipation: play your part on defense, shut down the offense, and watch Brunson inflict NBA-sanctioned brutality on James Harden in one of the most epic switch-hunting stages in NBA history. Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson certainly helped by waiting until the lead was cut to five to call a timeout and make adjustments, but by then, the building was shaking. The adrenaline was flowing. Destiny had officially entered.
At this point, Cleveland finally started to get the ball out of Brunson’s hands. His colleagues were ready. An Evan Mobley 3-pointer pushed Cleveland’s lead to eight, but he topped it with two 3s of his own. And then, with 45 seconds left in the tie, Shamet got his Haliburton moment with one of the sweetest bounces in Madison Square Garden history.
If that doesn’t sound like fate, this will. Harden and Brunson traded two-point baskets. Cleveland had a chance to win it on the last possession. Sam Merrill, one of the NBA’s best shooters, challenged for the win. Listen carefully to the sound in the picture. It’s so close to going in that Mike Breen started to say the word “bang” before it even came out, apparently surprising the highly decorated NBA broadcaster as much as the rest of us.
You could call the Knicks an army team. Hey, champions who haven’t even drafted a single starter are pretty rare. You could call this game a fluke, or a ridiculous exploitation of one mismatch that the opposing coach refused to address. You can dismiss this whole New York run as a junior varsity tournament while the big boys win it out West.
But there’s a lot more going on here than just one win, or a little beating. A group of players that has teetered on the brink of dysfunction for the better part of two years together is finding something, some kind of cohesion and team spirit, that it lacked a year ago. Something the organization has rarely achieved during its 53-year championship drought.
This completely falls apart if one player doesn’t sell out. If anyone fails to play defense because they’re tired of watching Brunson drive, the Knicks lose. If Hart’s ego can’t be benched, the Knicks could lose. If Bridges lets the “they traded you five first-round picks” criticism get him down, the Knicks lose. If OG Anunoby can’t recover from his hamstring injury, the Knicks lose. If Towns doesn’t embrace his new role and the few shots that come with it, the Knicks lose. And if Brown hadn’t fostered an environment that not only magnified everything, but made each part fit fully into the biggest stage of all, the Knicks almost certainly would have lost.
I don’t know if the Knicks will win. They will have less talent than anyone who wins the Western Conference, and talent often wins championships. It doesn’t happen often. The Pacers had less talent than the Thunder and could have beaten them even if Haliburton’s Achilles tendon didn’t tear. The Knicks have played well against the Spurs this season, beating them twice. As of this writing, San Antonio has a 1-0 lead in the Western Conference Finals, and the Knicks will benefit from a long, physical series between the two best teams in the regular season. Ultimately, however, heroism is driven by external factors. The Knicks can’t control who they play or how good they are.
But inside, they’ve got it. They have found their best selves, the team they always needed to be to give themselves a chance to win a championship. If you believe in your destiny or the basketball gods or anything like that, you probably believe that they will be rewarded for that. Of course they were in Game 1. How can you be in love with basketball?
