Every spring, as the flowers open and the days warm, Knicks merchandise bursts out of closets in New York City. Hats, T-shirts, and jackets adorn eager New Yorkers across the five boroughs. I wish I were a mature enough person to handle this particular bandwagoning with grace, and I do arrive there eventually. But there’s always an initial tingle of irritation at the stolen valor.
Hey, well-adjusted young urban professional who brought their kid to the playground: You didn’t suffer for that shirt. You weren’t with me watching every Emmanuel Mudiay turnover of the 2018-19 NBA season. The mere name “Isiah” doesn’t trigger a twitch in your eyelid. Your mind is unburdened by the knowledge of what lined Kevin Knox’s draft-day suit. You haven’t encountered the general concept of Mike Sweetney. I know that after each Knicks team flames out in the postseason, you will take that hat off just as breezily as you put it on. You don’t know the pain of watching this franchise discover vivid, exotic ways to fail: the squandered leads, the sputtering fourth quarters, the apocalyptic injuries, the Haliburton bounce. Your hat is just a wardrobe decision; the brain beneath it bears no scars.
That’s what’s so surreal about the spring of 2026: This time, there are no new scars at all. By completing a sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers Monday night, the Knicks have already clinched a spot in the NBA Finals, at least two games before their future opponent. What, in regards to basketball, will we even have to complain about to our grandchildren someday?
The masochists among us are able to watch the Knicks’ current playoff run with the blithe ease of the casual, with the same slack grins on our faces. Nobody’s sweating. An entire month of the NBA postseason has passed, and I have not seen the Knicks lose. I have not needed to pay close attention to the end of regulation, or entire second halves, because they’ve been clobbering teams with such regularity. Going into the Finals, the Knicks have won 11 games in a row, by an average margin of 23.8 points. Only three other teams have ever had winning streaks of that length heading into the championship round. When did the Knicks become a reliable team, and who was ritually sacrificed to make it so?
The last time I was trapped in Knicks psychosis was in late April, when the team was down 2-1 in the first round against the Atlanta Hawks, and I pleaded for them to diversify the offense beyond Jalen Brunson-bound stagnation. To my awe, the Knicks learned from their errors and instantly answered the plea, running sublime sets through Karl-Anthony Towns as a high-post playmaker, and eventually beating the Hawks in six games. This was the revelation I’d been waiting for. It took the franchise two head coaches, two regular seasons, and one postseason, but they’ve finally followed through the logic of the Towns-Brunson build. With these two strange geniuses—one small and stubby, the other big and floppy—you can build a funky, flexible offense that will thwart many different teams and coverages.
Everything about the star pairing that used to frustrate me has since been forgiven. Everyone else is eating, too—even Josh Hart from deep. Mikal Bridges is triumphing over all the slander, my own included, as he once again rises to meet the stern task of the playoffs. Early in Game 4 on Monday, he had made 69 of his last 100 shots. My favorite Knick, OG Anunoby, is healthy and dunking with aplomb; my sole regret of the postseason is that they don’t sell his jersey in infant sizes. Every trade that built this roster, no matter the fan discourse at the time, now appears to me as the hand of god assembling an intricate puzzle.
All my typical Knicks complaints have dissolved during this ride to the Finals. The furrows have been ironed out of my brow. No sleep has been lost to postgame stewing on the sofa about sloppy defensive rotations. The group chat has skewed more toward earnest “heart” reactions than unprintable words. Instead of poring over lineup data, I’m sitting and admiring nice photographs as if they were religious iconography. Might as well canonize Mike Brown while we’re at it.
Yes, I currently harbor only positive thoughts about a sitting Knicks head coach. What the hell has happened to me? The diseased 2007 version of me, who was closely following Mardy Collins stat lines, wouldn’t even know what to make of this present version, clapping like a dunce. The sight of Karl Anthony-Towns in a Knicks jersey, hoisting the Eastern Conference Finals trophy, would have the same effect on 2007 me as a Taki would to a member of the British royal family. I don’t have any muscle memory for this sort of viewing experience. I’m not accustomed to seeing them win painlessly and constantly. I don’t know how to watch my basketball team in ways compatible with human flourishing. The only two modes I’ve known are “romanticize suffering” and “watch Frank Ntilikina highlights.” Not this time.
Regardless of how the Western Conference Finals conclude, the Knicks will face a team that has on its roster a player better than anyone on the Knicks roster. And that’s OK. Either the Spurs or Thunder will limp out of the West a little bloodied from the battle, whereas the Knicks are as fresh as they could be after three rounds, and maybe that’s enough to offset the talent deficit. Perhaps Anunoby truly is the best thing humanity can muster to combat Victor Wembanyama; perhaps Brunson and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won’t get the whistles, and will instead engage in a pure-hearted midrange bucket-getting war.
I welcome either challenge. Let me type it out again so that it feels more real: The Knicks are in the NBA Finals. From their 1999 run, I have one faint memory of the Larry Johnson four-point play, and I’m pretty sure it’s a false one constructed after the fact, but I love it anyway. The Finals themselves are basically a blur, although I do remember that my dad said Tim Duncan looked a lot like our family friend. I can’t wait to have new, actual memories this time around. My Ohio wife put our daughter in a vintage LeBron jersey on the day that the Cavs were swept, but this child will be wearing the correct orange-and-blue onesie next week. Regardless of how my team—our team, her terrible inheritance—fares in the Finals, she will someday grow tired of her dumb dad taking any excuse to rhapsodize about Mitchell Robinson’s offensive rebounding.
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