The Knicks Made Me Believe Again

Up until the night of June 13, 2026, the New York Knicks were the only sports team I cared about that had never won a championship in my lifetime.

Up until the night of June 10, 2026, I had assumed that a team down 29 points in the NBA Finals against one of the league’s elite defenses couldn’t possibly win that same game, much less the whole series.

Up until the night of June 5, 2026, the very idea of the Knicks winning multiple Finals games on the road against a 22-year-old phenom — one who may end up dominating the league in the not-so-distant future — was a nigh-impossible notion, at least in my mind.

Up until the night of May 25, 2026, I couldn’t have possibly imagined the Knicks winning the Eastern Conference Finals in a sweep, much less doing so to cap off an historic 11-game win streak where their average margin of victory was in the double-digits.

Up until the afternoon of May 10, 2026, I didn’t think it was possible to sweep a team with Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey.

Up until the night of April 30, 2026, the very idea of the Knicks winning a closeout game by over 50 points — including at one point holding a 60-point lead — was risible, even in the first round.

Simply making the NBA Finals and losing would have been a major accomplishment on its own given the circumstances.

To say that this Knicks postseason run has been full of surprises is a massive understatement. To say that I’m happy about my favorite team in my favorite sport finally winning a championship for the first time in over 50 years is also a massive understatement. To say I genuinely expected something like this to happen this year (or any year) would be a lie.

Do You Believe in Unlikelihoods?

By any measurement that matters historically, the Knicks entered this postseason with championship aspirations but not serious championship expectations. They were the third seed in a fairly weak Eastern Conference, increased their year-over-year win total by just two, and experienced multiple bizarre losing streaks throughout the year, often struggling to find a cohesive and consistent offensive strategy.

Jalen Brunson remained clutch as ever but still presented problems on defense, Karl-Anthony Towns regressed a little bit (and also struggled defensively), OG Anunoby still missed games due to injury, and Mikal Bridges continued to draw excessive criticism considering the high price the team paid to acquire him. The bench still appeared relatively thin, just as it was last year. Simply making the NBA Finals and losing would have been a major accomplishment on its own given the circumstances.

After this two-month tear, all of that negativity is gone.

Meanwhile, the higher two seeds in the East included the up-and-coming Detroit Pistons, who absolutely trounced the Knicks multiple times in the regular season; and a Boston Celtics squad that exceeded all expectations and even had divine luck in Jayson Tatum returning from an Achilles tear earlier than anyone reasonably could have expected. I haven’t even mentioned the titans in the West, with a dominant Oklahoma City Thunder team looking to win back-to-back titles, the lofty San Antonio Spurs with one of the best young cores I’ve ever seen, and multiple other teams that would have reasonably challenged New York for the third seed. 

But Then…

And yet. And YET. The Orange and Blue recovered from a bizarre 1-2 series deficit in Atlanta and went on statistically one of the most dominant playoff runs in NBA history, rivaling greatness displayed by the 2017 Golden State Warriors and 1996 Chicago Bulls.

Brunson played like every bit the superstar hardly anyone believed he could have been just a few years ago. All of a sudden, Karl-Anthony Towns (KAT) became an elite playmaker and the only big man who could credibly guard Victor Wembanyama. Bridges and Landry Shamet simply couldn’t miss shots anymore. OG Anunoby looked at times like the best player on the court and made one of the most clutch plays anyone has ever made in a Finals game. Mitchell Robinson crashed the boards so thoroughly it made Cleveland’s front court look completely pedestrian.

And then, for the icing on the cake, this team came together to take down a young but hot Spurs team in just five games, erasing double-digit deficits in every single win. 

The Knicks winning in the NBA Finals is a great enough story on its own. But this Knicks team in particular, with these players? I’ve never seen anything quite like it in my life. Before this run, KAT was destined to exist in a weird place where he was simultaneously great and disappointing. The Knicks felt like a laughing stock for giving up so many assets for Bridges and dishing out big contracts to non-All-Stars like Anunoby and Josh Hart. Jalen Brunson’s excellent play over the past three seasons already made him a New York legend, but nobody outside of the five boroughs would have called him one of the best players in the league, much less someone likely to win Finals MVP.

But none of that mattered. They proved everyone wrong, even me. Brunson and KAT are superstars, with the former now officially the King of New York. OG is one of the most underrated forwards in the league. Mikal proved that “fuck them picks” can be a reasonable strategy. Josh Hart will go down as an all-time glue guy. Landry Shamet earned himself probably an extra $5 million per year in free agency. These were the players nobody really thought could compete for a title until it became clear that nobody was going to beat them. I joked with many friends over this run that the Knicks had The Mandate of God, but how else could you explain all this?

Hunger Is the Best Sauce

Any moderately-informed fan of the sport of basketball knows that the New York Knicks had been one of the more disappointing, discombobulated, and directionless franchises in professional sports from the early 2000s until the early 2020s. This was an era with only a handful of positive highlights and countless moments of torture and despair. Part of rooting for the Orange and Blue during these years was a constant exercise in talking yourself into the potential positives of trades, free agent signings, and coaching hires you knew deep down wouldn’t work out.

Oh, look, the Knicks signed Zach Randolph even though they already had a front court of non-shooters who couldn’t play defense? He can figure it out, he’ll be a star… a few years later in Memphis. Hey, they traded a ton of draft picks and all their good young players for Carmelo Anthony, who likely would have signed there in free agency anyway? It’s fine, it’s not like constantly surrounding Melo with aging veterans who would crumble into dust the second the postseason starts will backfire. Cool, we traded an UNPROTECTED FIRST ROUND PICK for Andrea Bargnani, one of the biggest busts in recent draft history? Hell, it’s not like he’ll be responsible for one of the most baffling plays I’ve ever seen in a basketball game.¹ 

I’ve had countless discussions with fellow Knicks fans over the years that are objectively laughable in retrospect. One person told me that there was “absolutely no way” LaMarcus Aldridge wouldn’t sign in New York in free agency, even though the two sides never even met to discuss an offer. My dear friend Alan, whose memory is a blessing now more than ever, once told me that Ron Baker “has moxie” with the utmost sincerity. Just a couple years before that, he and I had a somewhat heated debate over whether the team could develop Alexey Shved into a functional rotation player. Reader, they could not.

It’s Different for Some of Us

I present these anecdotes not to showcase how bad things had gotten for New York’s most beloved basketball team, but to explain that the joy, euphoria, and excitement from the Knicks finally winning it all feels particularly earned by people like me.

We trudged through the mud for years while watching our friends from Boston, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Miami win multiple championships, in some cases with completely different rosters each time. We had to suffer the indignity of failing to make the playoffs time and time again but never emerging from the ashes with a Blue Chip prospect in the draft. We even took cold comfort in watching so many beloved players — David Lee, Channing Frye, J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, Jeremy Lin, Trevor Ariza, Timofey Mozgov, Isaiah Hartenstein — hold up the Larry O’Brien Trophy while wearing another team’s colors. 

I had grown so used to failure that the highest level of success felt completely out of reach… The Knicks won, and I no longer believe anything is impossible for them, or impossible for anyone. I can feel hope again, and if I can feel it here, I can feel it anywhere.

I welcome (and will always welcome) all the bandwaggoners to take part in the celebrations, but this all means something different to fans like me. I rooted for the Knicks when they were the most pathetic losers, when even scraps of success felt an oasis in a desert. I celebrated the Knicks not getting swept by the Hawks in 2021 with no shred of irony or sarcasm. I was exuberant when they won a December 2017 matchup against the Celtics with Michael Beasley as their best scorer, since that was the only time that year the Knicks made me feel something other than disappointment and regret.² 

I’ve talked myself into tons of awful head coaching hires, and convinced myself many times that forgettable guys like Toney Douglas, Jared Jeffries, Lance Thomas, Chris Copeland, Lou Amundson, Chris Duhon, and Tim Thomas could be essential rotation players on a good team.

Hope (Finally) Springs Eternal

Now, I get to bask in the tremendous glory of an unlikely team going on an unlikely run for the championship, feeling a unique kind of elation I may never experience ever again. Ultimately, that as much as anything else is why this title means the world to me: I had grown so used to failure that the highest level of success felt completely out of reach. Even if there was always a part of me believing things could get better, for the longest time, they just didn’t, and that lack of improvement never surprised me. If anything, it only made me feel like a chump for believing otherwise in the first place. Some kind of inevitable catastrophe would always undercut any glimmer of hope. 

After this two-month tear, all of that negativity is gone. The Knicks won, and I no longer believe anything is impossible for them, or impossible for anyone. I can feel hope again, and if I can feel it here, I can feel it anywhere.³ I know that’s a silly and saccharine sentiment, but I can’t deny it and don’t even want to.

Are the Knicks going to win it all again next year? I don’t know, and honestly right now I don’t care. I can — and will — enjoy this moment forever.

---

1. Honestly, this move still kills me inside. ↩︎
2. Kristaps Porzingis, a former Knicks star who I once thought could take us to the promised land, went 0-11 in this game. ↩︎
3. I refuse to believe the Knicks finally winning a title the same year New York elected a socialist mayor is a coincidence. Argue with someone else! ↩︎