Knicks championship run stacks up against best in history, but that’s not the point

We rank everything in sports. It’s an easy way to argue because there is often no right or wrong answer. It’s how you, out your window, in the time of your life, see the world of sports happening around you. It’s what makes the historical rankings so impossible. Nostalgia is the biggest factor, whether anyone admits it or not. Michael Jordan versus LeBron James mostly comes down to who you grew up watching. Add in the contextual differences of the times, the rules under which they played, the competitive landscape they navigated, and there’s just no objective comparison to be had. 

So here we are with these New York Knicks and their 2026 NBA championship. Where does this rank among all-time playoff runs? It’s an honest debate, because statistically there haven’t been many, if any, like it. The Knicks just finished with a 16-3 playoff record and a +283 point differential. 

On that alone, only nine champions in history have finished with fewer losses over a single playoff run, and only one, the 2017 Warriors, has done so since the league shifted to seven-game first-round series in 2003.  

Meanwhile, that +283 point differential is the best ever. Those 2017 Warriors are next in line at +230, and that was indisputably one of the best teams ever with a 16-1 playoff record. That team won 15 straight games in that postseason before finally losing Game 4 of the Finals. These Knicks won 13 straight, the second-longest win streak in playoff history, and their nine straight road playoff wins are also an NBA record. 

The first road win in that streak was Game 4 at Atlanta, and you could argue that was the most important win of them all. The Knicks were down 2-1 in that series. They were in serious danger of what would’ve been an utterly devastating first-round upset, which likely would’ve been the end of this team. Mikal Bridges would have been a pariah. Karl-Anthony Towns would’ve been on the trade block. Mike Brown very possibly would’ve been fired. 

Instead, the Knicks won the next three games by 96 points to start the run of dominance we are now attempting to rank. In that span, they became the first team in history to win nine straight road playoff games, the fourth team to win all four series closeout games on the road, the fifth team to lose just one game over the final three rounds, and the eighth team to win three road games in a single Finals.

They also finished the postseason with both the No. 1-ranked offense and defense, the first team to do so since the 2018 Warriors. Bottom line: Measured against just about any statistical standard, the Knicks just finished one of the most dominant postseason runs in history. Which raises the question…

Is this one of the best teams ever?

First thing critics are going to say: The Knicks were only a 53-win No. 3 seed. They only had one All-NBA player in Jalen Brunson and he was second-team. Brunson is unbelievable, yes, but he’s no Shaq, Kobe, Curry, Duncan or LeBron. The Knicks played in an Eastern Conference that, on top of being generally regarded as an appreciably weaker test than the one faced by West teams, was even softer this season with the Celtics, Pacers and 76ers basically without their best player for the bulk, or entirety, of the campaign. 

What the supporters will say: You can only play the team in front of you, and when it mattered most, the Knicks swept through the conference semis and finals before taking out a Spurs team that pretty much everyone thinks is on the cusp of being a dynasty in five games.

To be fair, the Finals were much closer than a 4-1 result typically indicates. The Spurs held the lead in 72% of the minutes played. They led by double digits in three of the first four games, had the lead with less than two minutes to play in all four, and had a 10-point lead in Game 5 midway through the fourth quarter. 

If you remove all emotion and examine the series through the win-probably spreadsheet of a casino, the Knicks are lucky to be champions right now. They kept digging themselves into early holes that should’ve buried them. They lost the first quarter of all five games by a combined 57 points. That’s like getting dealt 14 with the dealer showing face card on five straight hands, and winning four of them. 

There is no way to look at those numbers and say the Knicks dominated this series. Put another way, there’s no way to look at those numbers and say the Spurs didn’t dominate this series. But you know what? Sports aren’t played on spreadsheets, as much as we try to act like they are these days. 

Hell, Kenny Atkinson probably thinks the Spurs actually won this series. But they didn’t. The Knicks did. Because when it came time to really find out who the better team was, the Knicks clearly were. They had more ways to win offensive possessions, even against a straight-jacket Spurs defense led by the single-most disorienting defender to ever anchor that end of the floor. 

Leon Rose and his Knicks front office designed it that way. They copied the Boston blueprint, with a stable of two-way wings and a shooting big man to open the floor for all those guys to make drive-and-kick plays. The offense was elite. The defense was very good. And ultimately, Jalen Brunson was the best player on the court. His 45-point masterpiece in the clincher will live forever in New York lore. He averaged 32.6 for the Finals, the most ever by a point guard. 

Nobody cares about the so-called inefficiency. Just as nobody cares about the win percentages that all say the Spurs should’ve won, or should at least still be in the series. What we care about is the actual win. And when it comes time to decide that, Brunson is undeniable. 

His relentless shot creation constantly stresses a defense, even when they’re not going in, because you know they will when it matters. The 13 fourth-quarter points to yank Game 1 from the jaws of defeat. The go-ahead jumper and game-winning steal and free throw in Game 2. The 28 points he either scored or assisted on from early in the third quarter of Game 4 to late in the fourth, a span over which the Knicks turned a 25-point deficit into a one-point lead. This bucket on Victor Wembanyama down the stretch of Game 5 epitomized the type of fearlessness required for a 6-foot-2 David to believe he can conquer a game specifically designed for Goliaths. 

Nobody goes at Wembaynama like that and comes out alive. Ninety-nine percent of the players in the league, nearly all of whom are bigger and more vertically athletic than Brunson, wouldn’t have even attempted that shot, let alone finished it. 

This guy is incredible. One of the best shot makers walking the planet, bar none. He may not be in the class of a Stephen Curry, but if the general rule is that small guys can’t be the “1A” player on a championship team, he has definitely joined Curry as one of the few exceptions in history and great underdog stories of our time. 

Ultimately, the story matters in the way we remember these teams. It’s one thing for the Lakers to win with Shaq and Kobe. The Spurs with Duncan and that whole machine. The Warriors with Curry and Durant. The Big 3 Heat. The Celtics have won 18 championships, so really, how memorable can any single one of them be unless you’re cut from the Bill Simmons cloth with an endlessly researched ranking permanently fixed in your brain? 

It’s the players and titles that we didn’t see coming that truly stand out. Nobody saw Brunson being this kind of player when he was drafted in the second round. He was too small. Too slow. Not athletic enough. A defensive liability. 

When the Knicks signed Brunson to a four-year, $104 million contract in the summer of 2022, pretty much every “expert” from garage bloggers to high-profile yappers laughed at the Knicks for thinking this tiny guard could be the savior of New York basketball that so many other “big” stars didn’t have the nerve to even try to be. LeBron. Durant. Kyrie. None of them wanted anything to do with the Knicks. Too much pressure. Not a favorable enough set of circumstances to win a title and keep adding to their ring-chasing legacies. 

Brunson didn’t necessarily have a choice because he wasn’t being courted by all the high-market majors for max contracts, but he jumped straight into the New York pressure cooker nonetheless. And he never once tried to get out. No trade demands. No drama. At every lost round, all he did was stay in the fight he was never supposed to win. 

By extension, these Knicks took on that same never-say-die, prove-the-doubters-wrong persona and turned into one of the toughest teams, both mentally and physically, that you’re likely to find. When teams win titles, they are notorious for pulling the “nobody believed in us” card, and usually it’s bogus. But in the case of these Knicks, it’s kind of true. At the start of the playoffs, they were a +2200 underdog to win it all. Those are the longest odds ever overcome by an eventual champion. 

Speaking of long odds …

That’s how unlikely this was to happen in the way that it did. You will likely never see a championship won against these kinds of probabilities for as long as you live, but in many ways, it feels like the only way this team, led by the biggest of underdogs, could’ve done it. 

Every step of the way, these Knicks did what very few people believed they could do. The 29-point comeback in Game 4? That was the microcosm of a team and superstar player that, all along, refused to quit in the face of so much doubt. As fans, as human beings, we attach to these kinds of stories. 

The Mavericks taking down the big bad Heat in 2011. The Cavaliers becoming the first team in history to come back from a 3-1 deficit to not only beat the 73-win Warriors, but also to end Cleveland’s 52-year championship drought. The Red Sox in 2004. The Cubs in 2016. Some championships mean more than others, and there’s no doubt this Knicks title is one of them. 

Sure, New York has been spoiled with professional championships by the Yankees and Giants. But the Knicks hold a special place in the heart of what is, deep down in its roots, a basketball city, and they went more than a half-century without a championship. Yeah, this one means more. 

And in the end, that’s what so many people will remember. They won’t think about where this team stacks up against the 2001 Lakers or the 2017 Warriors. They’ll think about where they were when OG Anunoby blocked De’Aaron Fox and tipped in that game-winner. They’ll think back to the day they signed Jalen Brunson, and the trade for Karl-Anthony Towns, and those five picks they gave up for Mikal Bridges, and the foundation that Tom Thibodeau laid. 

For the ones who are old enough, they’ll think back to that 1973 team with Clyde Frazier and Willis Reed. They will think about Patrick Ewing’s missed finger roll, John Starks’ Game 7, Reggie Miller, Pat Riley, the Carmelo years, Trae Young and Tyrese Haliburton and all the heartbreak that preceded the feeling of hearing that final buzzer sound on Saturday night. 

And they’ll think to themselves: it was all worth it.