For much of the season, the idea of being crowned Eastern Conference champions has felt almost ceremonial. Like a title handed out as a formality — a tribunal offering to the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder before they feast on their next opponent en route to back-to-back NBA titles.
That assumption wasn’t baseless. The Thunder’s absurd 24–1 start tied the Golden State Warriors for the best 25-game opening in NBA history, a statistical sledgehammer reinforcing the notion that everyone else was merely playing for second.
Then something happened over the weekend. Something small, but seismic.
The Thunder lost. They lost in their highest-pressure game of the early season. They lost while fully healthy. And they lost to a San Antonio Spurs team that had Victor Wembanyama on a minutes restriction.
Suddenly, the math changed. Not just for December. But for April. May. June.
The loss cracked the illusion of inevitability. It reopened a door that many around the league had already sealed shut. Maybe Oklahoma City isn’t impervious. Maybe this season isn’t preordained. And maybe — just maybe — winning the East no longer feels like a hollow prize.
Which brings us to the Knicks.
If beating the Toronto Raptors and Orlando Magic to reach the NBA Cup Final is evidence of New York walking the walk after years of championship talk, then Oklahoma City failing to even reach the final is proof that the mountain isn’t unclimbable. The Thunder remain the gold standard. But they’re no longer untouchable.
And if a Western Conference team can knock them off — even in a single-elimination setting — then the Knicks’ title hopes aren’t theoretical anymore. They’re real.
On Tuesday, the Knicks won’t face the preseason favorite. They won’t face the league’s regular-season juggernaut. They won’t face the team chasing history.
They’ll face the best available team. That team is the San Antonio Spurs. And come June, it could be anyone.
For now, the Knicks have a chance to hang something tangible. No, an NBA Cup banner isn’t the ultimate goal. And yes, in this franchise’s unfortunately comical history, it will sit next to Atlantic division banners rather than championship ones.
But banners matter in this building — and the Knicks haven’t had many opportunities to add new ones over the past half-century.
To do it, they’ll have to clear their toughest test yet.
The Spurs are no fluke. An 18–7 start, a semifinal win over the reigning champions, and sustained success despite Wembanyama missing half the early season all point to a team ahead of schedule. They’re young but disciplined. Explosive but organized. A blend of talent and IQ that still carries the fingerprints of the Gregg Popovich coaching tree, with Mitch Johnson steering the ship.
They’re formidable. But they’re not Oklahoma City. And that matters.
The Knicks don’t have a single clean answer for Wembanyama. No one does. But with OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, and Mitchell Robinson, they have options. Miles McBride (ankle) and Landry Shamet (shoulder) are sidelined, which complicates matchups against Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper, and De’Aaron Fox on the perimeter — but Bridges and Anunoby just passed back-to-back postseason stress tests against elite wings last spring.
And then there’s Jalen Brunson. New York’s trump card. The closer. The player who has the last word after everyone else has spoken. Brunson dropped 40 against Orlando with the season’s pressure dialed all the way up, because pressure has a way of sharpening his game rather than dulling it. His points are up this season despite his time on-ball being down.
The stakes won’t get higher than this — at least not until the playoffs.
Tuesday’s NBA Cup Final is the Knicks’ biggest game since the last time they stood on the brink of hanging a championship banner. That was 25 years ago, and it’s been more than twice as long since the Knicks actually won it all.
The Knicks only had a puncher’s chance coming into this season. Theoretically, they still dp. OKC will remain the favorites to go back-to-back even after their loss to the Spurs, because anyone can beat anyone on any given night. Winning four out of seven against those Thunder could be the closest thing to a basketball impossibility.
So was beating them on Saturday night. And with the reigning champs out of the picture, one can only imagine what it might look like should they be clear from the deck in July.
That looks like a real chance, and if the Knicks can seize it — beginning in Las Vegas, if they can get out of dodge with the hardware intact — it may not just validate their December run.
It might foreshadow something much bigger waiting later down the road.
“Being in an environment like this, it’s a great experience for all of us, especially having the feel of a single-elimination game,” said head coach Mike Brown. “There was no, ‘Hey, let’s go get them tomorrow,’ or, ‘Let’s figure it out.’ Everybody kind of hangs on to that during the course of the game,”
