four-game sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals<\/a>, the DJ at Radio City Music Hall played Prince\u2019s \u201c1999.\u201d<\/p>\nThat was the last time the Knicks had reached the NBA Finals. And as fans sang along to, \u201cSo tonight I\u2019m gonna party like it\u2019s 1999,\u201d they could forget the more than a quarter of a century of mostly bad years since and enjoy the\u00a0record-setting run the current team is on.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no precedent right now as far as point differential. That\u2019s how good this Knicks team is,\u201d said Ari Levine, who was carrying part of a broom as the Knicks swept their second straight series.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s right. The Knicks have outscored Atlanta, Philadelphia and Cleveland by a combined 262 points during their playoff winning streak, the largest margin in any 11-game span in NBA history.<\/p>\n
They will try to continue it against Oklahoma City or San Antonio in the NBA Finals. Fans seemed to have a clear preference for Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs as they poured out of the famous Manhattan venue onto city streets, chanting \u201cWe want Wemby! We want Wemby!\u201d<\/p>\n
But whether it\u2019s him or the defending champion Thunder, Knicks fans believe the run will continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re taking everything! We\u2019re taking the whole thing!\u201d\u00a0rapper Fat Joe posted on Instagram\u00a0from the court in Cleveland, where he was one of the Knicks\u2019 celebrity fans who made the trip.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t that long ago when fans had no reason for such confidence. The Knicks went 17-65 in 2018-19, the worst record in the league, during a stretch when they had a losing record for seven straight seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat year we won 17 games I thought we had reached rock bottom,\u201d longtime fan Anthony Mills said at the Radio City party. \u201cI wasn\u2019t sure that we could ever get this back again.\u201d<\/p>\n
He became a Knicks fan when Bernard King was playing for them in the mid-1980s, a decade removed from their second and most recent championship in 1973. The drought is now so long he believes if the Knicks end it this season,\u00a0star guard Jalen Brunson\u00a0would earn a spot among New York\u2019s most fabled champions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Jalen Brunson wins this championship, he should be Joe Namath. And if you\u2019re old enough, you understand what Joe Namath means,\u201d Mills said, referring to the iconic quarterback who guaranteed the New York Jets would beat the favored Baltimore Colts in the third Super Bowl in 1969, and then delivered.<\/p>\n
Brunson\u2019s team, like Namath\u2019s, will be the underdog. But the Knicks sure aren\u2019t playing like one.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis team is hungry and they know what it would mean to this city,\u201d Mills said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to win the championship.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Knicks fans are ecstatic about their first NBA Finals berth since 1999 after sweeping the Cavaliers in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":696710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,339451,590,85],"class_list":["post-696709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-knicks-nba-finals","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=696709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/696709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/696710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=696709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=696709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=696709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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