{"id":708963,"date":"2026-06-01T20:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T20:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/708963\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T20:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T20:41:10","slug":"2026-nba-finals-are-the-knicks-this-good-or-was-the-east-just-weak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/708963\/","title":{"rendered":"2026 NBA Finals: Are the Knicks This Good, or Was the East Just Weak?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen the New York Knicks<\/a> swept the Philadelphia 76ers in the second round of the playoffs in dominating fashion, fans debated whether the Knicks\u2019 nine days off before the Conference Finals would cause rust to build or if the rest would give them an advantage. Sportico\u2019s analysis<\/a> determined that rust was not a significant factor, and the Knicks backed that up by sweeping the Cleveland Cavaliers in the next round.<\/p>\n

The rest vs. rust debate has revved back up prior to the Finals, but the benefits of rest may be less pronounced in the Finals because there is more time off before the games start and between each game. The bigger discussion this time around: Are the Knicks actually as good as their 11-game win streak would suggest, or is the Eastern Conference just weak?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Western Conference has been stronger for most of the 21st century, with a winning record over the East in interconference games in 24 of the past 27 seasons. This year, though, the East was, on paper, the fourth strongest it has been since the 1999-00 season. East teams won 49% of their games against West teams.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tThe East\u2019s competitiveness wasn\u2019t just about depth of talent masking a lack of strength at the top. The top four teams in the East went 18-15 versus the top four teams in the West.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn fairness, two of the best Eastern Conference teams bowed out in the postseason before the Knicks got the chance to face them. The Boston Celtics blew a 3-1 lead to the 76ers in the first round and the Detroit Pistons lost to the Cavaliers in seven games in the second round.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the Knicks have shown they can compete with the best of the best. They went 2-1 versus their Finals foe the San Antonio Spurs this year, including a 124-113 win in the final of the NBA Cup in December. New York went 0-2 against the best team in the regular season, the Oklahoma City Thunder, but those losses were by an average of only seven points.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt should be noted that in their 11-game win streak through the middle two rounds of the playoffs, the Knicks outscored opponents by 262 points, more than any team in any 11-game stretch in NBA history, regular season or postseason. The Knicks played teams that were 12th, 19th and ninth in regular-season net rating, respectively, but they dominated those opponents to a historic extent.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tEven if the East was weak, that wouldn\u2019t necessarily indicate anything about the Knicks\u2019 ability to beat the particular team standing in their path right now. The weakest season for the East in the past 50 years was 2004, when the conference won just 37% of its games against the West. The Detroit Pistons didn\u2019t exactly demolish their competition that year, needing seven games to beat the 47-win New Jersey Nets en route to the Finals against the heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers, led by Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O\u2019Neal.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe result of the 2004 Finals? 4-1 Pistons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the New York Knicks swept the Philadelphia 76ers in the second round of the playoffs in dominating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,62680,590,2656,1666,85],"class_list":["post-708963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-data-viz","tag-nba","tag-nba-finals","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708963","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=708963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}