{"id":219477,"date":"2026-05-04T17:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T17:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/219477\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T17:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T17:25:10","slug":"nba-playoffs-2026-new-york-knicks-are-new-favorites-to-win-the-eastern-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/219477\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA playoffs 2026: New York Knicks are new favorites to win the Eastern Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was only a short time ago that the New York Knicks<\/a> were down 2-1 in their first-round series against the Atlanta Hawks<\/a> and it seemed as if the sky were falling for Knicks fans. New York<\/a> turned the series around and won in six games, though, including a historic 140-89 blowout win<\/a> in Game 6.<\/p>\n

Now, the Knicks are the favorites to win the Eastern Conference at sportsbooks.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

New York has the best odds (+150) of any team to make the NBA Finals from the East, ahead of the Detroit Pistons<\/a> (+250), Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> (+325) and Philadelphia 76ers<\/a> (+600).<\/p>\n

The Knicks take over the top spot on the Eastern Conference odds board because the Boston Celtics<\/a> \u2014 the highest power-rated team in the East by oddsmakers heading into the postseason and the previous favorite \u2014 lost to the 76ers in seven games after having a 3-1 series lead.<\/p>\n

Due to Boston\u2019s loss, the Knicks get to take on the 76ers in Round 2 (instead of the Celtics) and enter as a -250 favorite in the series.<\/p>\n

In the other Eastern Conference semifinal series, the No. 1 seed Pistons are slight -120 favorites against the No. 4 seed Cavaliers. Both teams won in Game 7s on Sunday, with Detroit overcoming a 3-1 series deficit against the Orlando Magic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Knicks are 7.5-point home favorites in Game 1 on Monday night against the 76ers. New York hasn\u2019t made the NBA Finals since 1999, when they lost to the San Antonio Spurs<\/a> in five games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was only a short time ago that the New York Knicks were down 2-1 in their first-round…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1262,9127,1266,1267,11352,9,11,1104,10,1264,9126,9138],"class_list":["post-219477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-atlanta-hawks","tag-boston-celtics","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-eastern-conference","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-new-york-news","tag-orlando-magic","tag-philadelphia-76ers","tag-san-antonio-spurs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}