The New York Knicks know when to hold them, fold them, walk away, and run. Heck, recent reports suggest they won’t even count their money no matter how far they are away from the table.
The Knicks are NBA Cup champions, securing the Association’s third in-season championship with a 124-113 triumph over the San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday night in Las Vegas. It’s a win that grants Manhattan its first form of hardwood championship representation in over a decade, its last official title being an Atlantic Division crown in 2012-13.
Leave it to the Knicks to position themselves in one of the most bittersweet penthouses in Association history: the discourse around the NBA Cup, for example, likely won’t get any complaints from New York, which has been on all three knockout brackets and joins the Los Angeles Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks among its champions.
But while there’s no doubt united euphoria among a fanbase that has a long time to use the word “champion” unironically again, time will tell if the 2025 Cup’s ultimate destination.
Will it be the peak of the current crop of Knicks, not unlike what their icy brethren has with the 2014 Eastern Conference Finals or the 2024 Stadium Series? Or are its artifacts due to occupy a corner of the Madison Square Garden concourse, one acknowledged but not worshiped due to the realization of several other, more prominent, even mainstream goals?
Early signs hint toward the latter …
Keep Your Enemies Closer
Perhaps the best compliment one can offer the current Knicks is that they’re boring, at least on the scoreboard. Of the Knicks’ 19 wins this so far this season, only seven have had a margin at at least a dozen.
Only the most pessimistic New Yorker would chide the Knicks for winning games too handily, of course. But it stands to reason that the Knicks could’ve stood to learn a lesson in close quarters. San Antonio, after all, earned its right to face the Knicks by hitting the rolling Oklahoma City Thunder early and not letting up. Perhaps not used to their prey hanging on, the Thunder endured just its second loss of the season.
The current Knicks are already well-versed in the statement victory, with last year’s six-game win over defending champion Boston (which secured a long-sought conference final entry) serving as a de facto graduation.
But it stood to reason they could learn a thing or two about succeeding in “clutch games,” defined by the Association as games where the margin stands at no more than five with five or fewer minutes left. Entering Tuesday, New York was 3-5 in such situations.
Facing a Spurs group that had created some separation with lingering double-figure leads in the second half, New York posted a 35-19 advantage over the final dozen to secure the win. While the nihilistic Knicks observer could argue that’s expected with a supposed top option like Jalen Brunson on the floor, the means of clutch production certainly took on a new identity.
Brunson certainly did his part in the end, as did fellow headliner OG Anunoby. But the Knicks enjoyed the well-timed efforts of depth stars like Jordan Clarkson, Tyler Kolek, and Mitchell Robinson, who kept up a recurring theme prevalent in the knockout portions. Robinson perfectly personified the Vegas moniker of the “City of Second Chances” with his offensive rebounding while Clarkson and Kolek were the leading scorer in the last minutes in Vegas.
New York did it all with depth star Miles McBride out and headliner Karl-Anthony Towns nursing a minor calf ailment.
“You want that for everybody on the team whenever they’re thrown into the game,” Knicks head coach Mike Brown said, lauding the adaptation. “It was evident that we were able to get it done by mixing and matching and with different lineups tonight. I’m proud of everybody in that locker room.”
That’s something the Knicks certainly hope doesn’t stay in Vegas: half of the NBA’s 84 playoff games were decided by less than 10 points last spring … five, including three in the conference finals, were Knick losses. It certainly has to be a feather in the proverbial cap of Brown, who continues to cull his doubters following his controversial arrival in the place of Tom Thibodeau.
“That pressure is manufactured without you as a coach having to try to do it all the time. When you’re able to have success doing it, it breeds confidence in everybody within the organization. That can propel you come the right time when you’re in that environment to be able to handle the pressure because you’ve already been through it.”
“There’s a lot of positives about it. But the most positive is being able to hang a banner up in MSG, the most iconic arena in the league.”
Brun-Sin City
One could charitably view the NBA Cup as a no-win situation for the Knicks: had they fallen to San Antonio, narratives about falling on the national stage could’ve been conjured.
The unspoken yet prevalent Knicks tax, which upgrades common hardwood follies into reliable comedy (a similar tithe exists for fans of New York’s green team), would’ve been granted material for years by a banner raising, but it appears that the team won’t provide such fodder.
The fact of the matter is that the Knicks needed some form of undeniable accomplishment for the Brunson era, which has ended several of the more dubious streaks in Manhattan hardwood history. It would perhaps offer further validation for not only the Brunson era but also the sizable investments in Anunoby, Towns, and Mikal Bridges.
Knicks fans are well-versed in what Brunson has done for the organization, their appreciation well apparent as they took down the neutral nature of Las Vegas on Tuesday.
No one in their right mind was saying that an NBA Cup was the endgame in this endeavor, but some form of hardware was needed to help push the Knicks further on the right path. Even the cursed Carmelo Anthony era is known as a minor champion in the ledgers in the form of the aforementioned division triumph.
Now, Brunson has it, and the Knicks in their current state are undeniably rolling. Granting him the MVP award for the tournament feels like a cliche ending considering what has transpired since his 2022 arrival, but the expected happy endings make for the finest receipts at both the box office and on the hardwood.
This Cup Feels Like a First Sip
Does this “Hangover” kick in after Vegas?
An earner of in-season glory, for example, has yet to earn postseason advancement in the spring. Modern Milwaukee, for example, figures to be an extreme case, as their win appears to have masked larger issues that could eventually lead to Giannis Antetokounmpo’s exit.
The Knicks, however, have the arsenal necessary to ensure that they fulfill the Cup’s apparent purpose of serving as special sneak playoff preview.
They proved that they’re deeper. They proved that they can win under new management. Their unique advantages (i.e. Robinson standing as one of the few traditional, paint-clogging centers left in the league) were on prominent display. There are sterling signs that what they’ve established is sustainable and lasting.
Sure, the value about the Cup and the subsequent celebration will continue to rage on. In this case, however, potential after the hoist is overflowing.
