The Buck stops here but the New York Knicks will play on.
New York earned a prize in absentia on Saturday afternoon: with the Milwaukee Bucks’ 122-99 defeat to the Atlanta Hawks (as well as owning the season series tiebreaker over Milwaukee), the Knicks are assured to finish no worse than 10th place in the Eastern Conference. That guarantees them entry to at least the Play-In round and access to an 83rd game in the 2025-26 season.
The Knicks (43-25) are the third team in the East (and ninth overall) to earn such a privilege, joining their conference’s respective top pair of Detroit and Boston.
Larger aspirations, of course, follow this Knicks group, which sits 1.5 games behind Boston for the runner-up spot on the Eastern bracket. Fortunately for New Yorkers anticipating postseason Madison Square Garden parties, the Knicks are relatively well-distanced from the Play-In Tournament, up five games on seventh-place Miami entering Sunday play.
Currently stationed in the third spot, the Knicks would play the sixth-ranked Toronto Raptors if the season ended this weekend.
The Knicks are closing in on their fourth consecutive playoff spot, seeking their first strung quartet of postseason appearances since a 14-year streak between 1988 and 2001. Their magic number to secure an automatic spot on the traditional bracket stands at nine and they’ll get a chance to eat into that digit on Sunday night at home against Golden State (8 p.m. ET, NBC).
