GREENBURGH, N.Y. (AP) — The New York Knicks are on a historic playoff run. They still need to win one more round to go down as an all-time great team.
If they can get four more wins — and get them quickly — they would take their place up near the Lakers of Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, or the Stephen Curry-Kevin Durant Warriors, among the NBA's dominant postseason powerhouses.
If they fall to Oklahoma City or San Antonio in the NBA Finals, they risk being remembered as a team that feasted on a weak East, that won a bunch of games right up until the ones that mattered most.
They returned to practice Thursday for the first time since sweeping Cleveland in the Eastern Conference finals, vowing to continue ignoring any type of noise, whether it's how great they have been or that their opponents were not very good.
“When there’s negative things being said about you, it’s important to ignore them. When there’s positive things about you it’s easy to be able to read them to make you feel good, but you can’t do one and not the other,” Jalen Brunson said. “So just block out as best you can.”
The Knicks are 12-2 in the postseason, with a victory margin of 19.4 points per game, and have won 11 straight games. That's tied for the third-longest winning streak within one postseason.
The 2001 Lakers are one of the teams that also won 11 straight on their way to a 15-1 record that year, just shy of Golden State's 16-1 finish in 2017 as the best in league history. Count O'Neal, the MVP of that Lakers championship run and now an ESPN analyst, as a believer in these Knicks.
“They are so good I owe the whole state and all five boroughs of New York an apology," he said during an appearance on “The Rich Eisen Show.”
“They are really good. They have it. It reminds me of that Detroit team that beat us my last year there (in 2004). They just got a bunch of guys that are just together.”
Those who aren’t convinced would point to a road to the NBA Finals that opened up in such a way that the Knicks had no choice but to look imposing.
Start with the final day of the regular season, when Atlanta rested its starters and blew a chance to finish with the No. 5 seed. Instead of facing Toronto or Orlando, tougher defensive teams who could have finished in the No. 6 spot and might have physically taxed them a bit, they Knicks ended up with the Hawks, who were far more finesse than force.
The Knicks took the final three games of that series to win in six games, then found their good fortune was just beginning.
Boston blew a 3-1 lead against Philadelphia, so instead of opening on the road against the second-seeded Celtics, the Knicks drew the No. 7 76ers, who came to New York with just one full day of rest and looked finished right from the start. The Knicks crushed them 137-98 in Game 1, Joel Embiid was too sore to play in Game 2, and it was over soon after.
When Cleveland knocked off Detroit in the Eastern Conference semifinals, it gave the Knicks home-court advantage against another tired team. Instead of facing the top-seeded Pistons, who easily beat them in all three meetings during the regular season, the Knicks welcomed the No. 4 Cavaliers — who played two straight seven-game series — and then had the same one full day off as the 76ers.
The Cavs noted their fatigue almost as much as the Knicks' talent in their remarks after the series, when James Harden couldn't explain if New York was even the better team.
“Obviously they dominated us 4-0 but I don’t know if I can necessarily answer that question just because genuinely I do feel like we are the better team, but series-wise it didn’t show it,” he said.
The Knicks will have another rest advantage in the finals, but not nearly as significant. They will have to open on the road against a team that will be considered the favorite. Las Vegas Aces coach Becky Hammon, while revisiting her previous comments about the 6-foot-2 Brunson that a team couldn't win a championship led by a small player, said the “two best teams are probably in the West, but I’m up for being proven wrong.”
The finals will truly be the final answer.
“Lot of questions, lot of talk about how great we are, how great we’ve been. All that doesn’t matter,” guard Mikal Bridges said. “We’ve just got to worry about being ourselves and stay locked in and go win.”
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba
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