After sweeping away the hapless Philadelphia 76ers last Sunday, the Knicks were able to spend the last week in a rare spot as spectators, watching the seven-game clash between the Detroit Pistons and Cleveland Cavaliers while resting, practicing, and rehabbing for the series. Ultimately, it was Cleveland that prevailed on Sunday night in the Motor City, finally finalizing our Eastern Conference Finals clash.
It’s the No. 3 seed New York Knicks (53-29) against the No. 4 seed Cleveland Cavaliers (52-30)
for a spot in the NBA Finals, kicking off on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.
Here’s everything you need to know about this matchup.
Season Recap
You know how the Knicks’ season has gone. After all, you’re reading this on a Knicks site, but just to sum it up.
After firing Tom Thibodeau, engaging in a long coaching search, and keying in on Mike Brown, the Knicks mostly ran back the same team, albeit with new faces Jordan Clarkson and Guerschon Yabusele, while drafting Mo Diawara. It was supposed to be a deeper, offensive powerhouse, and, for the most part, it was. The Knicks started 23-9 and even got some hardware along the way, beating the Spurs in the NBA Cup Final in December. Everything was coming up New York as 2025 turned into 2026.
And then everything fell apart. Starting with a New Year’s Eve collapse in San Antonio, the Knicks lost nine of their next 11 games, capped off by a terrible effort on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at MSG against the tanking Mavs. The sky was falling, we had podcasters saying he couldn’t wait to blow up this core, we had loud calls for Mike Brown’s job, the defense was abhorrently bad, and the season was in a tailspin.
Then, they mollywhopped the Nets by 54 and everything calmed down. After going from 23-9 to 25-18, the Knicks won 28 of their final 39 games, powered by the NBA’s second-best defense over the final 2.5 months of the season. They swapped the disappointing Yabusele for Jose Alvarado and finished the season strong. After struggling through three games with the feisty Hawks, they made the last three games look like varsity playing JV. They then proceeded to make a talented Sixers team look just as helpless, sweeping them in uncompetitive fashion.
Coming off a tremendous 64-win regular season, expectations were high for the Cavaliers with both Boston and Indiana diminished. They were considered co-favorites in the East alongside the Knicks, even amidst the shakiness of prior postseason failures and the increasingly worrying health of Darius Garland’s toe.
A 12-6 start bled into an alarming 17-16 record shortly after Christmas, and the discourse surrounding the team was getting louder. Evan Mobley wasn’t properly progressing, the depth was in and out of the lineup, and Garland was struggling badly when he wasn’t in street clothes. Aside from Donovan Mitchell, this was a concerning operation.
All that changed as soon as January hit, as Cleveland got hot. They were 29-21 entering February, but fully sent things into hyperdrive after a blockbuster move to flip Garland to the Los Angeles Clippers for James Harden, pushing all of Cleveland’s chips into the middle for an all-in push right now. The move was a big success, as the Cavs pushed for the No. 3 seed with a 23-9 finish to the year. They lost more games before New Year’s than they did afterwards.
It hasn’t been easy for them in the playoffs. A tougher-than-expected seven-game battle with the Toronto Raptors took a lot out of them, but they were fortunate to run into a similarly beaten-up Pistons team that they similarly battled to seven games, prevailing on the road despite a blowout home loss with a chance to close it out on Friday.
Regular Season Series
10/22/2025: Knicks win 119-111 (H)
12/25/2025: Knicks win 126-124 (H)
2/24/2026: Cavs win 109-94 (A)
Two of the three meetings with Cleveland had the eyes of the entire world on them on big days. The first matchup came all the way back in October to open the season, where both teams were banged up (no Garland, Mitchell Robinson, or Josh Hart).
The Knicks took two separate 15-point leads, but the Cavs had a response to both, ultimately taking the lead early in the fourth quarter. Despite seeming to have all the momentum, a 14-0 run early in the fourth spearheaded by OG Anunoby and Deuce McBride buried Cleveland to open the season. Jalen Brunson struggled, but Anunoy picked up the slack with an impressive 24/14 performance, while Donovan Mitchell scored 31.
The next meeting on Christmas could not have started worse for the Knicks, as Cleveland burst out to a 19-5 lead early in the first before the Knicks’ second unit slowly ate away at the deficit. The home team somehow managed to take the lead at the half, but once again was blitzed in the third quarter and trailed by as much as 16 with just eight minutes to go.
A Blue Christmas quickly shifted into a White Christmas at MSG, however, as a fourth-quarter avalanche by Tyler Kolek dragged the Knicks back into the game until Brunson brought it home by finishing off a 34-point gem. Kolek and Jordan Clarkson combined to score 41 points on 14-for-26 and 9-for-15 from three, while they survived another big game by Spida (34/7/6) and a big game by Jaylon Tyson.
The third meeting came underway in different circumstances. Harden was in, Garland was out. As the season series shifted to Cleveland in late February, the energized Cavs dominated action for 48 minutes and stifled the Knicks’ offense that couldn’t buy a shot. Mikal Bridges and Brunson combined to go 12-for-36 as a balanced attack from Harden, Mitchell, Jarrett Allen, and Dean Wade proved just enough for a commanding win.
Playoff History
(Cavaliers)
1978 East 1st Round: Knicks won 2-0
1995 East 1st Round: Knicks won 3-1
1996 East 1st Round: Knicks won 3-0
2023 East 1st Round: Knicks won 4-1
Key Stats (Regular Season)
Cavaliers:
Offensive rating: 118.3 (6th)
Defensive rating: 114.1 (15th)
FG%: 48.2% (8th)
3pt%: 36% (13th)
FT%: 77.6% (19th)
Pace: 100.7 (13th)
OREB%: 30.7% (9th)
TOV%: 13.8% (9th lowest)
Points in the Paint: 52.0 (T-10th)
Opponent PITP: 45.6 (5th)
Opponent 3pt%: 37.2% (26th)
4th Quarter Net Rating: +6.8 (3rd)
Clutch Record/Net Rating: 24-18, +14.5 (5th)
Knicks:
Offensive rating: 118.7 (T-3rd)
Defensive rating: 112.3 (7th)
FG%: 47.8% (11th)
3pt%: 37.3% (4th)
FT%: 79.2% (T-10th)
Pace: 97.5 (25th)
OREB%: 32.8% (7th)
TOV%: 13.9% (T-10th lowest)
Points in the Paint: 47.8 (22nd)
Opponent PITP: 43.4 (3rd)
Opponent 3pt%: 36.2% (20th lowest)
4th Quarter Net Rating: +11.7 (1st)
Clutch Record/Net Rating: 21-13, +20.5 (3rd)
Trends:
Knicks since 1/20: 118.5 ORtg (6th), 108.2 DRtg (2nd), +10.3 net rating (3rd)
Cavs since Harden trade: 22-9, 120.8 ORtg (4th), +5.7 net rating (9th)
Coaching Breakdown
Mike Brown (NYK):
Season with team: 1st
Season as head coach: 12th
Career teams coached: CLE, LAL, SAC, NYK
Career record: 507-333 (.604)
Career playoff record: 54-42 (.563)
Best finish: 2007 Cavaliers (Finals appearance)
Mike Brown is entering the postseason as the head coach of a third different team. He’s never won a game past the Eastern Conference Finals, but he’s certainly experienced deep playoff runs as an assistant under Gregg Popovich from 2001-03 and an assistant under Steve Kerr from 2017-22, winning four championships as an assistant coach.
Brown’s philosophy is a stylistic change from former head coach Tom Thibodeau, in that he prioritizes ball movement, spacing, and a drive-and-kick to open shooters (which he calls “sprays”). He was mostly unsuccessful in increasing the Knicks’ pace, showing that the team’s slow play is rooted in the way their captain operates in the offense, rather than the scheme. His biggest success has been increasing three-point attempts, but those have slowly decreased as the season has gone on.
Defensively, Brown has been flexible in his scheme. While Thibodeau always required a true rim protector on the floor, Brown has been more willing to mix up lineups in certain areas. After starting the season with a scheme that funneled the ball towards the middle of the floor into the help, Brown switched the scheme to look to send the ball towards the sidelines after the Knicks endured a month-plus stretch of abhorrent defense, powered by other teams driving and kicking to open shooters.
Kenny Atkinson (CLE):
Season with team: 2nd
Season as head coach: 6th
Career teams coached: BKN, CLE
Career record: 234-248 (.496)
Career playoff record: 14-14 (.500)
Best finish: 2026 Cavaliers (ECF and counting)
Atkinson got his start in NBA coaching with the Knicks, serving as an assistant under Mike D’Antoni from 2008-12 before D’Antoni’s spats with Carmelo Anthony wound up leading to a coaching change. After four good years, he latched onto Mike Budenholzer’s staff in Atlanta in 2012, where he helped groom a future No. 1 seed with four all-stars. It eventually led to him being hired by the Brooklyn Nets in the midst of their deep rebuild.
That deep Brooklyn rebuild finally bore fruit in 2018-19, when a fun collection of players spearheaded by All-Star D’Angelo Russell emerged as a playoff team in a soft Eastern Conference. The tremendous progress that Brooklyn made as a franchise made them a desirable landing spot for Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving that summer in the “Clean Sweep”, but Atkinson never saw them through. He was canned midway through the next season while Durant recovered from Achilles surgery.
He rehabilitated his coaching prospects as a lead assistant under Tyronn Lue in LA with the Clippers, and later joined Steve Kerr’s staff and won a championship in 2022. After JB Bickerstaff was canned in Cleveland in 2024, he has spearheaded a balanced Cavs attack for the last two years, winning NBA Coach of the Year in 2025.
Projected Rotations
Knicks:
Jalen Brunson
Mikal Bridges
Josh Hart
OG Anunoby
Karl-Anthony Towns
–
Jose Alvarado
Deuce McBride
Landry Shamet
Jordan Clarkson
Mitchell Robinson
Situational: Mo Diawara, Ariel Hukporti, Jeremy Sochan
Cavaliers:
James Harden
Donovan Mitchell
Max Strus
Evan Mobley
Jarrett Allen
–
Dennis Schroder
Sam Merrill
Jaylon Tyson
Dean Wade
Situational: Thomas Bryant, Keon Ellis
Injury Report
For the Knicks, it’s all centered around OG Anunoby. He missed the last two games of the second-round series in Philadelphia with a balky hamstring, but all signs point to him suiting up on Tuesday night. Will it look like Game 7 against Indiana two years ago, or will the eight-day layoff heal all wounds?
For the Cavs, they are pretty healthy, but are surely aching from playing 14 high-intensity playoff games in a little over four weeks. The only concern right now is that there’s a stomach bug running through the locker room, but no major player has missed time.
Broadcast Schedule
(The full schedule has yet to be released, this will be updated)
Game 1: Tues, May 19, 8 pm (ESPN)
Game 2: Thu, May 21, 8 pm (ESPN)
Game 3: Sat, May 23, 8 pm (ABC)
Game 4: Mon, May 25, 8 pm (ESPN)
Game 5*: Wed, May 27, 8 pm (ESPN)
Game 6*: Fri, May 29, 8 pm (ESPN)
Game 7*: Sun, May 31, 8 pm (ESPN)
