Many years ago, I got jumped. Didn’t end well. Concussion. Contusions. Fractured wrist. A thumbprint on my neck, where one of them choked me.
I’ve revisited the scene since. The first time I got all tingly and jumpy. Less and less ever since. It doesn’t hit the way it used to. Sometimes you can measure how from you’ve healed from a trauma by returning to the scene of the crime.
The New York Knicks are 2026 NBA champions, something that would’ve sounded unbelievable as recently as two or three years
ago because of where the Knicks were two to three years to five to 10 to 15 before then. I continue to struggle to find words that can capture the feelings I’m feeling this glorious spring. So how about some numbers? Maybe that’s the best way to measure just how far the Knicks came to get where they stand today, as champions of the world (whose owner already promised to pull the plug on the roster. You can lead a horse’s ass to the sparkling waters of the promised land, but you can’t stop him from assing).
First of all, to appreciate just how good the Knicks are now, some context about before. (And if you’re interested, we did run a mailbag yesterday. But between the Knick parade and the capitalist illogic that demands every writer here published eight pieces a day, a lotta good tracks get lost in the shuffle. So click here if you missed it)
RELATIVE RATINGS
The Knicks have rarely been good, historically. Even being 76 games over .500 the past five seasons, the franchise is still 113 games under, all-time. In 1950-51, the first year the NBA tracked relative offensive and defensive rating, the Knicks, led by Vince Boryla, Harry Gallatin and Dick McGuire, finished second in relative offensive rating at 2.9. The only team ahead of them: the then-champion Rochester Royals, led by Bob Davies and a young point guard — name of William “Red” Holzman.
That 2.9 was a level no Knick team could pass until 1989, Rick Pitino’s Bomb Squad. The highest relative offensive rating for any Knick team, ever? The 2013 anomaly, at 5.2. And that’s more of an anomaly than you may think: other than 2013, no Knick team from 1951 to 2024 ever reached the 4-point mark. In 2025, they did it again. In 2026, they did it again.
Rarer still than the Knicks being good anywhere has been the Knicks being good on both ends. Go back to 1952-53 for another mark that stood the test of time: that season ,the Knicks had an offensive rating of 3.0 and a defensive rating of -2.5 (the lower the defensive rating, the better). Guess what? From 1954 to 2025, the Knicks never again put up such strong ratings on both sides of the ball. In 2026, those numbers were 4.0 and -2.5 — greatest in club history.
WINS
Willis Reed retired in 1974, marking the official end of the Knick Golden Age. Patrick Ewing led what I suppose must now be called the Bronze Age, with the Brunson years the new Silver Age. Ewing’s dominant decade-plus drove the Knicks’ longest continuous run of contention. Interestingly, if you subtract the Ewing years from the post-Reed years, that leaves 33 seasons (Brunson’s draft number, Ewing’s jersey number and Dillon Jones’, too). In the first 29 of those seasons, the Knicks won 47-plus games four times. In each of Brunson’s four years in New York, they’ve won at least 47 games.
How big a jump is that? A quick rundown of some of the tripe ball we were forced to swallow over the last 20 years:
- The 2006 Knicks began the season losing their first five games. That year they had two five-game losing streaks, two six-game losing streaks, a seven-, a nine- and a 10-game losing streak. Their 23-59 record was their worst in 20 seasons.
- Two years later, the Knicks lost five straight three times, plus seven and eight games twice each, tying the ’06 squad with 23 wins. The last time a Knick team won fewer, Willis Reed was a phys. ed. major at Grambling State.
- Ahh, 2015 — the first year I covered the Knicks all season. And what a season! Would you believe opening 4-10 with a seven-game losing streak was the high point of the campaign?? It was! That’s what happens in a season a team has separate losing streaks of five, seven, eight, nine, 10 and 16 games. New York dropped 26 of 27 at one point; in a totally separate part of the season, they lost 16 of 18. How bad were those Knicks? You could remove the 1-26 and 2-16 stretches and they’d STILL have a losing record. That’s one way to finish 17-65, setting a new franchise low for wins.
- The 2016 Knicks were 22-22 and dreaming of a playoff spot. Losing 12 of 13 en route to a 10-28 finish sunk those dreams.
- The 2017 Knicks began the year 16-13. They then lost nine of ten games and 33 of 44.
- The 2018 Knicks also started 16-13. They went on to lose 32 of their last 40 contests.
- The 2019 Knicks tied the 2015 squad as the worst ever, thanks to a pair of five-game losing streaks, a pair of sixes, a pair of eights and an 18-game losing streak I admit I somehow do not remember. Even though I probably recapped most of those games.
- In 2020, David Fizdale had the Knicks on pace for an even worse finish, before he was canned and replaced by Mike Miller. Weekend Dad brought the stability Absent Father never could: in the COVID-shortened season, the Knicks played 66 games, going 4-18 until Fiz got sacked, 8-14 in Miller’s first 22 games and 9-13 after. That’s still a 50-loss pace under Miller, but after Fizdale had them on a 15-67 track, 50 Ls woulda been a stone groove.
TODAY’S TEAM
More good news.
The Knicks are good. Really good. Quite good, actually. I mean, you already knew that. From the championship, natch. From winning 15 of their last 16, or tearing through the playoffs at a 70-win pace. From this team being so lovable that not even the owner’s third turd in the punch bowl in less than two weeks has killed the buzz (1) inconveniencing millions of people to force President Pedo on the masses, in a very “forceful” gesture by a man whose BFFs all seem to be sex criminals and who has himself been charged with rape and convicted of sexual harassment; 2) complaining about the mayor and the NYPD restricting watch parties around MSG as an inconvenience to the fans, the same fans he didn’t give a shit about when President Pedo did the same 48 hours earlier; 3) waiting for the literal DAY OF THE FUCKING CHAMPIONSHIP PARADE to announce the hundreds of millions in property tax exemptions he’s enjoyed the past 25 years won’t compel him to raise the payroll for a title defense AND that he’s dragging the team to President Pedo’s White House, somewhere no NBA team has gone before).
I could give you numbers that show how awesome the Knicks have become. Here, lemme share one that’s kinda my fave.
18 current players have scored 60-plus points in an NBA game. Two of them are Knicks, Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns. Only three other teams have two players who’ve scored that many: the Cavs (Donovan Mitchell, James Harden), the Mavs (Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson) and the Lakers (Luka, LeBron; if LeBron and Austin Reaves re-sign, the Lakers would be the only team with three players who’ve scored 50-plus). I can tell without looking it up that no Knick ever scored 40 points in a game alongside Patrick Ewing (I know John Starks’ career-high was 39). But wait! There’s more.
All five Knick starters have scored 40-plus in a game, with four doing so as Knicks (Josh Hart’s career-high 44 came for Portland back in 2022). Know how many other teams can say that? None — with some asterisks.
The Heat, oddly, are close, and would qualify if Jamie Jaquez Jr. were their fifth starter. But Davion Mitchell is, so no dice. Four Cavs starters can count to cuarenta, but not Max Strus. Wanna real wild horsie? The Kings’ five most frequent starters last year don’t make the grade, but their top-5 in minutes per game do: Keegan Murray, Zach LaVine, Demar DeRozan, Domantas Sabonis and Russell Westbrook.
But the Heat suck. The Cavs are posers. The Kings, long the Knicks’ closest reflection, are now blessedly a funhouse mirror distortion of the truth, and no more. The Knicks are really, really good. You already knew that. But maybe now you know better just how really, really good they really are.
