For the past 25 years, any remotely good New York Knicks team would eventually get compared to the 1990s Knicks. Makes sense, considering they were the most modern-era squad close to going the distance after New York last celebrated a title in 1973.
If you’re like me, you weren’t around back then. If you’re like my father, you weren’t either. So yeah, the ‘90s are the golden Knicks benchmark for contemporary NYK teams because that is what happens when a franchise spends 50-plus years mostly selling
fans hope but ultimately dealing them pain. Alas.
Now, however, this comparison can’t make any more sense.
The 2026 Knicks will play Game 5 of the freaking NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs tonight, heading into it up 3-1, one win from their first championship since forever, and with a chance to topple the heights reached by both the 1994 and 1999 Knicks mobs.
As stupid as it might have sounded just two months ago, the Knicks are the favorites to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy when all is said and done, with FanDuel giving them -500 odds to the Spurs’ +385 entering Saturday’s matchup. See it to believe it!
The 1994 Knicks were the true big one. Patrick Ewing, John Starks, Charles Oakley, Anthony Mason, Derek Harper, all of them led by Pat Riley on the sideline, and coming off a 57-win regular season. The Finals run? Seven games against Hakeem Olajuwon’s Rockets. The ending? A title being close enough to hurt Knicks fans forever.
Then came 1999, the weirdest miracle run. After a shortened regular season following an infamous lockout, the Knicks entered the playoffs as a true underdog with the No. 8 seed out East, beat Miami, beat Atlanta, beat Indiana, and reached the Finals against 2026 dance partners the Spurs. By then, Ewing was hurt, and that was as damaging as what happened five years earlier, with neophyte Tim Duncan and admiral David Robinson pulverizing New York’s hopes in five outings.
These Knicks feel a bit different from those two historic squads in NYK lore. Those two Finals-bound teams were tough as nails, and while the current Knicks can put the clamps on anybody, there’s a distance there, and it’s fair to say that the Julius Randle-RJ Barrett stage of the roster was closer to that than the current version of it.
Jalen Brunson, as the face of the franchise, gives the Knicks the late-game guard those ‘90s teams never really had, in a clear contrast to the forward-and-big-heavy talent crammed into the past iterations of the winning Knicks.
Yes, Karl-Anthony Towns is in the paint these days, but you can’t even start to compare as he’s more of the finesse variety and gives New York a shooting touch who changes everything on the floor.
OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges are two of the best two-way wings in the Association and clear-cut models of modern basketball, compared to the grittier and darker and dirtier 1990s wrestling-ball.
Perhaps Josh Hart—with a s/o to Jose Alvarado too—is the latest remnant of that nearly glorious era, only just born 20 years after he should, but lucky to find his way to New York, blossomed into the Energizer Bunny we came to know and love.
The ’90s teams built the standard for Knicks toughness and togetherness, but they will always be remembered for coming oh-so-close, as endearing as they are and will ever be to our hearts.
The 2026 Knicks, however? Oh, boy, these dudes have a chance to cross all t’s and dot all i’s.
One more win, and the 2026 Knicks will forever stop being compared to the 1990s Knicks. They will pass them, put themselves on par with the golden ’70s Knicks, and force new comparisons for the near and distant future.
Game 5. Saturday. Let’s bring it home.
