The New York Knicks are just two wins from earning their first championship since they last hoisted the Larry O’Brien trophy all the way back in 1973. They might as well have won it already.
After Friday’s 105-104 win over the San Antonio Spurs in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, New York is standing in one of the rarest spots in history—certified rarefied air—as one of just three teams ever to win the first two games of the title series on the road.
The other two: the 1993 Chicago Bulls (57-25 in the regular
season, 11-2 in the playoffs) and the 1995 Houston Rockets (47-35, 15-7).
The outcome of those Bulls and Rockets finals runs? Jobs finished and happy endings.
The 1993 Bulls opened the Finals with two wins against the Suns, beating them in Phoenix twice and in six games overall before Michael Jordan announced his first retirement.
Two years later, the 1995 Rockets took Games 1 and 2 in Orlando against the Magic, went back to Houston, and swept Shaquille O’Neal, Penny Hardaway, and a supremely inexperienced Magic squad that resembles a certain contemporary squad we’ve gotten familiar with this week.
That is the regal company the Knicks joined as Friday leaked into Saturday.
New York surely sweated getting there, but to the disbelief of many—both on the haters’ ship and within the Garden faithful—the Knicks are mammoth favorites to win the chip on FanDuel, boasting -520 odds to the Spurs’ +400.
The Knickerbockers trailed by 14 in Game 1 but ended up winning 105-95. They once again trailed by 12 in the first half of Game 2, led by 14 in the fourth, then watched San Antonio rip off a 14-0 run before Jalen Brunson bailed them out late.
Brunson was kinda awful, let’s admit it, shooting just 7-for-25 in Game 2 but putting on his Captain Clutch cape at the perfect time to tie the game with a midrange jumper, grab a gift from Victor Wembanyama, and hit the go-ahead free throw with 9.5 seconds left.
Karl-Anthony Towns kept building his NBA Finals resume by leading New York with 21 points and 13 rebounds. A desperate-as-you’ve-never-seen-him Mikal Bridges added 20 points, six rebounds and six assists. Brunson finished 20 points, six assists, five rebounds and five steals. Josh Hart decided it was a nice evening to improve his cardio. Mitch and Shamet were off-the-pine saviors again. Jeremy Sochan didn’t play.
Now, looking at it from a Spurs point of view—if you’re into that or are one of the two San Antonio fans still not mad enough to read this blog—I’m sorry to inform you that here comes another ominous warning.
Five teams have come back from 0-2 to win the NBA Finals: the 1969 Celtics, 1977 Trail Blazers, 2006 Heat, 2016 Cavaliers and 2021 Bucks (yay!)… but those comebacks all came after the trailing team lost the first two games on the road, not in their supposedly strong feud. Ugh, sorry to disappoint you, Coyote.
The Spurs have lost the first two at their own Alamo Frost AT&T Arenadome or whatever the name of that thing is these days. No Finals team has ever recovered from that specific start to win the championship.
So, yeah. The Knicks still need two more wins. The Spurs have five chances to win four games. The math works for both heading into Game 3, but facts are facts, not Kenny Atkinson’s analytics.
The Bulls got there and won. The Rockets got there and won. New York is halfway there, and why not Knicks in four?
