{"id":1722,"date":"2026-05-28T20:37:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T20:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/raleighmovingnews.com\/?p=1722"},"modified":"2026-05-28T20:37:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T20:37:08","slug":"nba-finals-will-show-if-the-knicks-were-a-great-team-or-just-benefited-from-good-fortune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/raleighmovingnews.com\/?p=1722","title":{"rendered":"NBA Finals will show if the Knicks were a great team or just benefited from good fortune"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>GREENBURGH, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/raleighmovingnews.com\/?p=1720\">Chiefs WR Rashee Rice continues serving jail sentence as team begins voluntary offseason workouts<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If they can get four more wins \u2014 and get them quickly \u2014 they would take their place up near the Lakers of Shaquille O\u2019Neal and Kobe Bryant, or the Stephen Curry-Kevin Durant Warriors, among the NBA\u2019s dominant postseason powerhouses.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s how great they have been or that their opponents were not very good. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen there\u2019s negative things being said about you, it\u2019s important to ignore them. When there\u2019s positive things about you it\u2019s easy to be able to read them to make you feel good, but you can\u2019t do one and not the other,\u201d Jalen Brunson said. \u201cSo just block out as best you can.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s tied for the third-longest winning streak within one postseason. <\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 16-1 finish in 2017 as the best in league history. Count O\u2019Neal, the MVP of that Lakers championship run and now an ESPN analyst, as a believer in these Knicks.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey are so good I owe the whole state and all five boroughs of New York an apology,\u201d he said during an appearance on \u201cThe Rich Eisen Show.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those who aren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/raleighmovingnews.com\/?p=1718\">NHL releases potential Stanley Cup Final schedules: When the Canes could play<\/a><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The Knicks took the final three games of that series to win in six games, then found their good fortune was just beginning.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u2014 who played two straight seven-game series \u2014 and then had the same one full day off as the 76ers.<\/p>\n<p>The Cavs noted their fatigue almost as much as the Knicks\u2019 talent in their remarks after the series, when James Harden couldn\u2019t explain if New York was even the better team.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cObviously they dominated us 4-0 but I don\u2019t 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\u2019t show it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t win a championship led by a small player, said the \u201ctwo best teams are probably in the West, but I\u2019m up for being proven wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The finals will truly be the final answer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLot of questions, lot of talk about how great we are, how great we\u2019ve been. All that doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d guard Mikal Bridges said. \u201cWe\u2019ve just got to worry about being ourselves and stay locked in and go win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/raleighmovingnews.com\/?p=1717\">MLB owners have proposed a salary cap for the first time since baseball\u2019s 1994-95 strike<\/a><\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GREENBURGH, N.Y. (AP) \u2014 The New York Knicks are on a historic playoff run. They&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>NBA Finals will show if the Knicks were a great team or just benefited from good fortune - Raleigh Moving News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/raleighmovingnews.com\/?p=1722\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NBA Finals will show if the Knicks were a great team or just benefited from good fortune - Raleigh Moving News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"GREENBURGH, N.Y. 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