The New York Knicks are back on the NBA’s biggest stage, and they got there by sweeping the Cavaliers in four games to reach the NBA Finals for the first time in 27 years. The run leaves New York four wins away from its first championship under the Dolan family ownership.
For the fans who have spent decades waiting for this moment, the search for the Knicks last championship now has a fresh target: a team that has turned a long rebuild into a Finals appearance. Jalen Brunson, who arrived as a second-round pick and became the crown jewel of Leon Rose’s rebuilding project, has been at the center of it all. He called Mitchell Robinson the “best shooting center of all time,” a line that fits the strange, modern shape of this roster as much as it celebrates one of its key pieces.
Rose took over as general manager in 2020 and steadily remade the roster. Brunson became the face of that work after arriving as a second-round pick, while Julius Randle — who made All-NBA teams in 2020-21 and again in 2022-23 — came to New York through a three-team trade with the Timberwolves in 2024. Robinson, drafted by New York in the second round in 2018, was the only player in the Knicks’ rotation who was originally selected by the franchise.
That is the part of the story that makes this run feel different. The Knicks are on the championship stage, but the roster that carried them there was built largely without first-round picks from New York, a reminder that the current rise came from trades, free agency and a little fortune rather than the draft pedigree that had been promised before. It is a sharp contrast with earlier eras, when James Dolan leaned on executives, former players and Phil Jackson to steer the team and got nowhere close to this level.
Now the question is not whether New York can celebrate a breakthrough. It is whether this oddly assembled group can turn a long-awaited Finals appearance into the franchise’s first title under Dolan’s ownership. The next four wins will decide whether this becomes a milestone or only the first chapter of a longer search for the Knicks last championship.
