The party following the New York Knicks’ first NBA title in 53 years lasted all summer.
On Tuesday night, the Knicks get back to business — after one more celebratory flourish honoring a championship that was generations in the making.
The Knicks will raise their championship banner Tuesday night in Madison Square Garden before they open their title defense against the longtime rival Philadelphia 76ers, who added LeBron James and Jaylen Brown in hopes of dethroning New York.
The Knicks finished third in the Eastern Conference last season with a 53-29 record before mounting their historic run. Among their opponents were the 76ers, who went 45-37 to earn the seventh seed in the East and beat the Boston Celtics in a seven-game first-round series before being swept by New York in the conference semifinals.
New York went 16-3 in the postseason and won 13 straight games between the first round and the NBA Finals. The Knicks mounted two of the biggest comeback wins in playoff history — including the largest in Finals history, a 29-point comeback in Game 4, when OG Anunoby tipped in Jalen Brunson’s errant 3-pointer with 1.2 seconds left to cap a 107-106 win over the San Antonio Spurs.
New York clinched the title in Game 5, with Brunson locking up MVP honors by scoring 45 points in a 94-90 win. That unleashed a raucous celebration in the Big Apple for the Knicks, including a stint as a host of “Saturday Night Live” for Brunson in which he was joined on stage by Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges.
But even the celebration was tinged with reminders of how challenging it will be for New York to become the NBA’s first repeat champion since the Golden State Warriors in 2017-18.
Knicks owner James Dolan declared on June 17 — four days after the title-clinching win and one day before the ticker-tape parade in New York City — that he would not push the team’s payroll into the second apron in order to keep the team together. Center Mitchell Robinson became the lone member of the rotation to depart when he signed with the Celtics on July 6 for three years and $47.4 million.
Towns, who can opt out of his contract following this season, expressed disappointment with the pace and tenor of extension talks Oct. 5. Four days later, the Knicks announced they would table all extension talks — Hart and Deuce McBride are also candidates for extensions — until later in the season.
“My only philosophy since we won, only thing on my mind, is how do we win another one?” Towns said following the Knicks’ announcement.
James’ desire to win a fifth NBA championship with a fourth team took him to the title-starved 76ers on July 24, when he signed a two-year deal worth $8 million — about $44 million less than he made last year alone with the Los Angeles Lakers.
James’ signing cemented the all-in approach by the 76ers, who haven’t won the NBA title since 1983 and haven’t advanced beyond the conference finals since 2001.
Philadelphia, which reached the playoffs last year for the seventh time in eight seasons, traded Paul George and four draft picks — including first-rounders in 2028 and 2031 — to the Celtics on July 6 in exchange for Brown, who averaged a career-high 28.7 points per game last season.
James and Brown, who turns 30 on Saturday, will be joined in the starting lineup by former NBA MVP Joel Embiid, who is 32 and has played just 96 regular-season games over the last three years due to a series of chronic injuries, along with 21-year-old VJ Edgecombe and Tyrese Maxey, who turns 26 on Nov. 4.
Maxey averaged an NBA-high 38.0 minutes and a career-high 28.3 points per game last season, while Edgecombe finished third in the Rookie of the Year balloting after averaging 16.0 ppg.
“I’m excited; new team, new guys, lots of talent,” Embiid said. “There’s going to be ups and downs during the season, so you just want to make sure you learn from those downs. And keep learning and keep growing, on and off the court.”
