Knicks steamroll into NBA Finals
NBA Playoffs
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CLEVELAND -- Karl Anthony-Towns had 19 points and 14 rebounds, OG Anunoby scored 17 and the New York Knicks routed the Cleveland Cavaliers 130-93 Monday night to complete a four-game sweep of the Eastern Conference finals and advance to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999.
Landry Shamet scored 16 off the bench while Mikal Bridges and Jalen Brunson had 15 apiece for the Knicks, who became the fourth team to have an 11-game winning streak during their postseason run. The last to do it was Golden State, which had a 15-game run en route to its second title in three seasons in 2017.
All but one of the Knicks' wins have been by double digits, with an average margin of victory of 23.7 points.
The Knicks pulled their starters with 7:47 remaining and a 35-point lead as their large contingent of fans loudly chanted "Knicks in four!" New York fans easily outnumbered Cleveland fans as die-hard celebrity fans director Spike Lee, comedian Tracy Morgan and actor Timothee Chalamet and his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, made the trip.
"Our guys played great. You're in the conference finals and score 65 points off of offensive rebounds and fast break points. I don't know if I've seen that at this point of the year. We wanted to push the pace," coach Mike Brown said.
New York will play the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder or San Antonio Spurs in the finals. The Thunder or Spurs will have homecourt advantage when the finals start on June 3 because of a better regular-season record.
This will be the Knicks' third appearance in the finals since winning their last title in 1973. They lost in seven games to Houston in 1994 and in five to San Antonio in 1999.
Knicks legends Walt "Clyde" Frazier and Patrick Ewing presented the Bob Cousy Trophy to the Knicks on the court.
West chess match
It's like Victor Wembanyama has been here before.
Dec. 28, 2024, was a cold and drizzly morning in New York. Wembanyama had some spare time before the San Antonio Spurs' charter flight would leave for Minnesota that afternoon, so he posted a message on social media: Come meet me in Washington Square Park to play chess, he wrote.
He played four games that morning: two wins, two losses.
Fast forward to now, where the Spurs and Oklahoma City are playing a different form of chess -- the Western Conference finals, with Game 5 set for tonight on the Thunder's home floor. The score to this point, just like that morning in New York: two wins, two losses.
Spurs coach Mitch Johnson and Thunder coach Mark Daigneault have both likened the back-and-forth of this series to a chess match, where outthinking one's opponent is just as important as outplaying them. And Wembanyama, who often travels with his own chess set, appreciates that parallel.
"There's definitely similarities, as in any strategy game," Wembanyama said after San Antonio's series-tying 103-82 romp on Sunday night. "It's fun. It's very fun. In the playoffs at some point, especially when a series drags on, everybody knows the other team almost by heart. … I would say the coaches hold a lot of this load of the chess match, the coaching staff, all the strategy, it's a lot."