The New York Knicks aren’t a basketball juggernaut. They had 10-1 odds to win a title at the beginning of the season. New York won 53 games during the regular season, including the NBA Cup. They lost in the Eastern Conference Finals last year. James Dolan made a surprise coaching change. The players mostly remained the same. They went down 2-1 in the first round against the Atlanta Hawks, setting off alarm bells all over Manhattan. And yet, these Knicks are one game away from their first championship in 53 years.
The city is on fire. Karl-Anthony Towns has been redeemed. And everyone under the age of 40 is anointing Jalen Brunson as the greatest Knicks player of all time. They’re playing some of the best playoff basketball in the history of the NBA without necessarily going down as one of the great teams of all time. So how does a good-not-great team win an NBA championship, and what lessons can the Minnesota Timberwolves take from the 2026 Knicks?
The Knicks offense is a freight train in the playoffs. They were no slouches in the regular season. New York had the fourth-best offense in the regular season but turned things up a notch and is blowing away the competition with the best offense in the playoffs by 3.2 points per 100 possessions, ahead of second place. The Knicks are shooting the absolute lights out during this historic playoff run. As a team, the Knicks are hitting 49.7 percent of their shots and 39.5 percent of their threes, both about two percentage points higher than in the regular season. Their top six scorers are all contributing.
OG Anunoby has the hand of god and is also averaging 20.7 points and 6.2 rebounds per game in the playoffs on a ridiculous 57.8/50.6/86.7 shooting split. Karl-Anthony Towns has a true shooting percentage of 70.1. Jalen Brunson is relentless and is scoring 27.4 points per game. Josh Hart’s three-point shooting is down, but he’s averaging 8.8 rebounds. And Landry Shamet literally can’t miss. The consistency of New York’s starting lineup is a major reason they blitzed the rest of the teams in the East and reached the finals for the first time since 1999.
Meanwhile, the Timberwolves got anything but consistency from their main contributors during the postseason.
- Anthony Edwards was good, but his hyper-extended knee took away his athleticism and hampered his scoring ability against the San Antonio Spurs.
- Jaden McDaniels had an epic playoff run, but couldn’t hit a three-pointer to save his life. Ayo Dosunmu scored 43 points in game four against the Denver Nuggets, but could never recreate the magic in any other playoff game.
- Donte DiVincenzo tore his Achilles.
- Naz Reid was up and down.
- Terrence Shannon Jr. came on late when the Wolves were short-handed.
- Rudy Gobert dominated Nikola Jokic and then got spanked by Victor Wembanyama.
- And Julius Randle played so poorly that everyone I’ve ever met in my life wants him gone next season.
The Wolves will need each of their top six or seven contributors in lock step for four straight rounds if they ever want to make a similar run to the title.
The Knicks’ offense is blazing in the playoffs. Still, the real reason that they’re knocking on Larry O’Brien’s door is that they’ve taken their very good defense from the regular season and ratcheted it up to a championship-level defense. They posted a regular-season defensive rating of 112.3, good enough for seventh best in the NBA, just ahead of the Timberwolves. They have the best defense in the playoffs, giving up a stingy 104.7 points per 100 possessions, which would also be the best mark in the regular season.
Towns is playing the best defense of his life. Anunoby is erasing De’Aaron Fox from history. Hart and Bridges are hounding whoever is in front of them. And Mitchell Robinson could have been Wilt Chamberlain if he was born in 1935. The Knicks have held their opponents under 100 points in eight of 18 playoff games.
Minnesota’s defense in the playoffs and regular season was gnarly identical, but again, wildly inconsistent. They held the Nuggets under 100 points in three of their four wins in the first round. But the Wolves turned around and gave up 133 points to the Spurs in Game 2, 126 in Game 5, and 139 in Game 6. Rudy Gobert looked like the best post defender who ever lived against Denver, and then looked like a six-year-old trying to score against his dad when he was playing Wemby. Minnesota’s defense is probably the closest to being championship-level. Still, Gobert, Edwards, McDaniels, and Dosunmu will need to bring championship-level intensity every day.
The third element is the intangibles. The Knicks are just playing smart basketball up and down the lineup. Jalen Brunson is one of the savviest players in the league and rarely makes a mistake. Anunoby always seems to be in the right place at the right time. Josh Hart is a pit bull and, despite his missed layup and failed boxout in the waning minutes of Game 4, is one of the most reliable players in the league. Believe it or not, KAT is playing some really smart basketball, at least for him. And Mike Brown is coaching his ass off. Inserting Jose Alvarado in the fourth quarter of game four is a brave move and may have saved New York from blowing a 2-0 lead.
The Wolves aren’t exactly known for smart, measured basketball during the Chris Finch era. Edwards, Randle, McDaniels, and Naz Reid are all prone to some smooth-brained decisions on the court from time to time. Finch was forced to insert TSJ into the lineup out of necessity, and it paid off, begging the question: Why hadn’t Finch handed him the ball much earlier in the season? Where were the adjustments to bring in Jaylen Clark when Bones Hyland or Mike Conley were ineffective?
It takes guts to win an NBA Championship, and so far, Finch and the Wolves err on the side of caution.
The Knicks have laid the blueprint to show you don’t have to win 60-plus games in the regular season to win a title. Sometimes, good teams can find the missing link and put together one magical playoff run. The Knicks didn’t have to contend with the San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers, and Houston Rockets as the Timberwolves do in the West. Still, a similar path is available to Minnesota. They won’t sweep two straight series in the Western Conference. However, it’s possible to win a championship without being an all-time great regular-season team. The Wolves just have to take the right lessons from the Knicks this season.
