🏀 Where Does the Knicks' Playoff Run Rank All Time in NBA History?

Given the New York Knicks' track record over the better part of two decades, it's hard to believe this team is riding one of the best playoff runs of all time entering the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs with Game 1 set for Wednesday (ABC, 8:30 p.m. ET).

Entering this series, New York has won 11 straight games by an average of 24 points with 10 of those wins coming by double digits. Ahead of their first NBA Finals appearance since 1999, I broke down the Knicks' historic win streak, where it ranks across NBA history, and whether there's value on New York entering Game 1.

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🗽 How the Knicks reached the NBA Finals

Follow all of our NBA analysis and expert predictions this season.

After an up-and-down first half of the season, New York found its groove around the All-Star break and didn’t look back, winning 52 games and finishing the regular season as the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference.

The Knicks won Game 1 of their first-round matchup with Atlanta, but they looked a bit shellshocked after dropping Games 2 and 3 thanks to some inspired play from CJ McCollum. Since then, New York has been a subway train at full speed barreling down the tracks toward an inevitable Finals appearance. Here's every game since that Game 3 loss:

That 51-point rout at Atlanta in Game 6 has been the Knicks' shining moment of the postseason so far. They shot 58.8% from the field, forced 19 turnovers, and held a solid Hawks offense to 89 points on 82 field goal attempts. It was less a basketball game and more of a public execution.

The 76ers series was its own kind of statement, as New York smacked around its East Coast neighbor and won two games by 30-plus points in a four-game sweep. Jalen Brunson, who earned second-team All-NBA honors in the regular season, turned it on with 29 points and six assists per game while shooting 44.8% from 3-point range.

The Cavs had the Knicks cornered in Game 1 with a 22-point lead in the fourth quarter, but even that wasn't enough to keep New York from scoring another double-digit win in overtime. The series never felt close again, and for the third straight round, the Knicks closed out their opponent with a win by more than 30 points.

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📊 Knicks playoff run by the numbers

An 11-game win streak speaks for itself in the postseason, but the Knicks' numbers over this historic streak have been absolutely absurd. As I mentioned earlier, New York has outscored opponents by 24 points per game over those 11 wins - the highest mark by any team with 10-plus consecutive wins in NBA postseason history.

So far, the offensive numbers have been unmatched this postseason. New York’s 123.3 offensive rating entering the Finals is the best in NBA playoff history, narrowly edging out the 2020-21 Utah Jazz (121.4) and 2016-17 Cavaliers (120.3). In the series clincher against the 76ers, the Knicks’ offensive rating (147.8) was the seventh-highest by a team in a postseason game ever.

Highest offensive rating in NBA playoff history (min. 10 games)

The defensive picture is a little more nuanced, but still impressive considering that both the Hawks (14th) and Cavaliers (sixth) were among the top half of the league in the regular season in offensive rating. New York’s performance against Cleveland was particularly inspiring, as the Knicks held the Cavs under 95 points twice across the sweep.

Still, even with a record margin of victory and historic offensive production, it's hard to say this Knicks playoff run is the best of all time - at least not without a few more wins.

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🏆 Best NBA playoff runs of all time

To put the Knicks’ playoff run into full historical context, here is how it stacks up to some of the longest and most dominant stretches in a single postseason:

2017 Golden State Warriors: 15 straight wins

After going 67-15 in their first year with Kevin Durant, the Warriors won their first 15 playoff games before dropping Game 4 of the NBA Finals to the Cavaliers - their only loss en route to the title

Behind Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green, Golden State put together a net rating of plus-13.5 in the 2017 postseason, good for the fourth-best mark of any team in NBA history across at least 10 games in a single playoffs. The Knicks have the Warriors beat there, but Golden State’s competition was tougher: that season, Utah won 51 games and San Antonio was the No. 2 seed in the West with 61 wins.

1999 San Antonio Spurs: 12 straight wins

The run by the Spurs in the 1999 playoffs is the most defensively dominant on the list. Playing in a lockout-shortened season where most teams averaged 15 points per game fewer than teams do today, legendary coach Gregg Popovich and his star big men, Tim Duncan and David Robinson, held opponents to 92.6 points per 100 possessions across their 12-game win streak - the best mark of any comparable team.

San Antonio’s competition was solid, too. The Spurs took out the Kobe-Shaq Lakers in the Western Conference semis before sweeping Portland in the WCF. In the NBA Finals, San Antonio played spoiler to New York fans, holding the Knicks to just 79.8 points per game and winning the series 4-1.

2001 Los Angeles Lakers: 11 straight wins

In the middle of their 3-peat, the Shaq and Kobe Lakers put together one of their most dominant runs of play ever in the 2001 postseason. They won 11 straight games by an average of 15.5 points per game en route to a second straight title and put together some memorable single-game performances during that stretch, too.

In Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals, the Lakers blew out the Spurs by a 111-72 final score; the 39-point margin of victory is the seventh-largest blowout in a conference finals game in NBA history. After losing an overtime nail-biter in Game 1 of the Finals to an Allen Iverson-led 76ers team, Los Angeles won Games 2-5 by increasingly wider margins.

The Lakers average net rating of plus-17.5 during that stretch is the second best of any team during a postseason winning streak of at least 10 games, trailing only this year’s Knicks (+29.1).

1989 Los Angeles Lakers: 11 straight wins

The Lakers may have won 11 straight playoff games in 1989, but they own the unpleasant distinction as the only team in NBA history to do so without winning the title that season.

Instead, Los Angeles - led by MVP Magic Johnson and All-Stars James Worthy and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - won their first 11 games of the postseason before getting swept by the Bad Boy Pistons in the 1989 Finals. That season marked the first of 10 straight without a championship for the Lakers, who had won five titles during their dominant run through the 1980s.

2026 New York Knicks: 11 straight wins

As we laid out earlier, New York’s net rating of plus-29.1 during its 11-game postseason win streak is the best of any team by a wide margin, and its offensive rating of plus-128.5 also ranks first. While those numbers suggest the Knicks are the best team on the list, two key factors hold them back from having one of the all-time great postseason runs.

The obvious one: New York hasn’t won the championship (or even a Finals game) yet. And the competition it's faced (Hawks, 76ers, Cavaliers) stack up poorly against the opponents that like the 2017 Warriors or 1999 Spurs faced. That said, if the Knicks can beat Victor Wembanyama and the favored Spurs, that would make a compelling case to move them up this list. Without that, the opponent factor is a tough one to ignore.

Longest playoff win streaks in NBA history

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💰 Are the Knicks undervalued amid historic NBA playoff run?

See all of our experts' NBA picks based on the latest NBA odds.

It's hard to square the Knicks’ status as an underdog with what they've done this postseason, even if the competition hasn't been elite. And I think the betting market is sleeping on this team because of that soft slate to reach the NBA Finals.

The Spurs are clearly battle-tested after a seven-game series against the Thunder, though the Knicks enter this series rested - teams entering the NBA Finals off a sweep are 5-2 against an opponent coming off a seven-game series win. The market doesn't seem to respect the fact that no team in the play-by-play era has entered the Finals on a run with a wider margin of victory or a more efficient offense on a per-possession basis.

Because of that, there's value on the Knicks heading into the Finals, particularly if you can find them north of +175 in the days and hours ahead of Game 1. If New York wins its first title since 1973, it can legitimately lay claim to one of the three or four best postseason runs in NBA history - and the market isn't pricing in that possibility enough.

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