The last time the Knicks won a championship was 1973. The last time they even made it to the finals was 1999. But honestly, that appearance shouldn’t count. ’99 was a lockout season — it was the first time the NBA ever lost games to a labor dispute (and the year the league’s locked-out stars played a pay-per-view exhibition game that famously showed most of them completely out of shape) — and only 50 regular-season games took place. And the ’99 Knicks team wasn’t even all that good. It was 27-23 and headed into the playoffs as the No. 8 seed, the heavy underdog against the No. 1 seed, Miami Heat. The Knicks ended up pulling off a shocking upset, winning the decisive game five (there were only five games in the first round back then) by the super-gross score of 78-77, and found their path surprisingly clear all the way to the finals, where they were trounced by the vastly superior San Antonio Spurs in five games. The Knicks were actually better the next season, when they lost in the Eastern Conference finals — the last time they’d make it that far until this year. But trust someone who was there: No one thought they had a chance to win a title in either of those seasons, and for good reason.

The only other time New York has made it to a finals since ‘73 came in 1994. That series they should have won — you can ask poor John Starks about it the next time you see him high-fiving Timothée Chalamet courtside. But otherwise, the Knicks have never had a better opportunity to win an NBA title in most of our lifetimes........

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