The New York Knicks are breaking the rules

In the 80 year history of the NBA, there are rules that teams need to follow. Some are about the cap, some are about the game of basketball and some are about how a championship is supposed to look. For the New York Knicks, they are breaking all the rules on what a title team is supposed to be.

Up 2-0 in the NBA Finals, the Knicks and their fans can taste their first NBA championship in 53 years. They are doing it by winning 13 straight games in the playoffs which is the 2nd most in NBA history, only behind the 2017 Warriors (the team I think is the greatest of all time). New York is doing it with their defense, which you would not expect from a team led by Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns. However over their last 13 games, the Knicks defensive rating is 103.1 which would have led the NBA by over 4 points per 100 possessions in the regular season. A lot of credit needs to go to Towns who has been awesome on defense in these playoffs, to go along with his elite offense. Brunson’s late game heroics in games where they have been needed have also played a big part in getting New York to the edge of their first title in 53 years.

It really is stunning how we have gotten here. New York does not have the makeup of a traditional NBA champion. They are built around a small guard, who has never been an MVP candidate and their regular season didn’t follow the rules that championship teams typically follow.

Let’s start with the Brunson piece of this. He is New York’s best player and closer. Listed at 6 foot 2, Brunson is probably closer to 6 feet than 6’2” and in the history of the league teams built around little guards haven’t won titles. Las Vegas Aces Head Coach Becky Hammon is going to receive a lot of slack for a comment she made years ago when discussing New York’s chances to win a title with Brunson as their best player, should they pull this off. “If your best player is small, you’re not winning,” Hammon said in December of 2023 after she said New York needed a number 1 and there was push back with some saying Brunson was their number 1. In the moment, she was right. In the history of the league, there haven’t been many teams built around small guards who have won the title. The Warriors did it with Stephen Curry, who is the greatest shooter of all-time and not really that small so they don’t count. The other is the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons of 1989 and 1990, led by Isiah Thomas. It is really unprecedented what Brunson and the Knicks are doing.

The Knicks also don’t have a former MVP on their team. They are trying to become the 10th team since 1960 to win the title without a former MVP on their roster. It has become more common in recent years for teams to win the title without the MVP with both the 2019 Raptors and 2024 Celtics both doing so. However, one of those teams had Kawhi Leonard and the other had Jayson Tatum on their roster, both players who are perennial first team All-NBA players at that point in their careers. New York doesn’t have anyone who has made All-NBA first team in their entire career. Both Towns and Brunson have made All-NBA but neither have ever made first team, much less won MVP.

Another rule the Knicks would be breaking is the 40/20 rule. The 40/20 rule was coined by Phil Jackson and it states that in order to be a true championship team, a team must win 40 games before losing 20 games and throughout NBA history, this has held true. Since 1980, only 4 teams have won the title while losing their 20th game before winning their 40th. They are the 1995 Houston Rockets, the 2004 Detroit Pistons, the 2006 Miami Heat and the 2021 Milwaukee Bucks. The Knicks had 34 wins when they lost their 20th game.

The last rule is a newer rule that doesn’t have as much ground to stand on as the other rules do but I still think it holds validity. The last team to win the championship and play a 6 or 7 game first round series, like the Knicks did, was the 2014 San Antonio Spurs, who went 7 with the Dallas Mavericks. There are plenty of examples of teams playing 6 or 7 first round games that go on to win the title before that but since 2015, not one champion had played a first round series that went 6 or 7 games, 11 years of data. As the Knicks get closer and closer to their first championship since 1973, where Willis Reed was the Finals MVP, they are breaking a lot of the rules in NBA history to get there.