Knicks sweep Cavs, advance to NBA Finals for first time since 1999
Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, center, and teammates celebrate after winning Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Monday in Cleveland. Credit: AP/Sue Ogrocki
CLEVELAND — You could see it in the streets, the waves of fans streaming toward Rocket Arena, the bootleg concession stand set up a block away and the celebrity row traveling road show. Here in Cleveland, about 500 miles from Madison Square Garden, it was all blue and orange, here to be part of a celebration.
Inside, it almost felt as if the party could run from the streets surrounding the arena all the way to 7th Avenue in New York City as the Knicks ended any notion that the Cavaliers would provide any sort of obstacle in their march to the NBA Finals.
A 20-0 run late in the first quarter through the second quarter helped the Knicks build leads of as many as 45 points, another one-sided exclamation point to end a series. Completing the sweep with a 130-93 win, their 11th consecutive postseason victory, the Knicks reached the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999.
They again will await their next opponent and won’t play again until June 3 in either Oklahoma City or San Antonio.
But for one night, the thoughts weren’t on what is next, but on the present and maybe a little bit on the past. When the team came to center court to receive the trophy and for Jalen Brunson to collect his trophy as the Eastern Conference Finals MVP, it was Knicks legends Walt Frazier and Patrick Ewing who stood with them and handed him the trophy.
“It’s been a long time,” said Frazier, who was the point guard for the last Knicks squad to win a title 53 years ago. “Carrying on a tradition, passing it down to Jalen. So he’s the guy now who has to carry it, but you have to capitalize when you get there. So we’re going to stay on him. As Red Holzman would tell us at this point, ‘Hey Clyde, we ain’t won nothing yet.’ ”
Karl-Anthony Towns had 19 points, 14 rebounds, two steals and two blocked shots. OG Anunoby had 17 points, seven rebounds and two steals. Josh Hart (11 rebounds, six assists) and Mikal Bridges did a little of everything on both ends. Landry Shamet had 16 points off the bench, finishing the series an astounding 11-for-12 from three-point range. Mitchell Robinson had 10 rebounds as the Knicks dominated the Cavaliers 60-33.
You can nitpick the play of the Cavaliers or diminish the opposition the Knicks steamrolled to get to this point, but you can’t debate the way they have played. After closing out their first two series with 51- and 30-point wins, they posted a 37-point win to lift their margin of victory in the 11-game winning streak to 23.8 points.
They erased any doubt as they ran off 20 straight points in the first half, testing the capabilities of the speakers in the arena as the public address system tried to overpower the chants from the huge contingent of Knicks fans.
Leading by 19 at the half, the Knicks saw the Cavs briefly pull within 16 and answered with a 12-0 run capped by Anunoby’s follow dunk. By then it was just a countdown to the donning of the Eastern Conference championship T-shirts and hats.
“This team is hungry, and that’s the most important thing with the amazing, historical win we had tonight,” Towns said. “The celebrations were minimal. We really wanna get back to work, ask Coach, can we get back to work quick? We know what happened last time we had the long layoff, so we already talked after the game right away about preparing, getting to practice, back to the work. That’s what’s made us special and it’s what’s gonna give us a chance to win the next series.”
“I think everybody out there is trying to do just one thing: win,” Bridges said. “All trying to play hard, at the end of the day just trying to get a Knicks win.”
It doesn’t seem to be the style of Brunson or the players who have aligned themselves with him, but the Knicks perhaps could exhale a little bit, having met the lofty expectations that they have carried for a year.
It is rare that Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan speaks about the Knicks, but in January he appeared on WFAN, setting a high bar for the franchise. He offered a belief that “we want to get to the Finals, and we should win the Finals. This is sports and anything can happen. But getting to the Finals we absolutely got to do. Winning the Finals, we should win.”
With this pressure placed squarely on their shoulders, the Knicks were beaten that night by the Pistons, 121-90, an awkward misstep in terms of living up to the expectations with which they were burdened. But while it took time, the Knicks lifted their game. They certainly met the moment on Monday night, living up to the lofty standard of their owner, something that might have seemed far off that night.
“We better get to the Finals or we’re going to get traded,” Hart joked of the feeling when Dolan uttered those words. He added, “Not pressure, because I think that’s the goal that we all kind of have. Obviously, it hits a little bit different when the big dog says it. But that’s the goal that each and every one of us has. And we’re our own biggest critics, so this kind of adds a little bit more fuel to that internal fire of the hunger to get there.”
Maybe they didn’t need to hear it said it out loud because the baseline for success already had been set six months earlier. Just days after losing to Indiana in the 2025 Eastern Conference Finals, the Knicks fired coach Tom Thibodeau, the man who had led the team from years of dysfunction to contention.
If that wasn’t good enough, anything less certainly would be a failure for the team, which returned every key piece of the roster under new coach Mike Brown.
“I mean, we all had that aspiration regardless,’’ Towns said. “So we didn’t really need to hear that because we all wanted that moment. We all wanted to see that especially after last year being in the Eastern Conference Finals and coming up short. We understand that we’ve got to take that next step. So what he’s talking about is also how we all felt. We wanted to go out there and we wanted to take that next step. Get past the Eastern Conference Finals.
“It was historical last year. The city went crazy and it was awesome to see the city so alive, but there’s new standards now. There’s new expectations and we’ve raised the expectations, so we knew what we came into this season to do and what we want to accomplish. And we’ve just got to keep our heads down and continue to focus on the goal at hand.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
