Steve Popper: Knicks have last season's disappointment to fuel them in this year's Eastern Conference Finals vs. Cavaliers
Knicks guard Jalen Brunson drives the ball past Cleveland Cavaliers guard Jaylon Tyson in the first half of an NBA game at Madison Square Garden on Oct. 22, 2025. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
GREENBURGH — It was just short of a full year ago when Jalen Brunson sat down at a table and summed up the disappointment — the heartbreak, really. His first words really were more than enough.
“It sucks, man,” Brunson said that night in the bowels of Indiana’s Gainbridge Fieldhouse. “Simple as that. It sucks.”
He talked about the pride he had in the Knicks, and in that moment — with his team eliminated two wins short of reaching the NBA Finals — he was the sort of captain he had been throughout the rest of the season.
On Monday afternoon, he sat at a table and tried to sum up his thoughts at the start of this year's Eastern Conference Finals. After enduring that painful ending a year ago, the Knicks have made their way back to the round where it ended.
While we all wonder about how they will respond after their sweep of Philadelphia gave them eight days off, as they prepared to face the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 1 at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night, you got the feeling that the memory of how last season ended remains tucked in their minds and that it fuels them, pushing them to not let this opportunity get away.
“I mean, I've thought about it,” Brunson said of last year’s ending. “But like every journey, every year is different. You’ve got to kind of restart and reset. Yes, you learn from it. You're very disappointed in the result. But you move forward.”
There are no guarantees when the season ends, no card that allows you to pass the 82-game grind and the first two rounds of the playoffs to get back to this point. Players were cut loose. The coach who led them from dysfunction to the brink of the NBA Finals, Tom Thibodeau, was fired just days after the loss in Indiana. To get back here took work, and the Knicks seemed eager to get back to work.
Until Sunday night, they didn’t know the identity of the opponent who will try to prevent them from making their first NBA Finals appearance since 1999. Eight players on this roster were not even born when that season ended. Brunson was not quite 3 years old; his father, Rick, now an assistant on the Knicks' coaching staff, made a very brief appearance in that series. So maybe they don’t know exactly the longing that New York feels for the chance to step into the spotlight of the Finals, but they do know how it hurt when last season ended short of it.
While it was Game 6 in Indiana when the season ended last year, it was in Game 1 that the Knicks squandered a 14-point lead in the final three minutes, saw Tyrese Haliburton hurl up a prayer that bounced high in the air before falling through as time expired, and then lost it in overtime. If the Knicks have rust as an excuse now, they have those memories of Game 1 to push them to not let this first test get away.
“I mean, obviously in the playoffs you never want to give away games that you should win,” Josh Hart said. “You can never relax. Especially the style that the NBA is played now; you see 10-, 15-, 20-point leads dwindle in four, five minutes. So it’s just that mentality of, it’s never over. Play until there are zeros on the clock. You can’t give the games away.”
The Knicks certainly should have more energy than the Cavaliers, who just got through a second straight seven-game series, an arduous test against the physical Pistons. James Harden, 36, played at least 33 minutes in all 14 postseason games and struggled at times in the last round, including shooting 2-for-10 overall and 0-for-6 from three-point range in Game 7. But the Cavs, like the Knicks, are loaded offensively, with a variety of weapons on both sides of the floor.
When the Knicks beat them in the first round of the playoffs three years ago, it was the start of Brunson’s postseason runs with the team. The Knicks easily handled the Cavs, thanks to the play of Brunson offensively and by beating them physically, led by Mitchell Robinson. Now it’s two teams loaded with skilled players, and while the Knicks took two of three in the regular season, Cleveland won by 15 in the only meeting after the trade for Harden.
“You talk about back in the day; when I was with [San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich], he was kind of like ‘you need three All-Stars to win a championship,’ ” Mike Brown said. “Well, they got four. James being the fourth one has added a dimension to their team that not many teams have.
"Not many teams can say, ‘Hey, we got four All-Stars on our roster.’ And that fourth guy in James is a playmaker and a scorer, so he presents a problem when you have that and Donovan Mitchell and everybody else, and then they have the shooting. It’s a different team and he makes it different because of the experience that he has, especially in the playoffs and in big moments.”
It’s different from three years ago and maybe different from the regular season. And the Knicks believe that this will be different from the result a year ago.
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.
