New York Knicks

New York Knicks, American professional basketball team based in New York City. The Knicks (which is a shortened version of their official nickname, Knickerbockers) have won two NBA championships (1970 and 1973) and are among the most lucrative franchises in professional basketball.

The team was established in 1946 as part of the newly founded Basketball Association of America, which became the NBA in 1949. The Knicks had winning records in each of their first nine seasons, and they advanced to the NBA Finals in three consecutive years (1951–53), losing each time. The Knicks fielded mediocre to poor teams the remainder of the decade and into the early 1960s, but the team’s fortunes began to change with the drafting of center Willis Reed in 1964.

Reed was named the NBA’s Rookie of the Year for the 1964–65 season, and he led the Knicks to regular postseason berths from his third season to his retirement in 1974. The Knicks, under the direction of coach Red Holzman, won their first title at the close of the 1969–70 season with a talented roster featuring four future Hall of Famers: Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, and Dave DeBusschere. Their Finals showdown with the Los Angeles Lakers that year was one of the most dramatic playoff series in NBA history. Games three and four were both decided in overtime, and the seventh and final game featured an injured Reed—who had not played since tearing a muscle in his thigh in game five—limping onto the court before the game to a raucous reception from the home crowd at Madison Square Garden. Reed scored only the Knicks’ first two baskets of the game, but he inspired his team to close the door on the Lakers, giving New York its first NBA championship. The Knicks and the Lakers would battle in the Finals two more times in the next three years, generating a heated rivalry that saw New York claim another NBA championship in 1973.

As the Knicks’ roster of superstars began to age, the team slowly fell out of consistent postseason contention, though in the early to mid-1980s the Knicks’ Madison Square Garden home court was the base for one of the era’s most explosive scorers, Bernard King. The Knicks’ slide culminated in the team’s posting the league’s third worst record in the 1984–85 season (partly because of a career-threatening injury to King), which—combined with some luck in the NBA draft lottery—allowed the team to select center Patrick Ewing with the first overall draft choice in 1985. Behind Ewing, the Knicks enjoyed many winning seasons and consistently qualified for postseason play, including two more berths in the NBA Finals, but the team never won a title in Ewing’s 15 seasons in New York. Five of these playoff defeats came at the hands of Michael Jordan’s dominant Chicago Bulls teams of the late-1980s to mid-’90s, and the two franchises developed a heated rivalry (often witnessed courtside by the Knicks’ most prominent celebrity fan, film director Spike Lee).

Ewing was traded in 2000, and the Knicks entered a string of losing seasons soon thereafter. The Knicks hired former Detroit Pistons All-Star guard Isiah Thomas as team president in 2003. Under his guidance, the Knicks’ payroll grew to unprecedented levels, but the team continually finished at or near the bottom of their conference standings. In addition to their on-court failures, the Knicks were mired in a series of off-court scandals, which led many observers to brand Thomas’s Knicks as the worst-run franchise in professional sports. Thomas was fired in 2008, and the Knicks entered a rebuilding mode with a new front office and a new coaching staff, which soon brought in star players Amar’e Stoudemire (in 2010) and Carmelo Anthony (during the 2010–11 season) in an attempt to reenergize the franchise and its fans.

The rebuilt Knicks roster paid immediate dividends, as the team qualified for the playoffs each season after the addition of Anthony, and the team won its first division title in 19 years during the 2012–13 season. The team’s success was short-lived, and, in an attempt to initiate a turnaround, it hired former Knick Phil Jackson as team president during a disastrous 2013–14 campaign that saw the club finish eight games under .500 and miss the playoffs in a weak Eastern Conference. Anthony missed the second half of the 2014–15 season with an injury, and the Knicks subsequently limped to the worst record in franchise history (17–65). Anthony returned to full strength, but the Knicks failed to substantially improve over the next two years, leading New York to fire Jackson and trade away its star after the 2016–17 season. However, the team continued to struggle, posting 29 wins in 2017–18 and 17 wins in 2018–19, the latter being the worst record in the NBA that season.

A remarkable turnaround for the franchise began in the summer of 2020, when Tom Thibodeau was brought on as head coach. The hard-charging, defense-minded Thibodeau led the Knicks to a 41–31 record and a playoff berth in his first season with the team. After a slight regression the following year, when New York missed the playoffs, the Knicks improved to a 47–35 record in 2022–23, boosted by the strong play of newly signed guard Jalen Brunson. In the postseason the team advanced to the conference semifinals, where New York fell to the Miami Heat. Brunson’s outstanding play in the 2023–24 season earned him a fifth-place finish in Most Valuable Player voting and the Knicks another postseason berth. The team won a grueling first-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers, during which the 6-foot 2-inch (1.88-meter) Brunson repeatedly outwitted and outworked larger defenders and cemented himself as a fan favorite in New York. However, the exhausted Knicks were hampered by injuries in the second round and fell to the Indiana Pacers in seven games.