Historic run takes Knicks to the Finals

The NBA Finals won't start until June 3, so the schedule will do something that the Atlanta Hawks, Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers could not in recent weeks.

It'll prevent the New York Knicks from winning.

For a few days, anyway.

The Knicks are headed to the NBA Finals, and they're headed there on a roll like few others in league history. New York finished off a four-game sweep of the Eastern Conference finals on Monday night, beating the Cavaliers 130-93 — and extending its winning streak to 11 games.

Karl Anthony-Towns had 19 points and 14 rebounds, OG Anunoby scored 17 and the Knicks advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999.

Landry Shamet scored 16 off the bench while Mikal Bridges and Jalen Brunson had 15 apiece for the Knicks.

Donovan Mitchell had 31 points for Cleveland, which was swept in a postseason series for the first time since the 2018 NBA Finals against Golden State.

Knicks coach Mike Brown deferred all the credit to the players.

"They're just great, great human beings and they're obviously fantastic basketball players," Brown said.

The Knicks beat the Hawks in six games in the first round, then swept Philly in the second and, now, Cleveland for the East title.

The Knicks now wait to find out whether they face Oklahoma City or San Antonio. The Western Conference champion won't be crowned until Thursday at the earliest.

As for the Cavs, well they'll be left to rue their missed opportunities, while their stars contemplate their futures.

James Harden has a $42.3 million player option for next season that he's expected to decline to re-sign with the Cavs as a free agent.

Mitchell's future is more complicated. He could be offered a five-year, $350 million super-max extension by the Cavs as early as this offseason, but the team will likely wait due to several financial factors, and still must decide if the seven-time All-Star is worth the investment.

Eleven-game streak

The winner of the Western Conference will play host to the Knicks in Game 1 of the NBA Finals next week.

The Knicks, who haven't lost since April 23 (they actually trailed the Hawks 2-1 in that first-round series after back-to-back one-point losses), join a very small number of teams heading into the title round on this kind of winning streak.

Only three other teams — the Los Angeles Lakers in 1989, the Lakers again in 2001 and Golden State in 2017 — have been on postseason winning streaks of at least 11 games going into the NBA Finals.

The Lakers went 11-0 in the first three rounds of the playoffs (when the first round was best-of-five) in 1989, before getting swept by Detroit in the Finals. The 2001 Lakers also were 11-0 in the first three rounds, then lost Game 1 of the Finals to Philadelphia, then won the rest of that series' games to take the title.

Golden State was 12-0 in rounds 1-3 in 2017, then won the first three games of the Finals against Cleveland — getting to 15-0 for the playoffs — before falling in Game 4 of the finals and finishing it off in Game 5.

New York, however, isn't just winning. It is winning big. Really big.

The Knicks have outscored opponents by 262 points in this 11-game winning streak. It's the most lopsided 11-game span in NBA history — regular season or playoffs.

Boston outscored teams by 243 points in an 11-game stretch in 2024. Milwaukee had 11-game spans where it outscored teams by 230, 231 and 236 points (with some overlap during two of those streaks) in 1970-71.

Those Celtics and those Bucks went on to win NBA titles in those seasons.

Most dominant on the road

The Knicks' average point differential in its pre-Finals playoff rounds this season was 19.4 points per game. The previous best in all rounds combined before the title round was a 16.3-point differential per game by Golden State in 2017.

The Knicks have won six consecutive road playoff games by double digits. No team in NBA history has ever had such a postseason streak.

They've won those games by a staggering 161 combined points.

The previous mark for consecutive double-digit road playoff wins was five, done twice — by Miami in 2013 (by a combined 75 points) and Golden State in 2017 (by a combined 88 points).

Both of those clubs won NBA titles in those seasons.