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The New York Knicks are back in the NBA Finals for the first time in 27 years. As it turns out, of all possible opponents, the San Antonio Spurs will be waiting on the other end in a rematch of the 1999 Finals.

San Antonio will have a slight edge over New York, holding home-court advantage thanks to its better regular-season record. The Knicks, however, enter the Finals having won both the regular-season series against the Spurs and the NBA Cup final.

Truth be told, this matchup will certainly not lack sublime basketball or star power. From bona fide MVP candidates Jalen Brunson and Victor Wembanyama to legitimate All-Stars Karl-Anthony Towns and De’Aaron Fox, the series is loaded with talent. Add in a host of established and rising stars such as OG Anunoby, Dylan Harper, Mikal Bridges, and Stephon Castle, and the stage is set for a compelling showdown.

As usual, the Posting & Toasting crew has gathered once again around the round(ball) table to cut through the noise and tackle the pressing questions surrounding New York’s Finals matchup with the San Antonio Spurs. Our panel of basketball geniuses took on the juiciest topics:

How many games will the Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals last, and who wins the title?

Antonio: Six. It’s all been about the West Coast this, the Spurs/Thunder that, and everybody seems to have 1) skipped the Knicks’ scorching run through the Eastern Conference bracket or 2) just decided it’s better to simply just forget about it. In any case, all those are wrong, and New York is playing the best basketball these days, whether they like it or not. The Spurs are damn weird—because of Wemby and their neophyte squad—that I refuse to believe they won’t put up a fight. It’s still NYK bringing it back home at the end of the day and in front of the Knicks faithful.

Miranda: I dunno. Every other round I had a sense, usually pretty short. I don’t expect either team will be swept, be it literally or gentleman-arily, so that only leaves choosing six or seven games, which you already know is the likeliest outcome. So I’ll say Knicks in eight.

Zeno: Oh baby. I can’t believe we’re here. It won’t truly set in until I turn on ABC on Wednesday night, but I can feel the butterflies already. Contrary to the way the Knicks have played for the last month-plus and the general feeling among NBA fans that the West is so ridiculously better than the East, this series will go at least six games. If the Knicks win, it’s going six. If the Spurs win, it’s going seven. We’re Knicks fans, and dammit, I believe. Knicks in six.

Kento: The traumatized fans in me has been at odds with the more optimistic side of that has seen this team run through the Eastern Conference in historic fashion. The Spurs will be the toughest team the Knicks have faced, and it’s more likely that it goes seven games than it is for the Knicks to sweep like they did the last two series. But I just think the Knicks are deeper, more talented, and more experienced team, matchup better than any of the Spurs’ past opponents, and it feels like that special something is in the air with this team. I’ve taken the Knicks in five or six in each of the last three series, and I won’t stop here. The Knicks capitalize on the big opportunity, and win it in six.

Polaniecki: I’m going the full seven. This one is going to be a barn burner. There’s an old saying: “A playoff series doesn’t really start until the road team wins a game.” I could see this series heading back to San Antonio for Game 7 with neither team stealing one on the road. Of course, if the Knicks win Game 7 in San Antonio, that theory would kind of contradict itself. In that case, the series would start and end at the exact same time.

Beyond Jalen Brunson, who is the most important Knick in the NBA Finals?

Antonio: Must be Towns this round, both offensively and defensively. Even if the Spurs place Wemby on Hart, it’ll be key to have Towns moving around and playing QB to have San Antonio’s heads spinning and to mess with their assignments and coverages. Not to mention Towns taking advantage of his bulkier frame to deal with Wemby inside and punish him physically as much as possible. The Alien has the height, but the cat must flex his muscles.

Miranda: Mikal Bridges. Pretty simple. If he scores 18 a game on 80/60/100 splits like he has the past month, while remaining demonically disruptive on D, then the Knick wings have a great chance to outplay the Spurs’, and thus a better chance to win the series. If Bridges morphs back into milquetoast Dr. Jekyll, there won’t be anywhere in NYC for him to Hyde.

Zeno: OG Anunoby. While I do think that Mitch’s broken pinky could be a massive factor, he wouldn’t play enough either way for him to usurp the man who has been statistically the best Wemby stopper in the league. His hamstring has gotten plenty of time to heal, having only played four games in four weeks, and he looked like he got his burst back at the end against Cleveland. If things go right, Anunoby could be a dark horse to win Finals MVP, ala Andre Iguodala.

Kento: Hart will be important too as his shooting could help nullify the Spurs’ ghost coverage, but we’ve seen that Brown has learned to keep that leash short, and lean on Shamet, and McBride when needed. But Towns’ ability to continue being an offensive hub, stretch the floor, punish cross matchups, while being a much improved defender could be the main difference. If Towns can be the third best player in the series, and do so by a wide margin, New York should have two of the three best, and most impactful players in the Finals. And given the depth they have outside of Brunson and him, they should like their chances should Towns accomplish that.

Polaniecki: Without a doubt, it’s Karl-Anthony Towns. I might even go as far as saying he’s more important to the Knicks winning this series than Jalen Brunson.

That’s not to take anything away from Stephon Castle or Dylan Harper. Both are capable of having huge moments and swinging games in San Antonio’s favor. But when you look at the Spurs, everything still revolves around Victor Wembanyama.

How Towns matches up with Wemby on both ends of the floor remains to be seen. If Towns can pull him away from the basket offensively while also holding his own defensively, it could completely change the complexion of the series.

The Spurs will go as far as Wembanyama takes them. His leadership and performance will be the driving force behind everything they do, which makes the Towns-Wembanyama matchup one of the biggest storylines of the Finals.

What must New York do to win the Finals and avenge the loss to San Antonio from 1999?

Antonio: Halt the Spurs’ pace and don’t let them click from three-point range. Keeping the defense at the level it’s been for the first three rounds of the playoffs would be optimal, but it’s obviously asking a ton to demand the team to keep putting on shows like the last 11 times we’ve watched them play. The Spurs have dethroned the reigning champs and are hellacious in both D&O while playing quick ball. The Knicks have a strong 3P% compared to the Spurs’ percentage, and if they can keep it that way and KAT does his thing all around the court, that’d be massive.

Miranda: Second question first: let 1999 go. Even if the Spurs did kill the Knicks then, think of it as a mercy killing. Those Knicks won their championship getting to the Finals, period. Ain’t no vengeance to be had. To win this time? Well, in ‘99 the Knicks nearly had the series going back to San Antonio for Game 6, before a jitterbug-quick southpaw point guard hit the critical, corner baseline jumpers that lifted the Spurs to the title. So I guess whatever the Knicks do, if it’s late and close don’t ignore De’Aaron Fox in the corner.

Zeno: Defend the perimeter. Wemby is going to get his, but the Spurs can be deadly offensively outside of him, specifically by using his gravity to their advantage. We all remember what Julian Champagnie did on New Year’s Eve, and we saw how guys like Keldon Johnson, Devin Vassell, and Dylan Harper knocked down clutch shots in Game 7. A disciplined defense is the key to a parade down the Canyon of Heroes.

Kento: Win the possession battle. If the Knicks can limit turnovers against a younger more athletic team, while forcing their inexperienced backcourt to cough up turnovers, the game could easily swing. The same can be said for the rebounding battle. The Spurs struggled to keep the Thunder off the offensive glass in game seven of the Western Conference Finals, and had troubles with the Knicks’ offensive rebounding during the regular season as well. If the Knicks can win those battles, the Spurs, and especially Wembanyama, may eventually tire out, and their elite defense may falter.

Polaniecki: Game 1 could very well decide this series, and stealing it on the road won’t be easy, especially if it comes down to the final minutes. Those kinds of losses can be deflating.

The Knicks are going to have to shake off the rust quickly. Remember how slowly they came out in Game 1 against Cleveland? They can’t afford a start like that this time around. San Antonio is too good to spot an early lead, particularly on its home floor.

What concerns you most about the Knicks entering the Finals?

Antonio: Others here have experience with past Knicks trips to the Finals. I have not. I have no damn clue how these dudes might or might not react to operating under the brighter lights. I have never followed any sort of run like this closely, far from it. It’s been 11 consecutive wins, and I live in constant fear that it just cannot realistically be happening and will end abruptly and catastrophically. Will all of the good be karma’d by an awful Finals? Will Mitchell Robinson’s pristine bill of health come down crashing at the worst possible time? Will Josh Hart forget how to shoot a rock? Will Mikal Bridges return to his Bench Mikal version? Will Shamet, Clarkson, and Deuce turn into bland bench players? Everything points toward a huge NO, at least not to all the questions above, but I won’t believe it till I see it.

Miranda: That Donald Trump will use his tanking Q rating and the buzz around the Knicks to come to MSG with the series on a knife’s edge, fake an assassination attempt and use that to attack Zohran Mamdani’s leadership and New York’s autonomy. And that his friend James Dolan will use his illegal-if-not-unethical facial recognition tech to finger the wrong people for it.

Zeno: The unknown. This is uncharted territory for an entire generation of fans, including myself. You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. In a basketball sense, I wonder how this team will handle two things: not having home court advantage for the first time and the expected adversity. They haven’t experienced defeat in 40 days. When it inevitably happens, how quickly can they flush it? Can they avoid going down 0-2 heading home to the Garden? There’s a multitude of things to think about.

Kento: Mitchell Robinson’s health. One of the major reasons Knicks fans preferred to face off against the Spurs, and not the Thunder, was because of the Knicks’ unique ability to make things more difficult for Wembanyma than almost any other team. Robinson was a big part of that. Towns, given the defense has played, and Anunoby will still provide some resistance, and their strength could wear the young big man down over the course of what could be a long, and physical series. But the Knicks’ chances of winning it all increase greatly if Robinson is effective.

Polaniecki: Adding another disappointment to the Knicks decades long book of disappointments.

Heading into the Finals, what gives you the most confidence about New York amid its postseason run?

Antonio: The fact that they have put together such a great postseason run for a long, sustained period of time and against three different teams, that they come into the Finals uber-rested for the second consecutive series, and that, for all the Nova Knicks jokes out there, it actually feels like the group is so close and the chemistry so pure that this team is simply going to fight through whatever they face and still come out on top. Due’s due.

Miranda: This is the best Knicks team I’ve ever seen, playing the best basketball I’ve ever seen. The most balanced, with meaningful depth and the right mix of experience and not-old-yet. Their offensive (Brunson) and defensive linchpins (OG) are as good as any in the game today. Missing out on the Thunder was a break, iff only to the extent that the Spurs aren’t quite as large and accomplished as OKC. Also, it’s been 27 seasons since the Knicks last lost in the playoffs to a Western team. I bet they can keep that streak going.

Zeno: As I said, they haven’t lost in 40 days. It’s very rare that a team has this dominant a playoff run and loses. This team is an absolute juggernaut right now and is playing with a level of swagger that we haven’t seen before, but they’ve also remained levelheaded and locked in on the ultimate prize. No matter what happens next, they’re etched into history for what they’ve done to this point, and there’s no reason to doubt them at this point. They will fight their asses off for this city.

Kento: Everything we’ve seen in the last two series. During their historic run, the Knicks have answered so many questions that we had about them entering the postseason. Brunson has flourished playing off the ball more. Towns has been playing the best two-way ball of his life. Anunoby has seemingly reached new heights on offense. Bridges has regained his confidence on offense, and is playing more physically defensively at the point-of-attack. Hart has shown more willingness to continue shooting the ball against ghost coverage, knocking down five threes in game two of the Cavaliers series. And Brown has proven that while he may be a bit slow to react accordingly, he almost always finds the right solutions. If the Knicks continue just doing what they’ve been doing, it might not matter what the Spurs do, or how they play, even if they are the best team the Knicks have played thus far.

Polaniecki: I do believe this is the best Knicks team since 1994, and maybe even since 1973. I’m not saying that just because they’ve reached the Finals either.

When you compare the level of consistency, the way they’ve sustained success, and the current run they’re on, I don’t even think the 1999 team clears them. That group was memorable, but this version feels more complete and more capable on both ends of the floor over a longer stretch. What they’ve done over this stretch feels different, not just in terms of results, but in how convincingly they’ve controlled games at times against high-level competition.

In Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight, Karl-Anthony Towns will anchor the center position for the New York Knicks against the San Antonio Spurs. It’s been a long and bumpy road for the former number one overall pick, but Towns has finally reached the summit of the NBA Playoffs.

KAT is playing the best basketball of his career. In these playoffs, he is averaging 16.9 points per game on incredible 57/49/89 shooting splits while putting up 10.6 rebounds, 5.9 assists, 1.4 blocks, and 1.2 steals per game as the Knicks have won 11 straight games en route to their first Finals appearance since 1999.

It wasn’t that long ago, though, that many would have thought all of that would be impossible for Towns, a fact Minnesota Timberwolves fans know all too well. In his first eight NBA seasons, Towns and the Wolves made the playoffs just three times as KAT drew criticism after each series.

In his first two playoff games in 2018, Towns scored a total of just 13 points as James Harden, Chris Paul, and the Houston Rockets took a 2-0 series lead. In the series-defining Game 3 of the 2022 series against the Memphis Grizzlies, Towns took just four shots as Memphis came back from 20 points down (nearly twice) to take control of the series.

Towns played better in the 2023 loss to the eventual champion Denver Nuggets, but ultimately, the Wolves were 0-3 in the playoff series with huge questions looming about Towns’s ability to be an effective player in the Playoffs.

All of that changed for KAT in the 2024 Playoffs.

During the 2023-24 regular season, the Wolves won 56 games, earned the three-seed after sitting on top of the Western Conference for much of the season, and, despite being underdogs, swept Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, Bradley Beal, and the Phoenix Suns for the franchise’s first playoff series win in 20 years.

Towns guarded Durant the entire series and held his own against a matchup that, on the surface, seemed primed to play KAT off the court. In the series-ending Game 4, KAT put up 28 points on 11-17 shooting from the field and 4-6 from beyond the arc.

It was the first data point that proved a team with Towns as one of its top players could win big games in the Playoffs. With Anthony Edwards ascending and Rudy Gobert sharing the frontcourt, Towns ceded the spotlight, accepted his smaller role, and flourished as the team’s secondary scorer.

It was also a gigantic moment for the Timberwolves franchise, which had only won two previous playoff series in its history. While the previous two decades had seen little success, that series victory in Phoenix signaled a new era of Timberwolves basketball.

The Timberwolves kept it rolling in the next series against the defending champion Nuggets, eliminating them in seven games to reach the Western Conference Finals.

Towns, with the help of Gobert, guarded reigning-MVP Nikola Jokić and, similar to Durant in the previous round, kept his matchup in check as much as anyone can against one of the greatest players in the history of basketball.

That entire series culminated with Game 7 in Denver when the Wolves came back from down 20 points in the second half. Towns was the Wolves’ leading scorer that night and kept the game from spiraling out of control in the first half when no one else on the Wolves could score.

KAT punctuated the win with the putback dunk with less than a minute left and the final defensive rebound as the clock hit zero. If the victory over the Suns wasn’t validation, this one against the Nuggets certainly was, as the game and series stand as possibly the best moment in the history of the Timberwolves franchise.

Following the game, Towns gave one of the best postgame quotes in the history of the Timberwolves. In classic KAT fashion, he responded, “How much more we gotta lose?” to a question about the team needing to lose before they win in the NBA Playoffs.

KAT had done plenty of losing, but that time is over now.

The winning in 2024 has continued for KAT since he was traded to New York. Last season, Towns eliminated the reigning champion for the second straight season, taking down the Boston Celtics as the Knicks made the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time in 25 years.

Now, they are in the NBA Finals and sit just four wins away from NBA immortality.

In two short years, the narrative of Towns’s career has completely flipped from an overpaid liability to a fundamental piece of three straight conference finalists and a potential NBA champion. Now, starting Wednesday night in San Antonio, Towns has a chance to put an exclamation point on everything and become a New York City legend.

Some Timberwolves fans in Minnesota will be jealous of the Knicks’ success, try to re-litigate the trade that sent Towns to New York, or wallow in what they see as a validation of their Minnesota sports doomerism.

Many more will be cheering for KAT and the Knicks and will celebrate their success if they actually win the championship.

I know I will.

Cameron Boozer’s NBA track is pretty set: unless something very strange happens, he’ll go between the #1 and the #4 picks, and lately, a lot of people have suggested that maybe he’ll be the first pick.

Time will tell, obviously.

For his Duke teammate, Isaiah Evans, his path is less certain. He didn’t test that well athletically at the combine, and that is a negative.

However, he has a deadly perimeter shot, and a lot of teams could use that, not least of all the Detroit Pistons.

The Pistons ran out of gas in the playoffs against Cleveland when they just couldn’t get it going outside.

Given his golden arm, Evans could go a long way towards fixing that.

And it’s worth mentioning that Trajan Langdon is Detroit’s GM. If anyone knows how to spot a great shooter, it’s going to be the Alaskan Assassin.

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The Sixers were at the forefront of the sensation that was the 2025 rookie class. They immediately slotted No. 3 overall pick VJ Edgecombe into the starting lineup on opening night and played him 35 minutes a night. Edgecombe’s production correlated with team success all season as Philadelphia made it back to the playoffs and won a round.

They certainly did not get as much instant success from their second-round pick. At No. 35 overall, the Sixers selected Johni Broome out of Auburn. The 6-foot-8 forward was an interesting prospect to say the least. He had just carried his Tigers to the National Championship, but was set to turn 23 years old just weeks after being drafted and had some really troubling measurables coming out of the combine.

It wasn’t a shock that Broome spent more of his rookie season with the Delaware Blue Coats than the main club. He played in 18 games with the Coats compared 11 for the Sixers. In only one of those 11 games did Broome see minutes in non-garbage time.

Even in blowouts with the benches emptied, Broome looked concerningly a step behind the competition on the floor. This was most notable in the game he got the most extended run, a game in which he played 17 minutes in a 41-point loss to the Orlando Magic.

His 2-of-9 performance that night is a big reason he ended his rookie season shooting 16% from the field. Despite hardly ever seeing an NBA floor the rest of the season, Broome was able to go through the proper rite of passage for a Sixers rookie. He tore his meniscus in late February, sinking chances he had at getting reps in Delaware down the stretch of the season as well.

Broome did get cleared to return for the end of the season, but only appeared again in a couple fourth quarters in the second round of the playoffs in which the New York Knicks had thoroughly smashed the Sixers. Broome’s rookie season ended with him averaging 0.9 points, 1.5 rebounds and 0.4 assists per game.

The playing time and production are so minute it’s impossible to really evaluate, and yet at the same time it still feels bad enough to be concerning. He simultaneously didn’t get much of a chance at the NBA level yet did enough to make his detractors already write him off.

There’s already a debate over how bad of a miss it was drafting Broome at 35. On one hand, it’s only a second-round pick, but a pick as high as 35 is often viewed a little more highly.

There was only one player to go after Broome in the second round who was an obvious, that being Maxime Raynaud of the Sacramento Kings. As a center, Raynaud was an easy draft miss Broome skeptics pointed to given the uncertainty that is Joel Embiid’s health status. It didn’t help that Raynaud made Second Team All-Rookie.

No NBA career should be judged by the first 11 games alone. Broome did at least have some success in Delaware. Over eight games he averaged more than 19 points a game, including a 50-burger in February just weeks before he injured his knee. Removing his G-League production though, Broome has yet to show any real flash at the professional level.

The Spurs struggled against the Knicks in the regular season. Should New York be considered the favorite because of those matchups? 

Marilyn Dubinski: While the Spurs’ loss in New York was their lone blemish of February, if we’ve learned anything in these playoffs, it’s to disregard the regular season.  The Cup Final came with Wemby still coming off the bench (and admittedly not focused since he had lost his grandmother), and the Spurs won their home game (albeit behind a franchise record 11 threes from Julian Champagnie). All those games were outliers in their own ways, and both teams have come a long way since then.  It’s also hard to know what exactly to think of the Knicks right now because of how quickly they went from disappointing to close the regular season to flying through an easy first three rounds in part due to upsets on the other side of the East bracket.  I think it will be a very tight match-up, but homecourt advantage will be the difference for the Spurs.

Mark Barrington: No, because both teams have gotten a lot better since then. It’s hard to know how good the Knicks are right now, since they’ve been lapping the field in the kiddie pool that is the Eastern Conference playoffs. 

Can Landry Shamet continue to look like a bigger, stronger Steph Curry? [I think his shooting returns to Earth in this series, although he will continue to be a key player for them.] 

Is Jalen Brunson going to be able to create enough space with his compact structure and elite body control? [I think that Victor’s length will bother him in the paint.] 

Will KAT avoid taking 4 or 5 dumb fouls per game? [As if. KAT gotta KAT.]  

Is Josh Hart the ultimate glue guy? [Yes.] 

Will Mitch Robinson even play, and if he does, can he hit a free throw? [Jeremy Sochan is teaching him the one-handed free-throw technique as we speak.]

The deal is that the Knicks aren’t a known quantity at this point. They’ve had an incredible run so far, but they’ve hardly been tested. They’ve beaten the teams in front of them, and handily. I feel like it’s a pretty even matchup at this point. 

Devon Birdsong: The favorite? No, I don’t really think so. Cleveland may have been the team least suited to giving them trouble in the East, and the East is still pretty visibly the weaker conference to begin with. I’m honestly not sure the Knicks would even be here if the Sixers hadn’t summoned the inexplicable magic that put them over the Celtics. I see these teams as being remarkably even, and with a cleaner bill of health than previous matchups, I think you have to take this whole series as a start from scratch. Unlike the Thunder, the Knicks did get at least one real challenge in their opening series against the Hawks, but I still think the Spurs are going to benefit from having had to overcome so much in practically every series. If I were looking at this from an outside perspective, I’d be inclined to agree with Vegas, and slightly favor the Spurs, actually. 

Jeje Gomez: Regular season wins and losses don’t matter as much to me when it comes to the playoffs as how the matchup actually went. And considering that, I don’t think the Knicks should be the favorites, but they shouldn’t be underrated either. They do present significant matchup issues for Wembanyama and they have a bunch of wings who can potentially limit San Antonio’s driving game and punish overhelp with their shooting. It’s borderline impossible after the Western Conference Finals to think that there’s a better NBA team than the Spurs, but in terms of matchups, the Knicks are definitely dangerous.

What aspect of the game will determine who gets the ring?

Dubinski: I think it will be a combination of three-point shooting and how it’s defended.  The biggest key for the Spurs will be to not leave shooters open to play help defense on Brunson.  It worked fine against Minnesota because they were lacking in shooters and Ant wasn’t always looking to pass, but it almost burned them against OKC because Caruso and McCain got hot in stretches, hence why they adjusted back to “Stop everyone else and make SGA beat us”. The Knicks have SEVEN main rotation players who shot over 36% from three on three or more attempts during the regular season, so the Spurs can’t cede that shot. Trust Castle (or whoever is on Brunson), stay at home, and play man-to-man defense.  Make them beat you one-on-one.

Barrington: The Knicks are a team that shoots a lot of three-point shots, and in the playoffs, they’ve been going down at a high rate. The Spurs’ defense relies on letting Wembanyama roam to erase the other team’s interior and mid-range shots, which sometimes means they allow opponents to get looks from range. This was effective against the Thunder because they didn’t have a lot of elite shooters. Everyone on the Knicks can shoot three pointers, except Mitchell Robinson, who might not even play. So the Spurs are going to have to keep defenders on the shooters against New York, and that could open driving lanes for Brunson. If the Knicks solve the Spurs’ defense, they will win the series, because the Spurs can’t win a shooting contest against these guys. Well, maybe Julian Champagnie can.

Birdsong: Shooting feels like the easy answer, since the Knicks lead the playoff field in 3pt%, FG%, EFG%, and TS%, but I think it might really come down to two specific match-ups, and one wild card: Anunoby defending Wemby, Castle defending Brunson, and the Karl Anthony Towns factor.

As was pointed out a few weeks ago on Twitter/X, among players who have guarded the Spurs star in at least 100 half-court matchups, Anunoby allows the fewest points per matchup. He has tremendous length and strength in spite of the height disadvantage, and Mike Brown and his staff had plenty of time to see how successful the Thunder were in denying Wemby position. Thankfully, Stephon Castle has had his share of success in giving Jalen Brunson fits when defending him (in 38 possessions where Castle was the primary defender, Brunson scored just 5 points while being held to 28.7% from the field), but there’s an added wrinkle to defending Brunson now that KAT has effectively taken on some serious distribution responsibilities in the postseason. You can’t just focus on Brunson to shut down New York’s ball movement. And this is why Towns is the wild-card of the series. Because of his passing chops (6 assists per game) and his long-distance shooting, he allows the Knicks to run two legitimate big men, and that shooting (almost 50% from three in the postseason) pulls Wemby away from the hoop as the only player with the height to contest it, which leaves the interior up for grabs, and Towns has the ability to hit the open man. I think a lot of this series will hinge on how/if the Spurs are able to defend that with other players. I wonder if we’re going to end up seeing a lot of French Vanilla. 

Gomez: Since the shooting has already been mentioned, I’ll go with turnovers and pace. The Knicks play slow and don’t cough the ball up. They have Brunson, who can normally get a good shot whenever he wants in the half-court and a solid, switchy defense. If they dictate how the game is played, the Spurs could be in trouble. If San Antonio can create some turnovers and push the pace, they’ll be in great shape.

Prediction time: Who will win the championship, and how do you think the series will go? 

Dubinski: Spurs in 7.  I think this will be just as difficult as the last round, perhaps slightly more so based on the match-up.  There will be times when one team is hot and the other isn’t, but I believe in the Spurs’ grit, determination, willpower, and ability to make adjustments. (Also, I want them to win at home but don’t think it will be in Game 5.  Also, also, I have submitted to the power of the Corgi, so I must trust him.)

Barrington: Spurs in 6. Both teams hold home court until Game 6, when the Spurs take the title in MSG, breaking the hearts of the home fans. June 16, mark your calendars!

Victor Wembanyama is Finals MVP, to no one’s surprise. It’s going to be a stressful couple of weeks, folks.

Birdsong: For me, I see the Knicks as presenting all of the issues the Spurs had with the Timberwolves, but with less glaring weakness. They have the length, size, and toughness, but they also have a plethora of three-point shooters. They have a healthy lead guard who is top-notch at both scoring and distributing. And they have a power forward who can stretch the floor and make the pass in reality, as opposed to in theory.The Minnesota series went six games. Barring major injury, I can’t see this not going the full seven. And in that scenario, I think home-court advantage might be the deciding factor. Spurs in 7. 

Gomez: I went with Spurs in six. The Knicks are a horrible matchup, but we’ve seen the Silver and Black find another gear during the playoffs. I expect a close series, even if three-point variance turns a game or two into a blowout either way, but I can see San Antonio showing the killer instinct they displayed against the Thunder if they get a chance to end it on the road.

The 1998-99 season was a year of change in the NBA.

Michael Jordan had retired for a second time, and the league's owners, fed up with the league's financial structure and players' rising salaries, locked the players out after failing to reach a new collective bargaining agreement.

Once a deal was reached, the season began on Feb. 5, and the schedule was reduced to 50 games. The San Antonio Spurs tied for the league's best record and beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, Los Angeles Lakers, and Portland Trail Blazers on the way to the Finals.

The New York Knicks, as the No. 8 seed, upset the Miami Heat in the first round, becoming the second No. 8 seed to beat a top seed. After sweeping the Atlanta Hawks, they beat the Indiana Pacers in six games to advance to the championship round.

Here are some takeaways from the last Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals matchup:

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