GREENBURGH, N.Y. (AP) — When the New York Knicks declined to hang a banner after beating the San Antonio Spurs to win the NBA Cup, they did so because they were waiting to celebrate something bigger.
That wait is at 53 years and it can only end now by beating the Spurs again.
Nearly a week after clinching their first NBA Finals berth since 1999, the Knicks were at last able to practice Sunday while knowing who they were practicing for, after Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs knocked off Oklahoma City on Saturday night in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals.
“I mean, they’re a special team,” Knicks guard Deuce McBride said. “Obviously they have the Defensive Player of the Year, obviously a great organization and they’ve got a lot of great young guys, so we’re just excited for this matchup.”
It’s the same one as the last time the Knicks were in the NBA Finals, when the Spurs beat them 27 years ago to leave New York without a title since 1973.
The Knicks believed they were going to have a good shot at ending the drought this year and got a test run at chasing a championship back in December, when they beat San Antonio in Las Vegas to win the NBA Cup.
The Knicks then passed on joining the Lakers and Milwaukee, the previous winners of the in-season tournament, in raising a banner at Madison Square Garden to acknowledge it. They aren’t putting much stock in that victory six months later, knowing how different both teams are.
“Obviously there was good energy around that, but I don’t think that’s really going to be any equivalent to what the atmosphere or the energy is going to be like at their place, or obviously at the Garden,” Knicks forward Josh Hart said.
“So technically that game didn’t happen, so I don’t think there’s anything that we can learn from,” Hart added, poking fun at the fact that the Cup final, an 83rd game for the two teams, doesn’t count in the standings or statistics.
The teams split the two games that did matter, with San Antonio’s victory on New Year’s Eve starting a midseason spiral for a Knicks club that arrived with a 23-9 record. Then, after the Spurs went undefeated in February, New York snapped their 11-game winning streak with a 114-89 home victory on March 1.
Game 1 is Wednesday at San Antonio. More than Wembanyama and the Spurs, the Knicks’ biggest problem might be their lack of playing rhythm.
Because they are rolling through the postseason with an 11-game winning streak, that will be just the 10th game in a 35-day span for the Knicks, starting with the April 30 clincher against Atlanta in Game 6 of the first round.
They then swept Philadelphia and had more than a week off before opening the Eastern Conference finals against Cleveland. Their inactivity clearly showed after that extended rest, as they were 4 for 23 on 3-pointers through three quarters and fell behind by 22 points early in the fourth before rallying to win in overtime.
“We understand what happened last time we had a layoff like this, so we’re just trying to be better than we were last time,” center Karl-Anthony Towns said.
That was the only trouble the Knicks had with the Cavaliers, easily taking the next three games and ending the series last Monday. They have outscored opponents by 262 points during the winning streak, the largest margin for any 11-game stretch in NBA history.
The Knicks don’t expect anything so easy against the Spurs, whose victory in the 1999 matchup was their first of five NBA titles. New York coach Mike Brown was on the bench for one of them as an assistant to Gregg Popovich, and was the losing coach in another when the Spurs swept Cleveland in 2007.
“I got ties to San Antonio and you appreciate the people, you appreciate the journey and all that other stuff,” said Brown, who has family still living in San Antonio. “But at the end of the day, just like they want to beat you, you definitely want to beat them.”
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