Topic summary
2025–26 New York Knicks season
The 2025–26 New York Knicks season was the 80th season of the franchise in the National Basketball Association (NBA). On June 3, 2025, the Knicks dismissed head coach Tom Thibodeau after five seasons with the team. On July 7, the Knicks hired Mike Brown as their head coach. The Knicks won the NBA Championship during this season, for the first time since 1973. It was their third title in franchise history, and their first in which their Finals opponent was not the Los Angeles Lakers.
In the 2025 NBA Cup, the Knicks won East Group C with a 3–1 group stage record to advance to the knockout stage for the third straight year, also doing so as a group winner for the second straight year, by clinching the tiebreaker over the Miami Heat via their head-to-head victory on November 14. In the knockout stage, they defeated the Toronto Raptors in the quarterfinals, the Orlando Magic in the semifinals, and finally the San Antonio Spurs in the championship round, winning the Cup title. The Knicks finished the tournament with a 6–1 record, becoming the first Cup champions to win the tournament title without a perfect record.
In a span from December 31 to January 19, the Knicks had a 2–9 stretch that featured two separate four-game losing streaks, their longest since the 2023–24 season. Following a loss to the Dallas Mavericks, the Knicks closed out the month with a five-game winning streak, which included a 120–66 victory over their rival, the Brooklyn Nets, which also broke a franchise record for the largest victory margin in a regular season game.
On March 30, the Knicks clinched the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season following a Philadelphia 76ers loss to the Miami Heat. On April 9, the Knicks improved over their 51–31 record from the previous season with a win over the Boston Celtics. They finished the regular season with a 53–29 record, placing third in the East.
In the first round of the playoffs, the Knicks defeated the Atlanta Hawks in six games, advancing to the conference semifinals for the fourth consecutive year. The series concluded with a record-breaking game where the Knicks set an NBA playoff record for the largest halftime lead (47 points) and a franchise record for the largest playoff margin of victory (51 points). They would later sweep the Philadelphia 76ers in the conference semifinals and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals (New York's second straight appearance) to clinch their first NBA Finals berth since 1999.
The Knicks faced the San Antonio Spurs in the 2026 NBA Finals, which was a rematch of the 1999 Finals and this season's NBA Cup championship game. The Knicks had also won a franchise-record 13 straight playoff games, which stands as the second-longest single-postseason winning streak in NBA history behind only the 2016–17 Golden State Warriors, spanning from a first-round game 4 victory following a 2–1 deficit against the Hawks to a game 3 Finals loss to the Spurs. In game 4 of the Finals, New York achieved the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, in which they overcame a 29-point deficit to beat San Antonio 107–106. The Knicks defeated the Spurs in five games in the NBA Finals to win their first championship since 1973. They also became the first team to win the NBA Cup, win a playoff series, make the Finals, and win the NBA championship in the same season.