Hey, remember when the New York Knicks lost two playoff games to the Atlanta Hawks??

It’s true! They were down 2-1 in that series after a 109-108 loss in Game 3, which was back on April 23rd.

THEY HAVEN’T LOST SINCE!

Three straight against the Hawks to win that series 4-2, then a sweep of Philadelphia and a sweep of Cleveland in the Eastern Conference Finals! 11 straight wins, and now the Knicks are back in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999!

Unfortunately for our purposes here at Anonymous Eagle, OUR GUY Tyler Kolek only played nine total minutes against Cleveland in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. That seems a little weird because as we discussed in the preview/schedule post for that series, the Knicks are undefeated at 8-0 in the playoffs when head coach Mike Brown puts Kolek on the floor but now just 4-2 when Kolek does not play. GET IT TOGETHER, MIKE BROWN!

In fairness to Mike Brown, he’s the guy steering the ship on the best 10 game point differential in NBA history, regular season or playoffs…. and that margin is NOT CLOSE.

We should note that Kolek had eight points, a rebound, and an assist in eight minutes in New York’s 130-93 demolition of the Cavaliers in Game 4. That game was so lopsided that when it went to the half with the Knicks up 68-49, the Inside The NBA crew spent intermission openly discussing how much the Cavaliers had quit, up to and including an on screen stat package titled “QUITTING TIME.” That’s a yikes!

Anyway, the Knicks are in the NBA Finals, and after Saturday night’s Game 7, we know that they’ll be facing the San Antonio Spurs, making it a rematch of the 1999 NBA Finals. The Spurs went 62-20 in the regular season, which earned them the #2 seed in the Western Conference, and for the purposes of this series, that means San Antonio will have home court advantage in the Finals since New York was 53-29.

The Spurs got to the Finals by beating Portland, Minnesota and Oklahoma City in the Western Conference playoffs, which does mean that they beat the #1 seeded Thunder 4-3 in the conference finals and thus dethroned the reigning NBA Champions. San Antonio had to win Game 6 at home to force Game 7, and then they beat the Thunder 111-103 on the road to get to the Finals for the first time since 2014.

San Antonio was led in the Western Conference Finals by Victor Wembanyama, the 7’4”, 22-year-old phenom. He averaged 27.3 points and 10.9 rebounds per game against OKC, which includes a 16-for-40 effort behind the three-point line, and honestly: Big Vic shooting 40% on threes on top of everything should be declared illegal. He also chipped in 3.1 assists and a shockingly low 2.7 blocks per game against the Thunder, so he’s doing a little bit of everything for the Spurs.

The Spurs are more than just Le Slim, and it’s former UConn Husky Stephon Castle showing up as their #2 scorer from the conference finals at 18.0 points per game. He also led the squad in assists with 7.6 in the series, but don’t ignore De’Aaron Fox and his 6.2 per game either. There’s a little bit of noise in that signal since Fox did miss two games in the series, but he did play over 35 minutes in Game 7, so we’ll presume he’s good to go when the NBA Finals start on Wednesday.

One last thing, which I saw on Saturday night: Game 6 of the Finals, if necessary, will be at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, June 16th. France — Wembanyama’s home country! — plays their first match of the 2026 World Cup…. five hours earlier at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Could be quite the day for Francophones in the New York/New Jersey area, that’s all.

All games are on ABC, and all games start at 7:30pm Central

Game 1: Wednesday, June 3
Game 2: Friday, June 5
Game 3: Monday, June 8
Game 4: Wednesday, June 10
Game 5*: Saturday, June 13
Game 6*: Tuesday, June 16
Game 7*: Friday, June 19

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