A 2026 NBA Finals Preview that is Absolutely about Basketball and Totally Mentions Some of the People Who Will be Playing in This Series

Somewhere along the path from my time occupying this virtual real estate to today, I picked up a reputation as a Knicks optimist.  I’m not  certain that this would have been entirely predictable in the days when I was writing a midseason Knicks/Bucks recap about Mike Woodson and the team displaying the classic “Four Horsemen” of a doomed marriage or comparing a JR Smith playoff performance to a guy vomiting into an open casket mid-eulogy.*  I was young then, in my mid- to late-20’s for the duration, and my feelings seemed big and consequential even when the subject matter was demonstrably trivial and hopeless.  To paraphrase the American philosopher Mark Hoppus: I guess that was growing up.

*RIP our archives.

At some moment in a human life — and experience tells me that this can happen in utero, on a deathbed, anywhere in between, YMMV — each one of us has to make a decision about how much control of our emotional well-being we are willing to outsource to things beyond our control. I don’t mean this to be preachy, many of you have borne witness to the places I have (and occasionally continue to) allowed this team to take me.  That’s life, as they say, and it’s all the richer because we can’t feel joy or hope or serenity on demand.  Everybody, after all, has a plan until the Knicks kick them in the dick, to quote a phrase.

But with effort, perspective, maybe a little help from our friends, we can at least try to build whatever sufficiently stable emotional outlook works for us. And, the world being what it is, at some point we will each probably need to.  Without getting into the vagaries of the sociopolitical evolution of the past decade of American life, I think I can reasonably say among friends that the world isn’t PERFECT these days.  Let that mean whatever it may mean to you personally, this introduction is getting pretty long.

In the summer of 2020, in the middle of a global pandemic and an NBA shutdown, my first child was born.  Spreading authoritarianism, social upheaval, global pestilence and death.  Then: the record-scratch reality that a human life depends on you not only to survive but to learn how to cope with the seismic and mundane alike. And then, to top it off, basketball resumed and my utterly helpless Knicks team were literally not invited to participate. If you’re in the practice of looking for messages from the universe, that one is pretty hard to ignore.

(Interlude: As I was typing this, my Brunson-obsessed now-nearly-six-year-old walked up to me and said “If the Knicks don’t win it’s OKAY! They got REALLY FAR!” I did not put her up to this.

The textbook parenting answer, of course, is “That’s right! I’m so proud of you!” and I am of course proud of her sense of perspective.  But what I actually said to her, without thinking, was “Let’s not talk like that yet!”

Indeed, friends, the journey to enlightenment never ends.)

My point: there’s a whole lot of force majeure in the world these days, much of it far more majeure than our Knicks.  But in between fretting over about the potential collapse of civilization and trying to get my daughters to brush their teeth, I realized that I was going to need to find a way to compartmentalize this thing in my life, this thing that I loved beyond all reason, this thing that felt for years like it would never validate that love.  If I couldn’t ratchet down how much the Knicks meant to me, then, it would become necessary to recalibrate the manner of that meaning.

Life (both after an acute pandemic and after a newborn) began to normalize.  Knicks basketball resumed.  Moderna and Pfizer; board books and walks in the stroller; Thibodeau and Quickley.  The Knicks: an emotional trap! Good enough to hope but bad enough to infuriate.*

*Julius Randle in a sentence, tbh.

But, and here’s where I get corny and maybe lose some of you…life is a gift.  It’s that simple.

Find something that terrifies you so much that you realize how desperately precious life is.  Find something you love, really love enough to die for, and realize that you can’t live like Eeyore under a bespoke raincloud, waiting for something else to come along and make you happy.  Realize that there will be good times and there will be bad times but that, if you’re as fortunate as I am to be healthy and secure, you can always always choose hope.

“And unto them will be born a savior.” 2022 rolls around, what’s a little tampering between friends, he shows up.  We have our guys. It all starts to feel a little…easier? That winter, my second daughter is born on the night of a double-overtime win over the Celtics.  How can you not be romantic about basketball?  How can you be so lucky and not choose to believe, to hope, to see the beauty in life?

And since then, I dunno folks.  Don’t know if it’s delusion, denial, delirium.  But I trust him.  I trust them.  They’ve given me so much.  Last year I told everyone they could do it.  Not that they would do it.  But that they could do it. They didn’t do it. C’est la vie.

As for this year? I mean, you’re not going to get basketball analysis now, 10 minutes before tip, 95% of the way through my first post in over a decade.  All I will say is this: I have felt, since the late fall of 2025, felt all the way down in my bones, that the New York Knicks are going to be 2026 NBA champions.  I have felt that I’m watching the middle of a story that I can sense the end of.  I’m not here accumulating evidence, I’m not here to tell those with rational opinions to the contrary that they’re wrong.

I’m choosing hope, I’m choosing to believe, I’m choosing to trust this team that has made me feel so much joy — joy I’ve shared with my parents and with my children and with friends that I only met because of my time right here, on these pages.

And could they lose? Obviously, yes.  But why think about that now?  I’m here for the journey.  I’m choosing hope.

Knicks in 6.