The Knicks and Spurs face off in the 2026 NBA Finals, and there’s a ton of storylines and angles to base a series preview on. I could write about the Knicks’ improbable playoffs ascendency, the potential rise of the NBA’s next GOAT in Wemby, or even about how I spent my honeymoon watching the Knicks and Spurs face off in the Finals from the Bahamas. However, I thought my strengths lie in talking about this series from a purely statistical sense. Dean Oliver once noted that you have to understand the team first, before diving into the specifics of individual players, matchups, lineups, etc. I don’t know if he still follows that philosophical take on NBA analysis, but I do.
From a basic statistical standpoint, the Spurs are the clear favorites. They had the better regular season record and own home-court advantage. Their expected win percentage, a better indicator of team strength than wins, was 73.2% to the Knicks’ 68.3%. Plugging these values into Bill James’ Log 5 equation, which provides a basis for predicting the outcome of a game, gives the Spurs a 65% chance of winning a home game, and a 46% chance of winning a road game. It’s pretty easy to use Excel to run through a few thousand seven-game series, and after doing so, it seems the Knicks only win a championship 35% of the time.
Normally, that’s about where the strict analytical take would end. But what if we didn’t want to use the regular season as the baseline? What if we used the playoff numbers instead? The Spurs’ expected win percentage increases a tad, up to 77.8%, while the Knicks’ takes a Herculean leap to 92.9%. And running through the same calculations again, we find the Knicks winning the Finals in a landslide at a 95% clip.
Obviously, we shouldn’t ignore either the playoff data or the regular season data, but at what rate should we include each? If you think the regular season and playoffs should be weighted in equal portions, the Knicks win a ring 57% of the time. If you think you should just aggregate the two into a single season, then the Spurs are again the favorites at 59%. Playing around with the numbers, I found that with a ratio of 70% regular season to 30% playoffs, the odds evened out for both teams.
One “what-if” to consider here — is that if the Knicks had the home-court advantage, this would NOT be a radically different series. Based on the regular season numbers alone, the Knicks odds would increase from 35% to 41%, a nominal rate.
The numbers say that if the Knicks’ 2026 playoff team is the real deal, and what we will actually witness in this series, they are the clear favorite. Otherwise it’s a nail biter that could go either way.
EDIT: Thanks to ptmilo who had me recheck my work!
| Team | Knicks | Spurs | NY Wins Home Game | SA Wins Home Game |
| Regular-Exp% | 0.6829 | 0.7317 | 54.22% | 65.51% |
| Playoff-EXP% | 0.9286 | 0.7778 | 84.79% | 28.76% |
| Half | 0.8058 | 0.7778 | 64.00% | 55.87% |
| 15perc | 0.7198 | 0.7409 | 57.39% | 62.55% |
| 30Perc | 0.7566 | 0.7455 | 61.41% | 58.57% |
41 replies on “Knicks-Spurs 2026 Finals — A Statistical Preview”
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I’m still so mad at Mitch.
I’m frustrated with Mitch, but I can’t allow myself to be mad at him. He talked earlier in the spring about dealing with mental health struggles. And that stuff is real. The timing of it is awful, and I hope it doesn’t cost us the series. But some things, people cannot control about themselves.
Part of the frustration is having to speculate about what happened and when.
He was clearly in some discomfort during Game 4 vs. CLE. Was that after the fact? Did he hide a partial fracture and then aggravate it? Did he punch someone or something? What is the gap between when the injury happened and when surgery was performed? Why was it called a pinky injury rather than a hand injury? It would be nice to have answers to these questions.
Alas, we only have that he injured it somewhere other than practice or a game, that the Knicks lied about it, and that he had surgery sometime last week (we don’t even know the day for sure.)
How did the Knicks lie about it?
Yeah, I get it, and clearly he’s going through stuff so I can’t hate the guy.
But picking up a potentially series-altering injury after a year in which you were load managed with kids gloves before the biggest games in half a century is certainly frustrating.
I remain open to the possibility that Mitch plays well with the broken finger. It hasn’t been the best spring for him, though. He hasn’t come close to being the one man wrecking crew he was in the Celtics series.
Deuce has quietly been ineffective, too. But Landry has rendered that moot.
Regardless of whether we keep Mitch or not, unless he plays and has a impact on this series, he’s going to be less expensive than before the playoffs. Between general injury risk, nightmare from the FT line, mental health issues and the broken hand who exactly is going to bid him up?
“Between general injury risk, nightmare from the FT line, mental health issues and the broken hand who exactly is going to bid him up?”
San Antonio.
I read an incredible stat this morning about the 1999 Finals, apparently Duncan sat 11 mins for the entire 5 game series!
Ah, to be both that young and that sturdily-built.
Yep, he played 43, 45, 46, 47, and 46 minutes. Over the regular season, he averaged 39.3 minutes and played in every single regular season game. (Caveat: There were only 50 games that season.)
He was 22 years old that season. Imagine that.
For everyone, and particularly the under 65 contingent on this blog, I strongly recommend this article, and watching the tribute video to Dave DeBusschere embedded within. I got choked up at several points watching it.
Dave gets short shrift when discussing the greatest Knicks ever. He not only had a bunch of pivotal playoff performances (for example, 18 points and 17 rebounds in 1970 Game 7 gets lost behind Clyde’s performance and Willis’ heroics) but he was a consummate “coach on the floor” type. He was every bit as important to those championships as Willis and Clyde.
I remember as a very young but obsessed fan listening to every game on the radio how every time the Knicks would play the Pistons how Marv Albert would wax poetic about Dave. When the trade for him was announced, I knew that he was the missing piece. And he surely delivered.
If we go on to win, I truly hope that Dave, Willis, and Dick are able to see it from wherever they are.
Smiles in Thibs.
Re: the 1999 Finals, I also forgot that we had the final possession in game 5 and Sprewell got smothered. Final score 78-77!
If we were able to pull that one out the Spurs very likely win game 6 or 7 in San Antonio, but it would have made it interesting. And I believe there was a chance Ewing could have come back for those games or am I mistaken?
He tore his Achilles, so no.
https://www.theledger.com/story/news/1999/06/03/ewing-out-for-the-playoffs/26748247007/
My prediction is mildly tempered…
I predict the Knicks will win four straight as soon as they adjust to the Spurs’ physicality. Given the rust they are likely to face, I honestly have no idea when that will be.
Scenario A: Knicks in 4. We’re so good it takes us little time to adjust, and we put these guys in their place like Hakeem’s Rockets did with Shaq & Penny’s Magic in 1995.
Scenario B: Knicks in 5 after getting pounded in game 1. A couple famous past analogues for that include Heat v Bulls in 2011 ECF and Heat v Thunder in 2012 NBA Finals. In both cases a ferocious young team came storming out of the gate and overwhelmed the veteran Heat, who calmly adjusted and kicked their ass.
Scenario C: Knicks in 6. We lose the rust game and the second game in San Antonio, watch the Spurs get prematurely fitted for their crowns, make a stand in game 3, and cruise to three straight victories.
Scenario A would be the best one for posterity. 15 straight wins would cement us as one of the best postseason teams of all time.
Scenario C is the one I’m most prepared for, though, and would likely be the most fun.
Loved that DeBusschere’s sons think that OG is most like their late father. Both hard nosed stoics. Imagine coaching an NBA team at age 24. Don’t think we will ever see that again.
Ewing had a partial tear of his achilles, and it was bad enough that trying to play through it would have certainly resulted in a complete tear, not to mention that he was a seriously compromised player who would have hurt more than helped. There was a lot of speculation about how Ewing having a “partial” tear and his alleged “unwillingness” to pull a “Willis Reed” and risk a full-thickness tear. But the situation was a lot different, and even with a “healthy” Ewing (he was not playing well even before aggravating the injury) it was probably not going to be possible to beat the Spurs in 7 games. It sort of worked out in that he rehabbed the achilles without surgery, but he was in serious decline and never really a plus player after that.
One “what-if” to consider here, is that if the Knicks had the home-court advantage, this would be a radically different series. Based on the regular season numbers alone, the Knicks would be a 59% favorite to win, a massive 24 point swing!
this isn’t right. think you probably reversed the probability here.
Yeah Z-man this was back in the old 2-3-2 days, so if you were behind in a series going into games 6 and 7 on the road you were pretty much screwed.
I’ve listened to two podcast previews of the upcoming series. I was disappointed in them. I find the preview here is more to the point than they were. When the Knicks played Atlanta and beat them, Brown said afterwards that Atlanta forced them to get better and that the Knicks implemented an entirely new offense in order to beat Atlanta. Quinn Snyder basically said the same thing. He also said that the Knicks got better. After the Atlanta series, the Knicks beat Philadelphia and then the Cavaliers by going on scoring runs where the other team just couldn’t stop them. Which suggests that the Knicks really did improve their offense. So when I think about the upcoming series with San Antonio, I wonder can San Antonio stop the Knicks new offense. The preview above gets to exactly this point. Using numbers it asks basically is the Knicks improvement really for real, and if it is suggests that San Antonio could be in trouble. But the two podcast previews all focused on who is covering who and one of them just basically focused on Wemby (like how are the Knicks going to stop Wemby offense and how are they gonna get by him on defense) but I’m not sure that’s the real question here. The real question is “is the Knicks new offense for real and can San Antonio stop it”.
All the “they’re not ready” scenarios include a team in the way that has already proven itself to be championship mettle.
The Rockets that blocked Shaq/Penny were defending champions. The Pistons that kept Jordan at bay for a couple years were defending champions. Etc., etc.
The Knicks are not that. They’re more experienced in general, but no crown rests upon the Knicks heads, uneasily or otherwise.
I’ve consumed infinite content and found that Zach Lowe and — surprisingly — Bill Simmons have been the most reasonable about the Knicks in this run.
I just started listening to Lowe’s preview and his #1 bullet point is “where do the Knicks put KAT?” Apparently the Spurs were using Harrison Barnes in the three games we played them during the season.
The problem with putting him on Wemby is, of course, the dumb fouls. For all the great things KAT’s done in this series, he still commits a lot of them. Zach set the over/under for his first dumb foul at 2 mins, 15 seconds into the Finals.
I have decided to be optimistic about KAT. I watched him guard Durant and Jokic in the 2024 playoffs, and I think he’s going to guard Wemby and do OK. And if we can use KAT and Mitch on Wemby while Mikal swallows up Fox, that frees up OG to wreak havoc.
I think not having Ewing helped them beat the Pacers but I still thinking having his big body against SA that year would have helped a little. They were severely outplayed in some of those games. He couldn’t have made them much worse.
The Heatles hadn’t proved anything by the 2012 Finals, E. In fact LeBron was still hearing “he can’t win the big one” noise.
That Rockets team was severely depleted — a 47-win 6 seed getting by on experience, guile, and the indomitable will of Hakeem.
The Bulls and Pistons are not relevant data points. Those were both experienced teams who had gone through many wars.
I think the relevant questions are 1) is the new Knicks offense for real, and 2) are the developing-in-front-of-our-eyes wing stars for the Spurs for real? If they’re both true it’s going to be a hell of a series, and a crap shoot. If only one is true, that’s who is going to win.
The only real comp for this Spurs team winning is the ’77 Blazers. Their top 4 guys were 23 & 24 years old, which at that time was ridiculously young. But Walton had played four seasons at UCLA, winning two titles. He was basically a seasoned pro at that point.
Ewing missed the first 20 games of the 1999-00 season still recovering from his achilles injury but then played all 62 remaining games!
I think a solid question #3 is what about the pre-injury OG Anunoby, who was basically 80% of Kawhi Leonard?
He had moments where he looked good against Cleveland but he seemed to spend that whole series playing carefully. I assume he’s 100% now, but it’s not like that version of OG was the norm.
If we get that guy back, who the hell is going to guard him?
I am wondering if I can take some sort of a sleeping pill that will make the next 32 hours and 21 minutes go by faster than they are.
RE: who is going to cover OG–
Figure:
Vassell -> KAT
Castle -> Brunson
Wemby -> Hart
Fox –> Bridges
Champagnie -> OG?
If either Fox or Champagnie are going to try and cover OG, that is a huge advantage.
OG may have been going at it a little easy in his first game or two back, but he looked like he was at full capacity by the end of the Cleveland series. Add in the additional break and I’m quite confident he’ll be at 100%.
I was worried about his injury when it happened, but felt pretty good about his chances to return upon reading the tea leaves. The tea leaves are not giving me such great vibes about Mitch. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if Mitch is much of a factor in this series. It seems like this particular injury is worse than they are letting on, just a gut feeling sense I get.
You’re right. The percentage goes from 35% to 41%, so it’s not a huge disparity.
Thanks!
Yeah, I mean, this is OG’s boxscore for Games 3 and 4 against the Cavs:
27 min, 17 points on 6-13 shooting, 7 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 steals.
30 min, 21 points on 6-10 shooting, 7 rebounds, 4 assists
I think he’s fine. Maybe not molting hot like against Atlanta, but he seems ok.
Smiles approvingly in Thibs.
I don’t think the playoff numbers are real enough that Mike’s 95% above is possible, but I also think the regular numbers don’t tell the full story either. My gut says the 70/30 scenario is probably right and it’s a toss-up.
Which is why I’d be surprised if I get a single question from that poll correct…!
How can we find out if Mitch is actually practicing today? And by “practicing,” I mean actual practice. Not that “off-to-the-side” shit.
Or at least being “medically cleared to play.” That would make me so happy. Probably won’t happen until tomorrow, if it’s going to happen.
Is there even practice today? It’s media day, and the Knicks are not making Mitch available to the press. Which doesn’t seem great?
Hmmmmmmm….. Such intrigue. Who else are they and who else are they not making available to the press? That might provide a clue, but still probably not. I hate having to worry/think about this at all.
ESPN’s “experts” are 10-3 in favor of the Spurs.