The result of the New York Knicks' final regular season game didn't matter. The team was locked into the Eastern Conference's #3 seed, simply waiting for the rest of the bracket to take shape to find out who they'd be facing off against in the first round of the postseason.
It came down to Sunday night's game between the Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic, with the Knicks' divisional rival resting all of their starters in Game 82 of their regular season. A Magic victory would have lined the Knicks up to see the Raptors in Round 1, a team they've beaten in all five of their contests thus far this season.
The Celtics still pulled out the win, though, leaving the Knicks firmly set to take on the Atlanta Hawks in the NBA Playoffs' opening round. And nobody seemed happier, at least to the ears of one reporter, than the Raptors themselves.
Did Raptors' familiarity with Knicks fuel a desire to avoid a playoff series?
New York could simply not have made the run to the Eastern Conference Finals that marked the end of their 2024-25 campaign without the help of OG Anunoby.
It took legitimate sacrifice from the team and their front office to get Anunoby in the building, with the Knicks' December 2023 for the wing involving sending homegrown draft picks RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley up North.
The familiarity of those two players – not only with the Knicks' organization, but with the matchup they ended up securing in the Cleveland Cavaliers – with their potential opponents may have motivated the group to prefer a certain set of results.
After the Celtics secured their win over the Magic, TSN Sports reporter Josh Lewenberg tweeted that he overhead cheers coming from the Raptors' locker room. He also shared that Barrett, who – along with Quickley – was part of the Knicks squad that dispatched the Cavaliers in the first round, tried to make clear that Toronto had no preference.
"Definitely heard some cheers coming from the Raps room when Garza hit the game-winner for Boston, but RJ Barrett insists they didn't have a preference between Cleveland or New York. He played (and beat) the Cavs in the 4-5 matchup when he was with the Knicks in 2023," Lewenberg posted online.
Barrett, Quickley have seen these Cavaliers in the playoffs before
The 2023 NBA Playoffs, the second consecutive first-round matchup between Donovan Mitchell and Jalen Brunson. For the second time, Brunson's team came away victorious.
While Quickley dealt with injuries throughout that playoff run – and is currently getting a hamstring looked into – Barrett was integral to the Knicks' defeat of Cleveland. He averaged 17.4 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 2.8 assists in the five games New York played to earn their spot in the next round.
The Raptors' mild celebration may have been just as much about them getting to face the Cavaliers as it was them avoiding the Knicks. But should New York care either way?
To some extent, their up-and-down season still instilled enough fear in other teams around the conference to leave them cheering about their first-round matchup against Mitchell and his new teammate, former NBA MVP James Harden.
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