Nothing says “The New York Knicks have ascended to a higher plane of existence” quite like Reggie Miller guaranteeing they’ll be favored to win the NBA Finals regardless of whether they face the Oklahoma City Thunder or San Antonio Spurs.
“Listen to what I’m about to say, Michael Tirico [and] Jamal Crawford,” the Indiana Pacers legend/Knicks supervillain said during the Western Conference Finals Game 5 broadcast. “Whomever wins this series, I’ve seen enough from the Knicks…the Knicks are gonna be favored in the Finals to win it all.”
It is genuinely insane to hear this from Miller. Not only is he among the top-five public enemies in Knicks lore, but as an analyst with NBC Sports, he has a front-row seat to a Thunder-Spurs series being billed as the end of parity as we know it.
Declaring that New York will be favored over the reigning champs or the Association’s resident 7’4” alien deity is high praise. Miller is wrong, of course. But it’s high praise all the same.
The Knicks won’t be favored to win the Finals
After going up 3-2 on the Spurs, the Thunder are once again heavy odds-on favorites to win the whole thing. That isn’t going to change if and when they clinch a Finals berth.
Injuries to Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell leave room for debate. So, too, does the Knicks’ significant rest-and-recovery advantage. That’s before even getting to how dominant they’ve looked since Game 3 of the first round.
Still, the Thunder are a whirling dervish of depth and defensive mayhem, the kind of squad who can box Jalen Brunson into a coffin and make the rest of the team look like junior-varsity walk-ons. Linemakers and national analysts won’t think twice about picking them to beat New York.
The Spurs are a different story. Between their inexperience, De’Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper playing hurt, and how the Knicks match up with them, the benefit of the doubt might go to New York.
Then again, if the Knicks are facing the Spurs, it’s because San Antonio just took down the reigning champs in consecutive tilts, including a Game 7 in Oklahoma City. Combine that to the Wemby of it all, along with New York not beginning any Finals series with home-court advantage, and the Spurs could be favored over the Knicks as well—just as they were for much of the postseason.
Reggie Miller’s accuracy isn’t the point
You know what everyone’s response should be to all of this: Whoopty-freaking-doo.
The Knicks do not need to be favored in the Finals. It might actually be better for them if they’re not. They got here after banding together in the face of post-NBA-cup adversity. The chip on their shoulder is easier to maintain if they remain underdogs.
More importantly, Miller’s comments aren’t about New York’s championship chances. They are about the Knicks converting pretty much everyone into believers. That by itself is a feat of epic proportions.
Consider where this team was just a few months, languishing in a rut so seamlessly hopeless, it left many fans calling for a midseason teardown. Now, they are not only heading for the Finals, but doing so on the heels of historical dominance through three rounds that has those with the incentive or tendency to dismiss them buying whole-hog into what they’re selling.
Even if Miller is wrong, even if he's late to the party, even if your first instinct is to troll or ignore him, it's okay to admit what we should all be thinking and feeling: This is pretty damn cool.
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