For the first time in 53 years, the New York Knicks won the NBA Championship. Led by Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, and OG Anunoby’s miraculous tip-in, they took down the San Antonio Spurs in five games. Now, they are – for the most part – set to run it back with the same roster. But that’s a decision the Oklahoma City Thunder and Boston Celtics know all too well.
In recent years, teams that won the championship in the previous year have largely run it back with their same rosters. The Thunder, who won in 2025, and the Celtics, who won in 2024, did exactly that. Unfortunately for both of those teams, they fell short the next year. The same roster couldn’t get the job done a second year in a row, and that’s been a trend for years now.
The Knicks have a great roster. They don’t need to make any big-time moves. But neither did the Thunder or Celtics. New York may end up falling into that same trap.
The Knicks are running it back, and that's been a dangerous game lately
Right now, the Knicks are on top of the NBA world. They are champions. They just proved that the core of Brunson, Towns, Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, and Josh Hart is good enough to win a championship.
New York lost Mitchell Robinson in free agency, but other than that, the rest of the core is almost identical. Those top five players are still in town, and most of the bench is as well.
That’s what the Celtics did. Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Kristaps Porzingis, and Al Horford all returned for the 2025 season for Boston, fresh off a championship.
However, that team got bounced in the second round by the Knicks, losing in six games. Tatum got hurt in Game 4, but by that point, Boston had already blown to massive leads, and it felt like it was New York’s series to lose.
The next year, after the Thunder won the championship, they did a similar thing. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren, Alex Caruso, Isaiah Hartenstein, Lu Dort, and others were all back.
That team made it further than the 2025 Celtics, but ultimately, the Thunder lost to the Spurs after seven games of Western Conference finals action. They just failed to get over the hump.
Now, the Knicks are set up to head into next season in a very similar way to that of the 2025 Celtics and 2026 Thunder. This isn’t to say that’s the wrong decision, but more a note of the pattern currently going on.
In today’s NBA, teams don’t repeat. They haven’t since the 2018 Golden State Warriors. And in the last few years, teams have been running it back, just like the Knicks are.
They may fall into the same trap as Boston and OKC.
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