New York sports fans expect championships, but, of course, teams in the Big Apple don’t always deliver. The Knicks were prime examples for decades. Until, that is, Leon Rose started assembling a team – sometimes going outside the box – that developed into NBA champions.
For the first time in 53 years, the New York Knicks are NBA champions. And while it may seem like all this happened with an amazing run after trailing early in a first-round playoff series, their achievement was years in the making.
Since being named team president in 2020, Leon Rose has transformed the franchise from league-wide laughingstock to, well, champions. Having closed last decade with seven straight losing seasons, they’ve been to postseason in five of the six seasons since 2020-21.
Rose had a vision, and he’s executed it wonderfully.
This postseason, the Knicks went 16-3, winning 15 of their final 16 games after being down 2-1 against the Atlanta Hawks in the first round. Their run included sweeps of the Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers, and was completed by a 4-1 dispatching of the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals.
Here are the five key steps to the team’s masterful turnaround under Rose.
Step 1: Identifying the Right Face of the Franchise
It all starts with the NBA Finals MVP, Jalen Brunson. Since signing with the team in 2022, he has been one of the best players on the planet.
However, it wasn’t always this obvious. Many people scoffed at the notion of paying an undersized guard who started less than half of his games in his first four seasons over $100 million, but Rose and the Knicks saw the vision.
Not only has Brunson put up gaudy numbers – he’s averaged 26.3 points and 6.8 assists in four seasons with the Knicks – but he is also what a franchise player should be: calm, confident, resilient, and most importantly, all about winning.
Also, let’s not forget that in 2024, Brunson did not pursue a super max contract and basically took a $113 million pay cut to make building the Knicks’ roster possible.
The Knicks' championship snaps a streak of 52 straight playoff appearances by MLB/NBA/NFL/NHL teams from the NYC metro area that ended without a title.It was the 3rd-longest streak all-time by a metro area, behind only active streaks by Minneapolis-St. Paul (57) & Buffalo (55). pic.twitter.com/oA116aYBpn
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) June 14, 2026Step 2: Thinking About the Bigger Picture
A few days before the calendar shifted to 2024, the Knicks executed a blockbuster trade that helped them land OG Anunoby. At the time, some people were confused by this move as it sent away RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley and didn’t make the Knicks an immediate title contender.
Of course, Anunoby made the Knicks better right away. In fact, in his 23 appearances with the team that season, New York was 22.1 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor than with him on the bench.
More than that, Rose saw the bigger picture. It wasn’t about what Anunoby could do for that team. It was about what the 6-foot-7 small forward would eventually do for them once Rose’s vision was complete.
This postseason, Anunoby was incredible for the Knicks. He had the highest true shooting percentage of any 20+ PPG scorer with at least five games in the playoffs, and that says nothing of all the impact he brought on the defensive side of the ball (92nd percentile D-DRIP). If not for Brunson’s 45-point masterpiece to close out the NBA Finals, Anunoby very well would have earned the MVP award himself.
Step 3: Not Being Afraid to Go All In
Today, it feels like teams are overly fixated on draft capital. It makes sense because future picks are unknowns, and sometimes, the less an owner knows about what’s coming up, the longer the leash is for a front office executive to go all in on the draft.
However, fortune favors the bold, and if a team wants to accomplish something special, its executives need to be willing to take risks. No one can ever fault Rose for being too cautious, as he parted ways with six first-round draft picks (and did a first-round pick swap) to acquire two pieces of their championship starting five: small forward Mikal Bridges and big man Karl-Anthony Towns (the 7-footer is 10th in the NBA in our DRIP metric).
Maybe, analytically speaking, one of those moves (*coughs* the trade for Bridges) could be viewed as an overpay. But all the assets in the world don’t matter if they never amount to a championship.
Step 4: Developing Homegrown Talent
The Knicks are far from the Oklahoma City Thunder in that they have outsourced much of their talent through trades and free agency. Their top six guys in total minutes played this season were all drafted by other teams.
The Utah Jazz traded Josh Hart to the Los Angeles Lakers on the night of the 2017 NBA Draft, while the Philadelphia 76ers did the same in sending Mikal Bridges to the Phoenix Suns in 2018.But the Knicks also did a good job of developing a couple of their own guys – namely, Mitchell Robinson and Miles McBride, who played key roles in relieving some of the Knicks’ starters to help keep them fresh through the grueling stretch of the playoffs.
Step 5: Zigging When Others Would Have Zagged
The last piece of the puzzle was the decision to make a change at head coach last season.
Tom Thibodeau was the conductor of the most successful stretch of Knicks basketball this century. Most teams would have kept him beyond his five seasons, especially after he guided them to the 2025 Eastern Conference finals (their longest postseason run in 25 years).
But Rose felt Thibodeau was not the coach capable of getting them to an even higher level, so he replaced him with Mike Brown. The now 56-year-old coaching veteran reinvented the offense, trusted his bench (which kept his starters from being run to the ground), and squeezed the most out of a defense that displayed some warts against the Indiana Pacers in last year’s playoffs.
Brown was the right man for helping to make the Knicks NBA champions, and Rose wasn’t afraid of deviating from the status quo in order to find him.
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Coming Up Rose(s): The Knicks’ Blueprint for Becoming NBA Champions Opta Analyst.
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