Can the New York Knicks get over the hump?

That question is looming over the franchise like a cumulonimbus cloud after New York came six wins shy of the promised land in 2025.

The Knicks fired Tom Thibodeau and replaced him with Mike Brown in hopes that new leadership would give the team the push it needed to get those final six wins.

We still have many months to go until Brown gets his shot to prove that he can take this squad further than Thibodeau could in his five years at the helm. In the meantime, the regular season is Brown’s opportunity to prove why Knicks fans should buy into the team as a stronger title contender than it was last year.

So far, so good.

About one-quarter of the way through the 2025-26 season, Brown has the Knicks playing at a level that can only be rivaled by some of the most prestigious teams in franchise history.

Just how good are the 2025-26 Knicks?

Following their 146-112 victory over the Utah Jazz, the Knicks own an average point differential of 8.4, which leads the Eastern Conference and ranks fourth-best in the NBA.

Oklahoma City Thunder (15.6)

Houston Rockets (11.8)

Denver Nuggets (8.7)

New York Knicks (8.4)

Boston Celtics (6.6)

Minnesota Timberwolves (5.3)

Detroit Pistons (5.2)

Miami Heat (4.9)

Orlando Magic (4.7)

San Antonio Spurs (4.4)

However, it’s early in the season, and the Knicks have beaten up on some weak teams, with Utah being an example. According to Basketball Reference, they have faced the NBA’s sixth-weakest schedule thus far.

What’s promising for the New York faithful, though, is that the Knicks still appear as a dominant team even after accounting for their schedule.

Basketball Reference tracks a metric called “Simple Rating System” (SRS), which adjusts a team’s average point differential for its strength of schedule. The Knicks have an SRS of 7.6. It’s slightly lower than their raw point differential of 8.4, as the Knicks’ average opponent thus far has an SRS of -0.8.

Even so, the Knicks’ 7.6 SRS still leads the Eastern Conference by a full point compared to the closest team (Boston, 6.6). It also ranks third-best in the NBA, trailing only the Oklahoma City Thunder (12.4) and Houston Rockets (11.6). The schedule adjustment actually pushes the Knicks comfortably above the Denver Nuggets (6.8 SRS), who have a slightly better point differential (8.7) but a much weaker schedule (-1.9).

If the Knicks can maintain this level of play for a full season, they would put themselves in prestigious company. The franchise has never played this well and failed to reach the NBA Finals.

New York’s 7.6 SRS is currently on track to rank second-best in Knicks history. The record is held by the 1969-70 squad, which posted an 8.4 SRS en route to 60 wins and the franchise’s first NBA championship.

Only three teams in Knicks history have finished with an SRS of 6.0 or better, and all three reached the NBA Finals, with two of them winning it:

1. 1969-70 New York Knicks (8.4): 60-22, won Finals

***2025-26 New York Knicks (7.6): 15-7 (56-win pace)

2. 1993-94 New York Knicks (6.5): 57-25, lost Finals

3. 1972-73 New York Knicks (6.1): 57-25, won Finals

Over the last 70 years (1955-2024), the Knicks are three-for-three in winning their conference when posting an SRS of 6.0 or better; when falling below that mark, they have reached the Finals just once out of 67 tries.

Those are the type of odds you’d love to take with you into the playoffs.

We’ll see where the Knicks end up by Game 82, but with an SRS of 7.6 through a quarter of the season, they are comfortably nestled above that 6.0 benchmark. If they are at least close to as efficient over the next 60 games as they were over the first 22, they’ll enter the playoffs with their best shot at reaching the NBA Finals since the ’90s.

This doesn’t mean anything yet, but the trends are promising

Ultimately, the legacy of the 2025-26 Knicks will be determined by their performance in the playoffs. The potential displayed by a team in the regular season means nothing until it is capitalized upon.

Last year, the Cleveland Cavaliers set a franchise record for SRS with a stellar 8.8 mark in the regular season, sparking them to a 64-18 record. Yet, nobody will remember that team after it failed to even reach the conference finals.

Meanwhile, the Knicks had a somewhat underwhelming regular season, fielding a 3.6 SRS that was actually a decline from their 4.4 mark in 2023-24. Yet, they got hot at the right time, cementing their status as the most memorable Knicks team of the 21st century.

In fact, the Pacers team that downed the Knicks (and nearly took out the mighty Thunder in the Finals) had a paltry 1.7 SRS in the regular season, good enough for just 13th in the NBA. Indiana proved that you don’t have to light the league on fire in the regular season to succeed in the playoffs. On the other hand, lighting the league on fire in October-April does not guarantee you will be successful in May and June.

So, having a flashy point differential through the first 22 games of the regular season doesn’t guarantee diddly-squat about the Knicks’ future.

Nonetheless, in a league where many teams’ playoff spots are secured from the opening tip, the regular season is about establishing trends, and this Knicks team is building some darn promising ones.

The Pacers’ run last year was an outlier. Even the Knicks’ run to the Eastern Conference Finals was a shock; it would be difficult to replicate what they accomplished (outlasting two teams in Cleveland and Boston that were substantially better in the regular season and dominated the Knicks head-to-head).

Typically, the NBA’s best teams get to the Finals. For the first time in over three decades, the Knicks are legitimately playing like one of the NBA’s best teams. There were moments when they may have had the on-paper talent to pose as potential contenders (last year included), but they have not fulfilled that potential with tangible on-court results since the turn of the century—until now.

New York needed to improve on its 2024-25 performance just to ensure it could get back to the conference finals, let alone take the next step and reach the NBA Finals. Under Brown, they’re showing the significant improvement that is necessary to prove their status as the team to beat in the East.

That might ultimately yield the six precious playoff wins they could not get in 2025, or it might not. Either way, their odds of getting over the hump continue to strengthen as their overall efficiency diverges further from its peak during the Thibodeau era.