Good morning! It’s San Antonio! AGAIN!

On the Mitch front, head coach Mike Brown said that Robinson did “individual stuff” in practice but has yet to be cleared by the medical staff before he is a full participant. Hopefully better updates are in store before Wednesday night.

We’re here.

A rematch 27 years in the making (or, for Spurs fans, five and a half months in the making).

To kick off an abbreviated week of NBA Finals preview coverage, I’d like to travel back in time…back to a time before any of the current finals participants were in the league, and in fact before a majority of them were even born. Knicks coach Mike Brown was a video coordinator with the Denver Nuggets, Spurs coach Mitch Johnson was a promising middle school prospect on the Seattle hoops scene, Jeff Van Gundy was fighting for his job, Gregg Popovoch was toiling away as an anonymous assistant, and Leon Rose had recently signed his first NBA client, an undrafted guard from Temple University who was finishing up a stint in the Australian National Basketball League while awaiting the birth of his first child, a boy, who he would name Jalen.

It was at this time that we learned of the most influential NBA decision of the last 50 years that didn’t involve Sam Bowie or Michael Jordan. It was a decision that changed not only the course of Knicks and Spurs history, but the history of the league as well.

30 year ago this month, MJ’s Bulls were in the midst of marauding their way to the fourth and most impressive championship of the Chicago dynasty, but that’s not where our story begins. No, our story begins about an hour from where Jordan went to college, where a different NBA dynasty was about to be born.

We just didn’t realize it yet.

On May 10, 1996, Wake Forest junior big man Tim Duncan announced his decision to return to school for his senior season, citing a strong desire to complete his degree before entering the NBA draft. In the thick of the prep-to-pros era, just as several highly touted prospects were entering the draft after one college season, and one kid from Lower Merion High School decided to bypass college altogether, Duncan’s decision came as something of a shock. It also removed the presumptive first pick from a draft that would become legendary even without the future 15-time All-Star.

Without Duncan on the board, the Philadelphia 76ers took Allen Iverson, who until last week was the first and only guard of his size to shoulder a hefty offensive load all the way to the NBA Finals. Iverson had a Hall-of-Fame career that defied logic…but he wasn’t Duncan.

Meanwhile, three days before the ‘96 draft lottery took place, the San Antonio Spurs were eliminated by the Utah Jazz in the second round of the NBA playoffs. Not that they were worried. The Spurs had averaged 55 wins a season over the previous seven years, thanks to the most highly touted big man prospect since Patrick Ewing making good on his immense pre-draft hype. With David Robinson having just finished runner up for MVP a year after winning the award, the notion that San Antonio would be in the running for Duncan a year later was more far fetched than finding a salad bar on the river walk.

We know what happened next. Robinson missed all but six games due to injury (and the keenest tank job in the league before that sort of thing was in vogue), Bob Hill was fired after 18 games and replaced by the former head coach of the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens, Gregg Popovich, and the rest is history.

But every great great story needs a first chapter, and while Duncan’s Spurs would have been a dynasty regardless of when they got their start, the lockout-shortened 1999 season gave them that opportunity. The Lakers and Blazers were both a year away, and San Antonio made quick worth of both in the West semis and finals before a different beast awaited them in the final round.

Despite losing Patrick Ewing after Game 2 against Indiana, the New York Knicks had finished off the most improbable run in the history of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Unfortunately, even with Marcus Camby finally fulfilling the promise that got him drafted second overall behind Iverson, the Knicks were a big man short of legitimately threatening for the title. I’m as big a Chris Dudley fan as the next guy, but he didn’t stand much of a chance against the twin towers of south Texas. Between that and a hobbled Larry Johnson, the result was never really in doubt.

But if Duncan had come out of college a year earlier, and it wasn’t the gigantic Spurs standing in their way? 8th seed or no 8th seed, those Knicks were rolling, coming into the finals having won 17 of 23 games going back to the end of the regular season. They had six road playoff wins, four playoff wins by double figures, and only three wins in which the final score was within two possessions. No one else in the West posed a huge threat.

In short, if Duncan gets picked in ‘96, I wouldn’t have put it past the Knicks to raise a banner in ‘99.

Alas, he stayed, which meant San Antonio’s first ever NBA championship and the first of five rings for Duncan. 16-year-old me was in the stands at the Garden the night, but I wasn’t thinking about how unprecedented it was for a 23-year-old to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy in one hand and the Finals MVP award in the other. Instead, I was beaming with pride over my Knicks, who became the first 8th seed to make it as far as they did, and were a Latrell Sprewell fadeaway jumper short of bringing the series back to San Antonio.

In the 27 years since, I’ve never felt the same way about a team as I did that night.

Until now.

Of all the parallels between this season and 1999, that’s the thing that resonates the most. Even more than having to face another Spurs team led by another wunderkind ready to kick off another dynasty, the pride I feel about both the ‘99 and ‘26 teams is strikingly similar, not because the journeys were filled exclusively with good memories, but because of the frustration that defined each along the way.

A comparison between the borderline dysfunctional 1999 Knicks and the third seeded, 53-win group we’re watching now may seem wildly unfair, and in one sense it it. The ‘99 group began with even higher expectations, entering the season at +500 odds to win it all, which were nearly half as long as the current edition. Despite that early hope, they were a .500 team with two weeks to go in the regular season.

The 2025-26 Knicks never sank to those depths, not after they followed up a 2-3 start with 18 wins in 22 games. Along the way, they’ve given us more than a handful of genuinely thrilling victories, including the NBA Cup, the Christmas comeback, the Landry Shamet game, both Denver wins, Super Bowl Sunday, and the Houston fourth quarter just to name a few.

But for as high as those highs were, the lows felt just as significant in the moment. Kudos to any readers who never joined me in my despair, because there were times this season when I had far less faith in this team than even the lowest point of 1999. My Detroit crash out will be the thing that lives on in infamy, but I was equally frustrated by the October loss in Milwaukee, twice getting big-boyed by the Magic in November, the Sactown slop fest, Draymond-gate, the MLK Day massacre, the Cleveland no show, the three-game slide in April, and most recently by back to back one-point losses to the Hawks.

If you’d have told me at any of those points that the Knicks would be in the NBA Finals, I’d have first asked how many banged up East teams they had the good fortune of facing in the playoffs, and I’d still have wondered what you were smoking. Instead, they ran roughshod over three mostly healthy teams with a level of ease unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed.

The result is 11 straight wins heading in the NBA Finals, and the chance to do something that was first accomplished by those very 1999 San Antonio Spurs, and that’s win a title and have a double digit postseason winning steak in the same year.

One way or another, new precedent will be established.

For San Antonio, they would have the youngest core of any NBA champion in history. The current title is held by the 1977 Blazers whose four leading scorers were all under the age of 25. The 1986 Rockets, 1995 Magic and 2012 Thunder all made it this far despite relative inexperience, but all fell in the last round. The only other 22-year-old to put a finals team on his back like Wemby has was LeBron James in 2007, and he lost, naturally, to the Spurs. If Wembanyama, 21-year-old Stephon Castle and 20-year-old Dylan Harper can pull this off, it’ll be as impressive an accomplishment as the league has ever seen.

It just won’t be as impressive as if the Knicks can pull off the same feat, in part because for as young as they are, San Antonio followed the traditional NBA path: stink for a few years, get a bunch of high end lottery picks, draft a generational star, and fill out the roster to compliment his talents. Meanwhile, New York’s championship roadmap would have seemed like a magic eye painting not long ago.

If you scour the history of the league, you can find some analogs for a potential 2026 Knicks title. The 2020 Lakers won without drafting a single starter. The 2023 Nuggets won with their best player drafted in second round of a 30-team league, and with two perceived defensive liabilities leading their offense. The 1989 and 1990 Pistons won with a small guard leading the way. The 2004 Pistons won without a single All-NBA 1st Team player on their roster.

But to check all of those boxes at once, with a coach who has been fired four times before getting this job, no less? That’s more unlikely than Hoosiers and Henry Rowengartner put together.

But here we are, and the Knicks – the goddamn New York Knicks – have a real chance to raise their first NBA championship trophy since 1973.

So much is coming to a head as they prepare for this last leg of their journey.

We have Mike Brown, facing off against the team he cut his coaching teeth with and the point guard he guided to All-NBA heights.

We have Leon Rose, trying to do what many said was impossible and turn James Dolan’s Knicks into a championship organization without the assistance of a single tanking season.

We have Jalen Brunson, trying to redefine what is possible for a small, defensively challenged guard and etch his name alongside the giants of NBA history and the titans of New York sporting lore. Greatest free agent signing in league history is on the table, as is a spot in the NBA’s Top 100 list 20 years from now.

We have Karl-Anthony Towns, who would silence a decade’s worth of doubters in a way the league has rarely seen by raising a trophy in his hometown after so many said he didn’t have what it takes.

We have OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart, who would put themselves alongside Dave DeBusschere and Earl Monroe as the greatest trade acquisitions in franchise history. They would join the illustrious group of New York sports role players who elevated above their roles – guys like Mike Richter, Keith Hernandez and Carl Banks – and as a result, will never have to pay for a drink in this town again.

And of course, we have ourselves, the fan base who has been starved to see its team reach the pinnacle of this sport since before Jaws, the Watergate hearings and the first appearance of The Fonz. We have come so close to tasting it, and far more often, have been teased by the illusion of it. Now, finally, they have a team that can do it. Not come close, not just fall short, but go all the way.

We’ll spend the next two days discussing how the Knicks can ensure that positive result we’re all hoping for, but for right now, let’s take a beat and live in the anticipation.

The New York Knicks are about to play the San Antonio Spurs for the right to call themselves champions of the NBA.

Someone’s history is just waiting to be written.

The only question is whose.

🏀

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”