The path cleared for the Knicks, and they took full advantage.<\/p>\n
In winning the Eastern Conference (en route to winning the championship), they did not have to beat the No. 1 seeded Pistons \u2014 who owned them in the regular season \u2014 or the No. 2 seeded Celtics. The Pacers, who eliminated them from the playoffs the past two seasons, were a complete nonfactor. The Knicks were mostly healthy throughout the postseason.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, what are their chances to repeat as champions? What will affect those chances?<\/p>\n
Stephen Yang for NY Post<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s break it all down:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The path cleared for the Knicks, and they took full advantage. In winning the Eastern Conference (en route…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3774],"tags":[7,123,113,126,3866,3237,4988,1247,6,191,114,66,196],"class_list":["post-766159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-indiana-pacers","tag-basketball","tag-giannis-antetokounmpo","tag-indiana","tag-indiana-pacers","tag-indianapacers","tag-james-dolan","tag-landry-shamet","tag-mitchell-robinson","tag-nba","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-pacers","tag-sports","tag-sports-plus"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116784098412878414","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}