Mike Colón Media

For the first time since 2000, the New York Knicks are Eastern Conference Finals bound

May 21, 2000. On a warm night in Miami, the New York Knicks took on their arch rival Heat for the fourth consecutive postseason and yet again, the series had gone the distance. In a rock fight of a contest (as most Knicks games of that era were), New York prevailed 83-82, punching their ticket in the process to their second straight Conference Finals, their fourth since 1993.

Awaiting them in that series was another bitter rival in the Indiana Pacers. They’d lose that series in six games, a 34-year-old Reggie Miller finally after 13 seasons of his career getting to an NBA Finals. That Friday night, June 2, 2000, marked the end of not just an era, but for the longest times for these New York Knicks, relevance. Patrick Ewing, the longtime franchise stalwart, would be dealt that offseason to the since-defunct Seattle SuperSonics. When he left in that multi-team deal made in September of 2000, he seemingly took with him the grittiness and intensity of those 90’s Knicks squad that did everything but win a championship.

Since then, it had been a long, winding road of bad management, acquisitions, and draft choices that had turned this proud blue blood franchise into the comedic punchline of the association. We remember first the dregs of the Scott Layden era, putting a hapless Don Chaney at the helm of the team following Head Coach Jeff Van Gundy’s surprising departure in December 2001 and the trades for over-the-hill veterans in Mark Jackson, Othella Harrington and many more that followed. We remember too the darkness both on and off the court that enveloped the Isiah Thomas era. Players Jerome James, Eddy Curry, Stephon Marbury, Zach Randolph brought in either on wildly exorbitant contracts or foolish trades.

And who could forget the Phil Jackson era? The 11-time champion head coach who’d coached the likes of NBA immortals in Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Dennis Rodman, Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, and Pau Gasol. His hiring as President of Basketball Operations in 2014 was supposed to signify at the time a shift back to that long awaited respectability. We remember once again, the total opposite taking place. For as gifted as he was as a coach, he was every bit as awful as an overseer of operations, once again signing over-the-hill veterans such as Brandon Jennings and Joakim Noah, paying them as his predecessors had for what they were in their past as opposed to what they could be in the present. This practice (or better yet malpractice) as an executive ultimately getting him fired three years into what was a five year pact.

There was too the seemingly endless revolving door of coaches. From Lenny Wilkens, to Larry Brown, to Isiah Thomas, to Mike D’Antoni, Mike Woodson, Derek Fisher, Jeff Hornacek, and David Fizdale. Their philosophies different, their results all too often the same: losing seasons. Throughout these years, hope wasn’t hard to come by as a Knicks fan because it simply didn’t exist.

Then came the summer of 2019 and what seemed to be rock bottom. After months of speculation that seemed to link superstars and NBA Champions Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to the Knicks at every turn throughout the 2018-19 season, those two on July 1, would indeed sign in New York, however it’d be Brooklyn, for the rival Nets. In the midst of the hype surrounding those signings and the takeover of the city’s hoop scene that they seemed to indicate, the Knicks were written off, declared dead in the water. Pundits dancing on their grave.

As the collective verbal curb stomping was in full swing, the franchise quietly bided its time. In the summer of 2020, while the world was on hold due to the grips of the coronavirus pandemic, they quietly made the most important acquisition of the last 25 years. Was it a player acquired by trade, free agency, or a generational draft pick that usually is the catalyst for a team’s turnaround? No. It was Leon Rose.

Hired that summer as President of the Basketball Operations, the former player agent, attorney, and Cherry Hill, New Jersey native was the latest man touted as the one to finally right the ship. Naturally, he was met with skepticism. How could he not be? After all, two decades in the dregs and a consistent lack of stability at the top can hardly inspire optimism even in the most upbeat of fans. So bad were things at one point that fans like myself pined for the Knicks to simply be a regular bad basketball team as opposed to the dysfunctional train wreck they’d been known as for the better part of the 21st century.

Nearly five years have passed since that hiring , that skepticism has firmly turned to praise. Four playoff appearances in five seasons later, and almost five days to the 25th anniversary of when the Knicks last advanced to the Conference Finals following that gutsy win over Miami, they are back. No longer a punchline, no longer a laughingstock, finally, firmly, the contender we as fans have been waiting for.

The acquisitions of the 64-year old taking firm center stage as they dethroned the defending champion Boston Celtics with a ferocious and emphatic 119-81 win to eliminate their hated rivals in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals. There was Mikal Bridges, the former Brooklyn Net standout of whom was acquired for five first round picks, with 22 points, capping off a series that saw him make two critical defensive plays in Games 1 and 2 to seal those wins along the way. OG Anunoby, brought in via trade almost two years ago, coming up with 23 points, playing the same incredible defense that’d made him such a high value trade target in the first place.

Josh Hart, the gritty, gutsy, Villanova product who has come to embody so much of what the fighting spirit of New York City truly means, living up to his last name and grind in his way to a triple double. Karl Anthony Towns, who like his team president, is also a son of New Jersey, with 21 points and 12 rebounds, the most talented, albeit at times frustrating, big man the Knicks have had since Ewing. And of course Jalen Brunson, who was all of three years old when his father Rick was the backup point guard on the 1999 Knicks squad that last made the NBA Finals, with 23 points, 6 rebounds, and 6 assists. The floor general point guard this franchise hadn’t seen since the days of Clyde Frazier, once again leading the charge, driving his team to victory, and adding yet another notch under his belt to his growing legacy as an already all time great Knick.

Perhaps the most notable acquisition of all was sitting on the sidelines, per usual methodically and intensely coaching his players, as a commander would lead his soldiers into battle was Head Coach Tom Thibodeau. At 67 years old, the New Britain, Connecticut native is a basketball lifer. Having started his coaching career in 1981 at Massachusetts’ Salem State University, he was the aforementioned Van Gundy’s right hand man as an assistant coach during those late 90’s Knick playoff runs, serving seven years on Broadway from 1996-2003 before bolting to follow his mentor to his next coaching endeavor in Houston. Fittingly, it is him, a key link to those glory days fans of a certain age missed while others had not even been fortunate to have yet experienced, restoring the feeling at the Mecca of the sport he has devoted his life to in Madison Square Garden.

When the final buzzer sounded in Miami on Sunday, May 21, 2000, Bill Clinton was the President, Eminem had just dropped the Marshall Mathers LP, and yours truly was all of three months old. I don’t remember any of that time naturally. I’m one of the fans who missed the glory years. What I do remember was the years of dregs I had watching a litany of players I had to talk myself into believing in despite there being no reasonable notion to do so whilst I living in the toss up sports state that is Connecticut, having to put up with those around me rooting for the Celtics, Lakers, Heat, or any other team that perpetually played deep into June while mines were playing meaningless games by December.

Why do you stick with them? Why not root for someone else? Can’t you see they’ll never figure it out? If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard some variation of those questions, I’d probably be a millionaire. On a magical Friday spring night, with that emphatic 38-point drubbing to send the Celtics packing, I am finally able to give my rebuttal. THIS is why I stuck it out as a fan and boy, am I glad I did.

Awaiting the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Finals in May of 2025 is the very same team that awaited them in May of 2000: the Indiana Pacers. It isn’t the likes of Reggie Miller, Rik Smits, or Mark Jackson anymore, long gone are those memorable names, but rather Tyrese Haliburton, Paskal Siakam, and Myles Turner driving the success these days for the crown jewel franchise of basketball’s Midwest scene. Will it be easy? Of course not. These same Pacers just got done defeating the NBA-best Cleveland Cavaliers who’d won 64 games during the regular season in five games, frustrating them along the way with rugged defense and timely shooting. The same formula guiding them now that guided them too to great heights during glory years of their own in the 90’s, reaching five Conference Finals along the way with Miller as their catalyst. Much like those dangerous squads of yesteryear, this is a squad that is NOT to be taken lightly.

But then again, for the 51-win Knicks, what has been easy this season? Nothing. Everything earned, through the very blood, sweat, and tears that many a New Yorker puts out in pursuit of a goal every day. But as we sit here, the madness that will undoubtedly envelop MSG when the series tips off on Wednesday night having yet to occur, is it a sweet feeling? Absolutely. And one that no matter how old you may be and how much Knick basketball you’ve seen, you will never take for granted. A third round at the Garden, a trip to the NBA Finals on the line. The stakes are high, the moment is major, the Garden and by extension the city, up for grabs. The Knicks holding it in the palm of their hands. The renaissance is here. The glory days have returned.

Mike Colón is the host of the Mic’d In New Haven Podcast which can be found on all podcast platforms and is simulcast in video form on YouTube