‘Desperate’ Knicks finally finding championship-level consistency

Mikal Bridges stood at his locker after the Knicks completed a 4-0 second-round sweep of the Philadelphia 76ers on Sunday and summed up the biggest difference between this Knicks team and the flawed, inconsistent versions of years past.

“Being able to play desperate even being up 3-0,” he said. “Shoutouts to everybody: Shoutouts to the coaches and everybody who played tonight.”

The Knicks do look desperate.

Desperate to end a 53-year NBA championship drought. Desperate to reach the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. And desperate enough to understand, after letting two games slip away against the Atlanta Hawks in the first round, that easing off the gas for even a moment can get a season killed in the playoffs.

Desperation looks good on these Knicks. The biggest question entering a playoff run with clear-stated championship expectations was whether or not they could remain consistent, a fair question for a team that won the NBA Cup Final, then almost immediately went on a stretch of nine losses in 11 games.

The answer has been a resounding yes. The Knicks are going to the Eastern Conference Finals for a second year in a row. Their margin of victory over the last six games — from Game 4 of their first-round series through the four-game sweep of the 76ers — has been a comical 175 combined points, winning lottery ticket-type numbers (16, 29, 51, 39, 6, 4, and 30) for an organization that’s hit the NBA jackpot.

It’s one thing to win a playoff series by the skin of your teeth. It’s another beast entirely to, in series-clinching victories during this playoff run, close out opponents by a total of 81 points through the first two rounds.

“Closeout games are the hardest games to play, because of the level of desperation from the other team, especially when you’re on the road and you factor in your opponent’s home crowd — so, I give our guys a lot of credit,” said head coach Mike Brown. “I give my staff a ton of credit. My staff has been unbelievable from top to bottom. They’ve been really, really, really good in our preparation and making sure guys understand what we need to do so that they can stay focused on the details at hand.”

The Knicks have found the very consistency that’s evaded them in the past. They look nothing like the team that lost nine out of an 11-game stretch coming into the 2026 calendar year, the team that nearly imploded as the Feb. 5 NBA Trade Deadline loomed midseason.