Knicks sweep Cavs, advance to NBA Finals for first time since 1999

CLEVELAND — You could see it in the streets, the waves of fans streaming toward Rocket Arena, the bootleg concession stand set up a block away and the celebrity row traveling road show. Here in Cleveland, about 500 miles from Madison Square Garden, it was all blue and orange, here to be part of a celebration.

Inside, it almost felt as if the party could run from the streets surrounding the arena all the way to 7th Avenue in New York City as the Knicks ended any notion that the Cavaliers would provide any sort of obstacle in their march to the NBA Finals.

A 20-0 run late in the first quarter through the second quarter helped the Knicks build leads of as many as 45 points, another one-sided exclamation point to end a series. Completing the sweep with a 130-93 win, their 11th consecutive postseason victory, the Knicks reached the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999.

They again will await their next opponent and won’t play again until June 3 in either Oklahoma City or San Antonio. The Thunder and Spurs are tied at 2-2 in the Western Conference Finals.

Jalen Brunson had 15 points and five assists and was named the Eastern Conference Finals Most Valuable Player, but the honor could have gone to any number of Knicks.

Karl-Anthony Towns had 19 points, 14 rebounds, two steals and two blocked shots. OG Anunoby had 17 points, seven rebounds and two steals. Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart did a little of everything on both ends. Landry Shamet had 16 points off the bench, finishing the series an astounding 11-for-12 on three-pointers.

You can nitpick the play of the Cavaliers or diminish the opposition the Knicks steamrolled to get to this point, but you can’t debate the way that they have played. After closing out their first two series with 51- and 30-point wins, they won this one by 37 and lifted their margin of victory during the 11-game winning streak to 23.8 points.

The Knicks took the early punch — a light jab — from the Cavaliers and held a 30-26 lead before running off 20 straight points. It tested the capabilities of the speaker system in the arena as the public address system tried to overpower the chants from the huge contingent of Knicks fans.

Leading by 19 at the half, the Knicks saw the Cavs briefly pull within 16 and answered with a 12-0 run capped by Anunoby’s follow dunk. By then it was just a countdown to the donning of the Eastern Conference champion T-shirts and hats.

With 8:37 left, all of the starters were on the bench. Less than a minute later, even the usual rotation players were replaced.

“When you’re at this point, no matter who you’re playing, they’re a good team,” Mike Brown said before the game.

“They’re here for many reasons. And, you know, you don’t want to give them life if you can help it. Because if you give anybody hope this time of the year, they can string that into a long run.

“So just continuing to have an appropriate fear, which is basically a respect for the process of your opponent, while trying to be physical at the highest level for as long as you can.”

It doesn’t seem to be the style of Brunson or the players who have aligned themselves with him, but the Knicks perhaps could exhale a little bit, having met the lofty expectations that they have carried for a year.

It is rare that Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan speaks on the Knicks, but in January he appeared on WFAN, setting a high bar for the franchise, offering up a belief that “we want to get to the Finals, And we should win the Finals. This is sports and anything can happen. But getting to the Finals we absolutely got to do. Winning the Finals, we should win.”

With this pressure placed squarely on their shoulders, the Knicks were beaten that night by the Detroit Pistons, 121-90, an awkward misstep in terms of living up to the expectations with which they were burdened. But while it took time, the Knicks lifted their game and met the moment on Monday night, living up to the lofty standard of their owner, something that might have seemed far off that night.

“We better get to the Finals or we’re going to get traded,” Hart joked of the feeling when Dolan uttered those words before adding, “Not pressure, because I think that’s the goal that we all kind of have. Obviously, it hits a little bit different when the big dog says it. But that’s the goal that each and every one of us has. And we’re our own biggest critics, so this kind of adds a little bit more fuel to that internal fire of the hunger to get there,”

Maybe they didn’t need to hear it said it out loud because the baseline for success already had been set six months earlier. Just days after losing to Indiana in the 2025 Eastern Conference Finals, the Knicks fired coach Tom Thibodeau, the man who had led the team from years of dysfunction to contention.

If that wasn’t good enough, anything less certainly would be a failure for the team, which returned every key piece of the roster under new coach Mike Brown.

“I mean, we all had that aspiration regardless,’’ Towns said. “So we didn’t really need to hear that because we all wanted that moment. We all wanted to see that especially after last year being in the Eastern Conference Finals and coming up short. We understand that we’ve got to take that next step. So what he’s talking about is also how we all felt. We wanted to go out there and we wanted to take that next step. Get past the Eastern Conference Finals.

“It was historical last year. The city went crazy and it was awesome to see the city so alive, but there’s new standards now. There’s new expectations and we’ve raised the expectations, so we knew what we came into this season to do and what we want to accomplish. And we’ve just got to keep our heads down and continue to focus on the goal at hand.”

The Knicks have managed to do that, and that night in Detroit seems far removed.