Prelude, 2026

On Tuesday night, the NBA put forth the best opening night of the play-in era by a considerable margin. Opening proceedings, the Miami Heat met the Charlotte Hornets, the former with its ostensibly altruistic #HeatCulture, the latter with a singularly special do-everything point guard who should possibly only drive and also never drive again. 

To the former: a last-second layup from LaMelo Ball extinguished the Heat, setting up a date with fellow division rivals the Orlando Magic, themselves at a team crossroads going into the summer. Charlotte enters ablaze. Well, the thing with Bam, whatever happened there–

In the late game, Jrue Holiday reminded you that he’s won NBA championships, plural, in past lives, delivering the Portland Trail Blazers to a land that nobody promised: the 7-seed, to face off against the San Antonio Spurs. Frustratingly, and despite their best efforts, the Phoenix Suns remain in the present. Courtesy of the Wednesday game, Phoenix now has the opportunity to face the Golden State Warriors, fresh off a deconstruction of Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Standing two games away from us, finally, are the NBA playoffs. Breathe in; exhale.

A brain-teasing game will soon unfold in this year’s playoffs. From the point last offseason when we all sort of acknowledged no team was going to out-build them, the Oklahoma City Thunder are the overwhelming favorites to repeat. Any intrigue built into this season started from that point: who can beat the Thunder, and how? 

In four out of their last five meetings, the San Antonio Spurs have beaten OKC. Victor Wembanyama seems to actively dislike the Thunder’s whole steeze, which is fantastic news for everyone except Chet Holmgren and Isaiah Joe. Stephon Castle and De’Aaron Fox have created a new triangle around Wemby, with cutters and spotters-up and the kind of players you can trust to knock down a shot when stuck in a triple-team to help the large homme out.

Meanwhile, in Denver, Jamal Murray is having a career year, finally on track to match Nikola Jokic’s output per capita, and a healthy Aaron Gordon suggests that the Nuggets are steeling themselves for a hard road. Every team in the Western Conference would be wise to follow suit.

We’re all doing labor in forgetting that the Minnesota Timberwolves have been to the West Finals the past two years, but I understand wanting to get your mind off of things in order to not have to think about Julius Randle. Been there. However, Anthony Edwards still exists. His dog, Ant Jr., would be most displeased if you went ahead and wrote off a team that has repeatedly proven itself as built for the weirdo stretches that accompany playoff basketball.

With regard to the dastardly Los Angeles Lakers, who continue to dominate the few remaining brain cells basketball fans have to think about anything other than themselves: Someone who [REDACTED, but closer to him than I am] told me last summer that this was definitely LeBron James’s last season and that he hadn’t announced it yet. If it is, expect a torrent of 40-point triple-doubles to close out the career, but something suggests this might be a test case for one last ride. Whether that happens in Los Angeles might be up to Luka, or it might be up to how deep the Lakers go. New majority ownership is watching.

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As for the East: Jayson Tatum’s return, slightly stunted and arrhythmic though it has begun, has also been a resounding success. If this is what a version of the Boston Celtics that Jaylen Brown leads looks like, Tatum’s secondary playmaking and displacement on purpose schemes are a threatening fit. Joe Mazzulla’s an absolute maniac, the coach of the year and also, after this, probably the best coach in the league outright. Bless up to that man.

Speaking of people doing bang-up coaching jobs, J.B. Bickerstaff’s been running a rotating kitchen since the turn of the year for a variety of reasons, but finally, Cade is back for the Detroit Pistons. He may very well have been the MVP this year but for all of the parameters and injuries and whatever else; so could anyone else have been, darling, you know how it goes. Slightly different but so much the same, they remember the series against the Knicks last year, and they will be looking to grind back.

But for *egh* this and erk that, last year’s Pistons could see themselves against the Pacers. Beating them, even. Handily, even. Did you see how sloppy Indiana was? The Pistons are a team built to capitalize on that, then and now. The slower pace of the playoffs will benefit them, but their relative lack of shooting, especially off the bench, will require Wallace-era efforts on some nights to get to the light. Now, more than ever: Tobias Harris.

Lurking are the preseason presumptive East faves, the Cleveland Cavaliers. Since trading for James Harden, they have traded the Hornets for the most eye-poppingly efficient offense in the league on a night-to-night basis, at least as far as starting lineups go. Cleveland finished the season with a top-six offense and top-half defensive efficiency, right at the cusp of typical title contention benchmarks. 

The Harden-Donovan Mitchell fit has been seamless. As Kenny Atkinson has spaced their minutes apart, they’ve been able to stretch out while still being capable of pulling it back cohesively in close games. The Evan Mobley-Jarrett Allen fit has reached a point of stasis. As they drew it up, now it is: these are the four who will dictate how far the Cavs go.

Treading lightly, neither of Harden’s nor the Cavs’ collective postseason resumes inspire fear (Chris Paul, somewhere, laughs and laughs). Many of the tight spots that these players have encountered, individually and together, have resulted in shaking heads and negative reaction gifs for messageboard donkeys waking up to a TNT they don’t recognize. Hockey? What in…

Related aside: friend of the program Katrina, the biggest Cavaliers fan I know and, basically, fan zero of this here website, is getting married this weekend. It is, frankly, big-gigantic of her to have done this to a bunch of Cavs and Knicks fans on the occasions of our respective Games 1, but we’ll all get over it.

As much as I enjoy the idea of “Scottie Barnes + Brandon Ingram + Zombie Knicks” in theory, the Toronto Raptors are not an especially fun watch. Even as they’ve tightened up since January, Toronto’s an ill-fitting bunch that is a little overseeded in the East. Good luck to the Cavs, leaving the best of it to Katrina and George.

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Are the Thunder the team of destiny? Look: It’s possible. They may very well go something like 4-5-5 with disturbing margins of victory on their way to the second of three titles before the money really starts to become a problem. 

If OKC is that team, well, fine. There wouldn’t be much we could do about it otherwise, and we’ll all be able to say we saw that too. They’re only just rounding into full health, after all, with the J. Williamses of the team finally recuperated. The 73-win Warriors looked like that at the end of Game 7 of the 2016 Western Conference Finals.

Believe in something. Believe in anything. Do not, under any circumstances, believe in the Houston Rockets.

Every argument against the Thunder winning the title is, in effect, an argument for any team coming out of the East to win the title. Given we know who is coming out of the East this year, your New York Knickerbockers, it seems safe to posit that the vulgar gauntlet through which every Western Conference team is about to go will ruin them all beyond any point of recognition. Christian Braun is going to emerge from the West semis looking like Hans Moleman, and he isn’t even 31 years old.

The New York Knicks lost a game against the Spurs on NYE by two points but have beaten them the other two times they’ve played, including in the NBA Cup Final, by an average of 18 points. Similarly, for the most part, San Antonio has the Thunder’s number. Either of the latter teams has to face Denver and/or Minnesota first, nevermind whatever version of the Lakers remains.

Ongoing problems with KAT’s effusiveness toward refs, Brunson being a defensive liability down the stretch when timeout math comes into play, and who Mikal Bridges is on a night-to-night basis start to rattle the paws. “Was Cal Ripken overrated?,” a thought Knicks fans might now think when they see the consecutive games played streak graphic.

Though Jose Alvarado and Landry Shamet have stabilized the minutes that will shore up anyway, New York’s bench has been erratic, apart from Mitchell Robinson, a walking minutes restriction who is also a dynamic rebounder and game-changing defensive presence. 

So begins the playoff exploits of the Jalen Johnson Hawks, freed from Trae Young’s spell and, similarly to the Hornets, an especially feisty group in the second half of the season. New York cannot be happy that this was the draw upon securing the 3-seed, having only just disposed of Atlanta in State Farm Arena by three points a week and a half ago. This reeks of a six-game-at-least slugfest echoing the Knicks’ series against Detroit a year ago.

There is going to be a game in which Josh Hart goes 3-15 but gets eight assists and seven rebounds, and we’ll all sort of nod and move on, but that will not be where it’s at when he’s -34. There will also be a game, several even, in which Jalen Brunson inexplicably rescues the team from a sleepy fourth quarter. They shouldn’t have lost that game, those games, in the first place, but it’ll remind you why you were watching.

No sense giving up the gun now. Next time you want to go someplace like Bolivia, let’s go someplace like Bolivia. Read me now, believe me in June: the New York Knicks are going to win the 2026 NBA championship.