With Sunday’s 113-105 win over the Brooklyn Nets, the Knicks’ 2024-25 regular season is officially in the books. For the 15th time in franchise history, the Knicks finished with at least 50 wins, as Tom Thibodeau‘s unit finished the year at 51-31 — one game better than last year’s end result.
And while that regular season success has set the Knicks up well for the postseason, with the club owning the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference, they know their regular season record can be thrown away as they begin their pursuit of a championship with a First Round matchup against the Detroit Pistons.
“I just said that to our team. You win 51 games, you’re the third seed, so you’ve earned the right to be in the playoffs,” Thibodeau said. “You’re not in the play-in, so you have a week to prepare and get ready for the next challenge, so it’s really a new season. The regular season puts you in position and gives you the opportunity. You want to finish with the highest seed possible, and then you start all over. Everyone’s record is 0-0, so you’ve got to earn everything again.”
While the official schedule has not yet been released for the Knicks-Pistons series, Game 1 will tip off on either Saturday or Sunday at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks have time to prepare, but they know they’re facing a strong opponent.
“We’re ready to go…. Got time to get right and get ready, but we’re for sure ready,” said Mikal Bridges, who played just six seconds of game time on Sunday to extend his consecutive games played streak to 556 regular season games.
“We’ve definitely grown so much from the beginning. We learned a lot about each other and are learning more about each other. I think we’re in the right spot, we’ve just got to go out there and play hard and play our way.”
The Pistons have proven to pose a challenge to the Knicks. In four matchups this season, the Knicks won just once, though it was a 30-point blowout win back in November. The Pistons have emerged victorious in each of the three most recent meetings, including a 115-106 win just three days ago.
“They’ve had a fantastic season,” Thibodeau said. “We just played them recently so I think we have a feel for what their strengths are. But we have to dig a lot deeper into them to know them really well. We have a respect for them, but we understand that it’s going to take 48 minutes of good basketball to win.”
Detroit star Cade Cunningham scored 36 points in that April 10 game, and averaged 30.8 points against the Knicks in those four matchups.
The Knicks know full-well that they’ll have their hands full with one of the NBA’s emerging stars.
“He’s had a terrific season,” Thibodeau added on Cunningham. “It’s not just us, he’s done it against everybody, so we understand that. Every game that you have, a team is going to have certain strengths, and you have to have the proper amount of respect. I think with great players, you don’t guard them individually, you guard them collectively. So we have to understand what goes into that.”
“Great player, obviously size, shooting ability,” said Miles McBride. “He’s a three-level scorer so we’ve just got to do our best to stop him as a team… whatever we can do as a team to slow him down. We’ve got to bring our best.”
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