This summer’s NBA Finals haven’t been decided just yet, but things looked very different the last time that both the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs won a title.
The Knicks are carrying a 2-1 series lead over the Spurs entering Wednesday night’s Game 4 matchup at Madison Square Garden. This marks the first time that the Knicks have even played in the NBA Finals since 1999. Back then, social media didn’t really exist, the iPhone was nearly a decade away from dropping, and half of the current Knicks’ roster wasn’t even born.
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The Knicks’ last championship came back in 1973. They beat the Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West-led Los Angeles Lakers 4-1 in that series. During that series, according to Yahoo Finance, a gallon of gas cost roughly 60 cents. The median price of a home was just $30,000, and the median rent in the United States was only $108 a month.
The Spurs, thanks to star Victor Wembanyama, are on their first postseason run in seven years. They last won a championship back in 2014, when they beat the LeBron James-led Miami Heat 4-1. That year, a gallon of gas cost just shy of $3.70 in the United States. The average home cost about $290,000 and rent was at $934 a month.
While it’s only been a decade since then, things across the board cost much more. Take a look:
Movie tickets, for example, cost about $16 in 2026 compared to just $1.76 back in 1973. Today’s price is roughly double what it was in 2014, too. A Big Mac at McDonald’s went from just $0.55 in 1973 to nearly $4 in 2014 to now $6.72 today.
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Even though the Knicks have the lead, this series is still very much up for grabs. But across the board, from what things used to cost to how we now live our lives, the United States is a very different place today than what it used to be the last time that these two teams won an NBA title.
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