The pressure is officially on for the New York Knicks. Even though we are still roughly seven weeks away from the start of the 2025-26 NBA season, the landscape of the league appears to be very clear.
While the Western Conference is loaded with a handful of tightly-packed teams that believe they can contend for a championship, the Eastern Conference is wide open, and when I say wide open, I mean as wide open as we’ve seen any NBA conference in recent memory. It’s so wide open that I can definitively say right now that the 2025-26 season will provide the New York Knicks with the easiest and most favorable path to the NBA Finals that they have had this century, or are likely to have in years to come.
Aside From Cleveland, Are There Any Real Challengers?
Most of this season’s serious title contenders are expected to be in the West. According to FanDuel’s latest odds, seven of the ten teams that are most likely to win the 2026 NBA Championship reside in the Western Conference. Cleveland (+700), New York (+850), and the new-look Orlando Magic (+1600) are the only Eastern Conference teams that have shorter than 30/1 odds to win the title.
The last two Eastern Conference champions, the Pacers and Celtics, are both not expected to be in the mix this upcoming season. Of course, both Tyrese Haliburton and Jayson Tatum are projected to miss most of, if not the entire season as they rehab from Achilles injuries suffered during the 2025 playoffs.
With Boston and Indiana out of the way, the contender conversation beyond New York and Cleveland comes down to potential dark horses like Orlando, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Detroit, and Philadelphia. The Magic, Hawks, and Pistons all have exciting young rosters and all should end up making the playoffs, but do we seriously think any of them are ready to make a run to the NBA Finals? Probably not.
Milwaukee will be interesting as long as they have Giannis Antetokounmpo. However, the Bucks failed to make any significant upgrades to their roster aside from Myles Turner and they parted ways with Damian Lillard in the process.
Lastly, Philadelphia has a nice group of players on paper; however, Joel Embiid’s health is always in question. At this point, it’s probably unrealistic to expect to get a full season from him. Sure if the Sixers are fully healthy, they have the potential to be interesting, but it’s still an extreme longshot that they can maintain a mostly healthy roster by the time the playoffs roll around.
It’s All Lined Up For The Knicks To Finally Make The Finals
Aside from the unusually easy path to come out of the Eastern Conference, the Knicks have built their best roster in decades. The core of Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, and OG Anunoby is good enough to rival Cleveland and is not that far behind the core groups of the top teams in the Western Conference.
The strength of the Knicks’ roster combined with the favorable lay of the land in the East gives New York a big advantage. If the Knicks are to snap their long title drought in the near future, 2026 could very well be the year.
