NBA Finals: Knicks, Spurs have changed a lot since meeting in the NBA Cup championship game
Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, center, celebrates with teammates after his team's victory over the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Cup championship game on Dec. 16, 2025, in Las Vegas. Credit: AP/Ian Maule
GREENBURGH — For the first time in the incredibly young three-season history of the NBA Cup, the NBA Finals matchup is the same as the championship game matchup of the in-season tournament.
Past NBA Cup champions went 0-for-2 in the postseasons that followed, with the 2023-24 Lakers and the 2024-25 Bucks seeing their respective seasons end in the first round of the playoffs, both in five games.
So yes, the Knicks — who defeated the Spurs, 124-113, for the Cup title in Las Vegas on Dec. 16 — can make history as the first team to win the NBA Finals and the NBA Cup in the same season. But did the Knicks’ NBA Cup run — plus the fact that they are facing the same opponent they faced to win the tournament — provide any valuable lessons?
“There's a lot,” coach Mike Brown said after Sunday’s practice. “We're the same but different team, and same with them. We played different guys during that Cup run. They played different guys during that Cup run. You can tell that they've matured as a group. You can tell we've matured as a group.
“So just going through that experience and having that type of pressure, where it's the only game being played, was something that you can always kind of carry over to try to understand that, you know what, there’s a lot going on around you. We still have a job to do. We have to be very intentional with everything we do, because you're going to be pulled at in a ton of different directions.
“But at the end of the day, it's all about going out and playing that game and getting a win.”
Plenty of eyeballs were on the Cup final, with the exclusive Amazon Prime Video broadcast averaging 3.07 million viewers. Things certainly were different then, though, as Wednesday night’s Game 1 in San Antonio will be played 169 days after the teams met in Vegas.
For the Spurs, the 7-4 Victor Wembanyama — who was named Western Conference Finals MVP — played only 25 minutes off the bench in Las Vegas as he was returning from a left calf strain. For the Knicks, Deuce McBride and Landry Shamet — the team’s sixth- and seventh-leading scorers in this postseason — were injured.
The teams also played again on Dec. 31 in San Antonio, a 134-132 win for the Spurs, and on March 1 at the Garden, a 114-89 win for the Knicks.
Josh Hart said Sunday that there isn’t much to learn now from the NBA Cup final.
“No, that was December,” he said. “Obviously, there was good energy around that, but I don’t think that’s really going to be any equivalent to what the atmosphere or the energy is going to be like at their place, obviously at the Garden.
“Technically, that game didn’t happen, so I don’t think there’s anything we can learn from.”
Technically, Hart is correct.
The NBA Cup final does not count toward a team’s regular-season record (the semifinals, quarterfinals and group stage games do). Stats compiled in the game don’t count toward a player’s season, either.
But McBride, who played in the NBA Cup’s group stage before missing the knockout rounds, noted there were some positives to take away from the tournament.
“Yeah, honestly,” he said. “I think it was a great opportunity for us to play a high-stakes game. Obviously, I didn’t play, but I played in Cup games. So I feel like we treated it close to a playoff game.
"We haven’t been to the Finals. They haven’t been to the Finals. So it’s going to be totally different and a lot has happened since then, so just excited for this.”
Ben Dickson is Newsday Sports' general assignment reporter. He joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins' teams.
