Bad Blood: Who's the Knicks' Biggest Rival Entering 2023-24?
These days, it feels like everyone wants a piece of the New York Knicks.
The cheapest tickets to their opening night game against the Boston Celtics at Madison Square Garden go for $259. The NBA's national broadcasting partners have taken in 25 of their 82 games. Four active Knicks are set to partake in the FIBA Basketball World Cup, which tips off on Friday in Asia.
All that and more is part of the side effects of earning 47 wins and a playoff series triumph for the first time in a decade. But things felt just a little too personal this week.
On Sunday, Fox Sports' coverage of the United States men's national basketball team's exhibition against Germany featured clips from the squad's preparation in Las Vegas. Shooting around with Josh Hart, Indiana Pacers All-Star Tyrese Haliburton vowed to "go crazy" when he faces off against the Villanova alum's newly-minted long-term employers this year. The Knicks have since gone to legal lengths to claim that the divisional rival Toronto Raptors would be willing to do anything ... maybe a little too much ... to learn their secrets.
8. Milwaukee Bucks
For some reason, the NBA seems intent on making Knicks-Bucks happen this year: not only are they placed in the same NBA Cup group, but they're also set to open this year's Christmas Day slate at MSG.
Considering the fact that Giannis Antetokounmpo's reindeer have won six in a row against New York (including a perfect 3-0 mark last season), the Knicks will have to master Milwaukee on a prime time stage if they're going to fulfill the Association's apparent wish.
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7. Brooklyn Nets
The Knicks and Nets' cross-borough nature and New York City's love of all things basketball ensure that their respective get-togethers are the talk of the town. Beyond Gotham, however, there has often been little reason to get excited about a Knicks-Nets game.
When it comes to forming the perfect crosstown rivalry, the Knicks and Nets have perpetually failed to get their timing right ever since the latter moved from across the river. When one looks like a contender, the other always seems to be rebuilding and that trend appears to be on its way back for next year thanks to Brooklyn's latest fire sale that ditched Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Besides, this metropolitan melee loses a good deal of luster when it's clear that each side is fighting for New York basketball's silver medal until further notice thanks to the Liberty's rise up the WNBA leaderboard.
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6. Cleveland Cavaliers
The Knicks are no stranger to forming rivalries with competition beyond the Eatern Seaboard thanks to the NBA postseason. Lingering hurt feelings with the Cavaliers could open that potential box of hate and those feelings will likely only intensify with Donovan Mitchell's long-term future in the Forest City lingering in relative doubt.
Cleveland could also look at what's transpired in New York with envious eyes: the Cavs supposedly swiped Mitchell from the Knicks' grasp but failed to become a threat to enter to Eastern Conference penthouse, a denial defined by their five-game first-round defeat at the hands of New York. They've recently re-stocked with Georges Niang and Max Strus joining the fold.
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5. Toronto Raptors
But, suddenly, a new contender emerges. The Knicks and Raptors haven't provided too many memories on the floor (the opening round in 2001 and one of the finest hours of "Linsanity" notwithstanding) but international tensions have risen in the wake of New York's lawsuit against Toronto management for the illegal obtaining of proprietary, confidential information.
Only time will tell exactly how the legal situation between the Knicks and Raptors pans out. But the fickle, if not fanatically supportive, nature of NBA spectators will make sure that neither side is warmly welcomed upon the respective trips to Manhattan/Ontario. The fact that the Knicks carry one of Canada's brightest hopes for a World Cup title on their roster (RJ Barret ... for now) should only raise the stakes, even if not much is expected from the rebuilding Raptors this season.
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4. Indiana Pacers
Everything else from the 1990s is getting a reboot these days, so why should the Knicks-Pacers rivalry be exempt? At first glance, the heat index behind this one is relatively cool, especially considering Indiana's struggle to merely reach the East's Play-In Tournament.
But Haliburton, even without Hart's season-long prescience, has plenty of reasons to show up for the matchups against the Knicks as his war of attrition with MSG Network analyst Wally Szczerbiak shows no signs of stopping. The Knicks may have also given rise to their own monster earlier this summer, as they traded 2020's eighth overall pick, Obi Toppin, to Indianapolis earlier this summer. Toppin will do doubt look to prove that he deserved more patience and/or a permanent spot in the New York rotation upon facing his former employers.
3. Miami Heat
Another 90s reboot, the Heat seem like an obvious choice after the teams did six-game battle in the Eastern Conference Semifinals last spring. Not only did Miami prevail but it was the middle step of their three-legged journey to join the 1999 Knicks as the only teams seeded in the conference's eighth slot to reach the NBA Finals ... avenging that year's top-ranked Heat group in the process.
Tensions were simmering between Manhattan and South Beach long before the playoffs: last year's four-game preamble in the regular season (which the Knicks won 3-1) was decided by a combined 20 points.
2. Dallas Mavericks
Divisional loyalties have kept the unusual pairing of New York ... well, New Jersey ... and Dallas alive for decades in the NFL. But something new might be simmering in the NBA.
Turning Knicks-Mavericks into a lasting rivalry will be difficult considering they meet only twice annually and neither team appears destined for multiple Finals runs in their respective current incarnations. But the Knicks, or at least their luring of Jalen Brunson, have left an obvious impression on Mark Cuban's Mavs.
As Dallas sunk deeper into oblivion last season, Brunson's departure, the result of (penalized) tampering charges from North Texas, became more glaring, even as the Mavs took a pair of December meetings. Cuban and Co. went through several potential fringe replacements (including brief Knicks washout Kemba Walker) before settling on Irving. The real estate that the Knicks occupied in Cuban's brain was well apparent at the end of the year when Dallas hardly masked its effort to avoid reaching the Western Conference Play-In Tournament and risk a potential top 10 pick making its way to Manhattan.
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1. Boston Celtics
There's no use in dreaming about what might've been, but the hypotheticals of last year's Eastern Conference Finals are particularly intriguing from a New York-Boston perspective: both sides met their end at the hands of the Heat and Miami's aforementioned conference semifinal win denied a chance to see the Knicks and Celtics do postseason battle for the first time since 2013.
One look at the recent history between the two lasting rivals hints at hijinks of both the high-scoring and last-second varieties ... and the series' outcome highly in doubt.
Amateur and professional editors of Knicks hype videos have been granted plenty of material from recent endeavors against the Celtics: no documentation of recent Knicks history is complete without Barrett's buzzer-beating game-winner from January 2021. Last season, Immanuel Quickley put up a career night in Beantown in front of national cameras. Since the 2020-21 season tipped off, the Knicks hold a 7-4 advantage in the lasting rivalry. The NBA wasted no time in reigniting the rivalry, placing the two sides next to each other on opening night.
Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags
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