-
Brian Windhorst
TEX WINTER, ONE of the 20th century’s great basketball coaches, once summed up a classic NBA paradox with five words: Everything turns on a trifle.
The league’s best teams often teeter on a knife’s edge, thriving thanks to continuity but in a constant state of fragility, which explains the current state of the weakened Eastern Conference.
The two favorites, who meet in a made-for-television opener Wednesday in New York, the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Knicks (7 p.m. ET on ESPN), are in this place because of the consistency of their rosters and misfortune of fellow contenders.
The gut-churning images of Damian Lillard, then Jayson Tatum, and then Tyrese Haliburton, each taking fateful missteps and tearing their Achilles tendons in a matter of weeks in a painful playoff stretch has provided these two teams with the most precious of NBA opportunities.
The window to reach the Finals for the Cavs and Knicks, who return all of their key players with additional depth down their roster, is wide open.
For now.
“We have a target on our backs,” new Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “We better bring it.”
The Cavs have been accelerating toward this moment for five years, amassing a team with two All-NBA players, Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland, four players who have All-Star appearances on their résumés, and an impressive spread of depth that has ballooned their payroll to just under $400 million this season, including luxury taxes.
But because of that, they have entered the nether world known as the second apron, and they are the only team currently living there.
Last season, three teams — the Boston Celtics, Phoenix Suns and Minnesota Timberwolves — were in this penal zone of tax and roster restriction, and all three fled this season by shedding key players.
Three teams that were in it the season before also bailed out after one uncomfortable year.
No one stays in the second apron long, at least not in the new rule’s infancy. So, while the Cavs’ core players are all in their 20s, keeping this group together could well be untenable unless the team starts to win bigger and now. The Celtics, for example, were in the second apron in 2023-24 and, after winning the 2024 title, they stayed in the second apron as ownership spent nearly $100 million in luxury taxes in the two-year span.
The Cavs have been upset as the higher seed in two of the past three seasons in the playoffs, and last season’s second-round exit to the Indiana Pacers in five games was bitter, after a 64-win season appeared to set them up for a long run.
“The question will come for us,” Cavs president Koby Altman said. “How do you navigate this collective bargaining agreement and the restrictions that we have? For us, we’ve set ourselves up to have a runway with the guys we have.”
But all runways eventually run out of pavement, and the Cavs are nearing the end of theirs.
That’s why Altman traded for defensive specialist guard Lonzo Ball in the offseason and added multiple backup big men to give the Cavs some size after the Pacers exploited them inside.
“We’re not reinventing this thing,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said. “We’ve really created an identity not only on court but how we practice, how we develop, all of it. We’re going to double down on all that. But we do need to make some tweaks to how we play.”
Part of that is to put more offensive responsibility onto Evan Mobley’s plate. He will have the ball more this season and is expected to take another step as a playmaker after he juiced his scoring average to a career-best 18.5 points last season, especially with Garland out as the point guard recovers from toe surgery.
There is also more expected from forward De’Andre Hunter, whose midseason acquisition last season guaranteed the Cavs would enter the second apron.
Now with Max Strus out for months because of a foot injury, Hunter’s role will change — from Sixth Man of the Year contender to starter, after a summer of work that excited Cavs coaches.
As the Celtics and Pacers, the last two Eastern Conference champions, shed key players such as Kristaps Porzingis, Jrue Holiday and Myles Turner over the summer as they faced gap years with their franchise players Tatum and Haliburton in long-term rehab, the Knicks, too, kept their roster intact and added to it.
Though they upgraded their depth with one of the league’s best bench scorers, Jordan Clarkson, and added energetic French forward Guerschon Yabusele, the controversial firing of coach Tom Thibodeau, who took the Knicks to the conference finals for the first time in 25 years, represents the only core personnel change.
Brown, for his part, has brought with him a higher-tempo offense that he says he believes will make the Knicks less predictable and ease the burden on All-NBA guard Jalen Brunson, who led the league last season in clutch scoring and dribbling, a combination that was admirable but burdensome.
“It’s always good to have short-term memory to focus on what is going on ahead and figure out how you can be better,” said Brunson, who also led the NBA in usage rate and field goal attempts per game over the past two postseasons. “You can learn from things in the past.”
The Knicks have barely, but expertly, dodged the second apron by relative pennies over the past two seasons, which has left open some trade options, such as being able to combine salaries in a deal.
But the six first-round picks they traded for Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns in 2024 — deals meant to surround Brunson with defensive protection, in Bridges, and a pick-and-roll partner, in Towns — has left them deeply invested in the current roster.
Those limited pathways first showed up in August when talks surrounding a trade for Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo didn’t progress.
One of the league’s signature stars expressed an interest in being a Knick, but the Knicks couldn’t, or wouldn’t, make a serious enough offer for the Bucks to consider.
Which puts even more pressure on the 2025-26 Knicks, who might indeed have the best chance at a Finals run in 25 years.
The Antetokounmpo interest was the type of opportunity the Knicks have searched for, in one way or another, for more than a decade as they repeatedly have failed to land a superstar.
Perhaps those talks could be revisited this season or next summer. But there is no guarantee on that or that Antetokounmpo will have the Knicks at the top of the list, should he reconsider a departure from Milwaukee, a process he probably would control with only one more season after this one on his contract.
For now, though, those big trade thoughts are secondary.
“Our team is unified and has the continuity needed to do great things,” Towns said. “We showed that last year and we’re going to build off that.”
Leave a Reply