What went right and what went wrong for the Knicks in the 2025 playoffs

This year’s playoff run will go down as one of the most memorable ones in franchise history for a myriad of reasons. Their first-round matchup against a feisty up-and-coming Pistons team was a fun and close one that saw multiple games come down to the last possession and was highlighted by Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns exchanging clutch shots. The back-and-forth series was outdone by the very next series, which started with a pair of 20-point comebacks and ended with an emphatic series-clinching blowout at home to advance to conference finals for the first time in 25 years.

But the overall bittersweetness of the season dawned on fans as the Knicks bowed out rather unceremoniously in a disappointing six-game loss to the hated Pacers. As with the regular season, the 2025 playoffs included many memorable highlights and encouraging signs, but it was also filled with frustrations, what-ifs, and questions about the potential of the team. So what exactly went right and what exactly went wrong during their playoff run?

Right: Jalen Brunson

It’s a tale as old as time. And at this point, it’s almost a foregone conclusion. But that doesn’t make it any less true. This team goes as far as Brunson takes them. And given that this team went further than it had in 25 years, it’s not a stretch to say that Brunson was the thing that went the most right this postseason. Despite some arguing that Cade Cunningham would be the best player in the first round, and despite everyone expecting Jayson Tatum to take over the second round, it was Brunson who clearly looked like the best player, not only in those series but in the eastern conference. Despite having a few uncharacteristically bad games throughout the playoffs, Brunson finished the postseason averaging 29.4 PPG, 7 APG, and 3.4 RPG while shooting 46.1% from the field. The Knicks don’t get close to getting as far as they do without Brunson’s heroics, so it’s been rather ridiculous to see the kind of criticism the captain has gotten, but that just goes to show you just how high the expectations have become for him now.

Wrong: The starting lineup

Maybe the only other thing that was as reliable as Brunson, was the Knicks’ starting lineup being bad. Despite having months of indisputable evidence that the starting lineup was subpar, Tom Thibodeau continued to ride them until game three of the third round. That seemed to be one of the major reasons why the front office ultimately decided to relieve Thibodeau of his duties, and one of the major reasons why many fans believed that this team won in spite of him, not because of him.

Thibodeau’s go-to starting lineup opted for Josh Hart over Mitchell Robinson, and Deuce McBride, in a sort of half-measure strategy. In Hart, they get some of the rebounding of Robinson and some of the ball handling of McBride, but what it really did was get the worst parts of having Karl-Anthony Town as a starting center. You have Towns as a stretch five, but in a way that can’t be leveraged effectively because of the lack of spacing Hart provides. And you have Towns as a rim-protecting center who’s responsible for being the backline communicator of the defense—something we saw him struggle mightily with.

The team performed incredibly well when it was McBride and any combination of the starters, and the team looked good for stretches with Robinson in there as well. Yet for some reason, Thibodeau continued to play the starting lineup more minutes than any other five-man unit in the league despite it yielding subpar results, which often led to the team getting out to incredibly poor starts in the first and third quarters.

Right: Karl-Anthony Towns’ offense

A lot has been made of Towns’ awful defense, and rightfully so. When he was tasked with switching on to smaller and quicker players, he actually held his own relatively well. But when in drop coverage, he looked lost many times and often gave up wide-open threes because he was just too late to get out to shooters. But we can’t let it completely overshadow what he did on the offensive end. Multiple times throughout the postseason, Towns came up big. He had second-quarter stretches where he would dominate, he had some incredibly clutch baskets in the Celtics series, and he had an incredible 20-point fourth quarter in game three of the Pacers series. He finished the playoffs averaging 21.4 PPG, and 11.6 RPG while shooting 48.8% from the field, and along with Brunson, was a major reason the Knicks made their first conference finals in 25 years.

Wrong: Three-point shooting from the wings

When the Knicks traded for Mikal Bridges, the vision was that he, along with OG Anunoby, would give Brunson more spacing and give the Knicks two deadly corner three-point shooters. That ultimately never came to fruition though. Anunoby (37.2%) shot his second-lowest percentage from three since 2019, and Bridges (35.4%) had the second-worst three-point shooting season in his career. The hope was that both, or at least one of them, would catch fire in the playoffs, but it never really happened as they shot 33.9%, and 33.3% respectively.

It is important to note that they had to do a lot defensively. With Brunson and Towns being negatives on that end of the floor, the two wings had a lot of work to do and that couldn’t have helped their three-point shooting percentages. But they needed to be better.

Right: The bench

For almost the entirety of the regular season, the narrative was that the Knicks bench was subpar and that it wasn’t good enough to be a factor in the playoffs. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. And the beauty of it was that it wasn’t just one player. Cam Payne struggled for the majority of the postseason and ended up out of the rotation, but the Knicks don’t win game one of the first round without his clutch 14-point performance, 11 of which came in the fourth quarter.

Landry Shamet, and Delon Wright, who many thought couldn’t provide the Knicks with quality minutes in the playoffs did exactly that by playing solid physical defense and being connectors on the offensive end. Deuce McBride, who failed to take the next leap and had himself a rather disappointing regular season, looked like the McBride fans were used to. While his numbers don’t exactly show it, he had some big baskets and was amazing yet again on the defensive end.

And last but not least, is Robinson, the longest-tenured Knick, who single-handedly changed the Celtics series with his rim protection, pick-and-roll defense, screening, and offensive rebounding, and was a force to be reckoned with for parts of the Pacers series as well. It might’ve been the least expected part of the postseason, but it was a nice surprise to see the second unit do so well.

Wrong: Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals

I don’t think much needs to be said here, and I’m not sure I, or anyone for that matter, is quite ready to fully talk about this game yet. In fact, I’m not sure any of us ever will be. But, the reality is, despite the Knicks looking formidable overall in the series, there’s still a solid chance they would find a way to win the series if they didn’t deliver possibly the worst collapse in sports history to begin the series. Between the head-scratching decision to repeatedly allow Aaron Nesmith to walk into wide-open threes, the inexplicable turnover by Brunson, the missed free throws, the ridiculous bounce that Tyrese Haliburton got to end regulation, and the missed goaltending call, so much went wrong for the Knicks.

Right: Resiliency

The fanbase’s sentiments surrounding this team are split and there’s really no consensus on how good this team, and season was. But if there’s one thing this team undoubtedly is, it’s resilient. In game one of the opening round, Detroit looked to be taking control of the game but New York went on a 21-0 run to come back and win the game. In games one and two against the Celtics, they erased a 20-point deficit on the road and made history while doing so. And in the conference finals, they did it once again, coming back from being down 20 in Indiana.

This team may not always be as great as it should be, and it may not always be pretty. The holes they find themselves in are often ones they dig for themselves. But we’ve seen them crawl out of said hole many times. It’s at times frustrating to watch, and it’s at times the most stressful thing to experience. But it’s also extremely inspiring to know that they always have a shot and that even when they aren’t playing well, they’ll continue to fight. And that they did.

Wrong: Offense

A large part of this has been discussed above as the Hart starting, and the wings struggling three had a lot to do with it. But the extent to which the offense failed them may still be understated. While a lot of people have focused on just how bad the defense looked during the playoffs, that wasn’t even the main problem. The defense actually ranked middle of the pack among playoff teams, which, given this roster that includes Brunson, and Towns, is more than enough. But the offense was atrocious as it had just the second-worst offensive rating among the eight teams that advanced past the first round. With one of the best isolation scorers and pick-and-roll ball handlers as your point guard and one of, if not, the best shooting big man of all time, there is just no reason for this offense to be this bad. Yet, it was. And that cannot be the case again moving forward.