Mikal Bridges: Knicks Must "Stay Desperate" For Title Despite Historic Start

The New York Knicks  are a -500 favorite at  DraftKings  to win the 2026 NBA championship. Up 2-0 over the San Antonio Spurs after Friday night's thriller , the Knicks are just two wins away from one of the most jaw-dropping postseason turnarounds in NBA history. Remember, they were essentially a coin flip at most books just to advance past the Atlanta Hawks in the first round when they trailed that series 2-1. At that moment , the Knicks were a 30-to-1 championship underdog. Now they're the heavy favorites... and the odds here probably undersell them, at least based on history.

At -500, the Knicks have implied championship odds of 83.33%. However, if you just look purely at the track record of teams in their specific circumstances, the history here is screaming, "The New York Knicks are going to win the championship." Just consider the following:

- Only three road teams have ever won the first two games of the NBA Finals. The Knicks are one of them. The others are the 1993 Chicago Bulls and 1995 Houston Rockets . Both of them won the championship. - The Knicks are currently on a 13-game playoff winning streak. The only other team with a 13-game winning streak across a single postseason is the 2017 Golden State Warriors . Not only did they win the championship, but they were coached for most of that streak by current Knicks coach Mike Brown, as full-time Warriors coach Steve Kerr left the team between Game 2 of the first round and Game 2 of the NBA Finals while recovering from back surgery. - If you include streaks that span multiple postseasons, there are five more teams with playoff winning streaks of at least 12 games: the Los Angeles Lakers in 1988 and 1989, the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016 and 2017, the Detroit Pistons in 1989 and 1990, the Spurs in 1999 and the Lakers in 2000 and 2001. All five of those teams won at least one championship during their streaks. - During this winning streak, the Knicks have out-rebounded their opponents by 113 and out-assisted them by 92. Only two other teams in playoff history have done that across a 13-game span: the 2001 Lakers and the 1996 Chicago Bulls. Both champions. - The Knicks have, by far, the best point differential in playoff history. They have outscored their playoff opponents by 282 total points this postseason. The next 12 highest playoff point differentials all won championships: the 2017 Warriors (+230), 2014 Spurs (+214), 2018 Warriors (+210), the 1987 Lakers (+205), the 2001 Lakers (+204), the 1971 Milwaukee Bucks (+203), the 1991 Bulls (+199), the 1985 Lakers (+193), the 2025 Oklahoma City Thunder (+192), the 1996 Bulls (+190), the 1986 Boston Celtics (+186) and the 2016 Cavaliers (+181). The streak, as of now, is only broken by... the 2026 San Antonio Spurs, who, at +174, currently have the 14th-best playoff point-differential in history. You have to go all the way past the top 20 down to No. 21, the 2013 Spurs at +147, to find a non-champion.

The Knicks are making their grand return to Madison Square Garden on Monday. It will be their first home game in two-and-a-half weeks, and they will be treated as conquering heroes. They can end their season without ever getting on a plane and playing another road game. It would be very easy to treat the next two games as a coronation, the crowning of an inevitable champion and one of the greatest teams in playoff history.

And ironically, perhaps the single strongest reason to believe that might happen is that the Knicks are not remotely acting as if it will. Mikal Bridges had a powerful message for the team in his on-court interview after Game 2. When asked about his mindset going into Game 3, he succinctly  summed it up : "Zero-zero. Stay desperate at all times."

Bridges can speak from experience here. Only four teams in NBA history have blown a 2-0 Finals lead. Bridges is the only Knicks player who's been a part of one of them. His 2021 Phoenix Suns took the first two games against the Bucks before losing four straight and handing Giannis Antetokounmpo the title. They may have won their first two games at home, and therefore had a slightly lesser advantage, but the mindset is the same. He's seen a team let go of the rope in the Finals. Treating the championship as a given is exactly how it's lost.

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That's where that underdog status is probably helpful. The Knicks have played desperately all postseason. They were underdogs against Boston a year ago. Their backs were against the wall against Atlanta after three games this year. They came into this series hearing that nothing they'd done thus far really mattered because it  was against a weak Eastern Conference . They've even been where the Spurs are now, albeit on a slightly lesser stage.

In last year's Eastern Conference Finals, the Knicks had home-court advantage and lost the first two games against Indiana. They fought back to push the series to six, including winning Game 3 on the road. The heartbreak San Antonio experienced in Game 2, when Victor Wembanyama threw the game away with a late turnover , is similar to what the Knicks experienced in Game 1 of that series, when they blew a 14-point lead with 3:14 remaining and watched Tyrese Haliburton make one of the most unbelievable game-tying shots in playoff history.

They know exactly what's going through San Antonio's mind right now. They probably even know what specific pitfalls to avoid, because they've also been where they are right now. Last year, they won two road games in Boston to open their second-round series before losing Game 3 at home. Brown wasn't their coach at that point, but all of the core players are still in place.

The Knicks have all of the tools they'll need to finally get that 53-year-old monkey off of their back. They have the history. They have players that San Antonio has thus far proven incapable of countering. And perhaps most importantly, they have the lessons they've learned across their past two playoff runs, and all of the ones that came before them for their players.

Bridges sent the right message after Game 2. No matter how certain all of this may feel, desperation is what will get the Knicks across the finish line.

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_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/history-pointing-to-knicks-title-spurs-nba-finals-mikal-bridges/)._