Are the 2025-26 New York Knicks a Team of Destiny?

A 130-93 closeout will do funny things to a studio. With Suzy in for Rich, the show spent the morning circling one question: are these Knicks a team of destiny? By the end, TJ had simply declared it.

Chris set the table by reminding everyone he called it a week ago, when the room told him he was crazy. The series, in his telling, was over after game one, the night Cleveland blew a 22-point lead with seven-plus minutes to go. Knicks in four, exactly as drawn up, and now eight days off before game one on June 3rd. His worry was the obvious one. A team that has won 11 straight, on a historic run with point margins the league has rarely seen, might not want eight days to cool off.

That is where the destiny case turned practical. Suzy's counter was health. The Knicks are whole, no nagging hamstrings, while the West beats itself up. Fox's ankle is not getting better, she noted, and Jalen Williams' hamstring is not either. Rather have a healthy team than a hot one with no rest, she argued, and the panel mostly came around.

TJ went all the way. Sometimes, he said, the story is already written and you are just reading it, and he is reading a Knicks championship. "There's not a doubt in my mind. I'm just going to call it." The Larry O'Brien trophy, in his view, is already spoken for.

The veterans-of-rust conversation got fun. The show had gone to the Batphone earlier to call Shaquille O'Neal precisely because Shaq knows about long layoffs, having waited through sweeps on the way to a 15-1 playoff run, the only blemish Allen Iverson's step-over game. Chris invoked Phil Jackson's Jedi mind tricks for keeping idle players sharp and suggested Mike Brown will need the same. There were jokes about booking scrimmages, the Globetrotters, Rucker Park, anything to keep the juice flowing.

Even the love came with edge. Chris insisted he hates every Knicks fan but is genuinely happy for them, because everyone deserves to feel the joy of their team winning, right before promising to go vomit about it.

The group also kept one eye on the West, where Suzy is openly rooting for San Antonio, charmed by Pop's presence and the way De'Aaron Fox described him rallying the locker room. That led to the running gripe of the day: SGA and the flopping. The panel admitted he is brilliant, a back-to-back MVP averaging 30 and a championship favorite, but several confessed they are tiring of the constant falls, comparing the officiating circus to the Caitlin Clark debate. The kicker landed anyway. You cannot stop Shai, one of them sighed. You can only hope to contain the flop.