Coming off an NBA Championship, the New York Knicks will return all five starters this season, welcoming back Jalen Brunson, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, and Karl-Anthony Towns.

It takes more than a starting five to win an NBA Championship, but the Knicks group has now been through playoff runs together, making the Eastern Conference Finals in 2025 before storming through the playoffs with a 16-3 record this past season.

As champions, the Knicks deserve respect around the league and should be viewed as the team to beat, but they’ll face heavy competition from the likes of the San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Philadelphia 76ers.

Though those teams boast strong starting lineups on their own, is any five-man group better than New York?

Winning a championship goes a long way in saying you have the best starting lineup, but the overall numbers tell a slightly different story.

In the playoffs, the Knicks starting lineup wasn’t even their best five-man unit.

Towns, Anunoby, Bridges, Brunson, and Shamet had a +5.9 net rating in the playoffs while Towns, Anunoby, Hart, Brunson, and McBride had a +5.3 net rating, both of which were higher than the starters’ net rating of +4.9. Granted, there is a big minutes discrepancy between the starters and the two lineups with bench players.

In the regular season, the Knicks’ best lineup in terms of net rating was McBride, Brunson, Hart, Bridges, and Towns. The starting lineup was their seventh-best group and barely a positive with a +0.3 net rating.

While the Knicks are returning their same starting lineup, so are other successful teams around the league.

The Spurs will have Victor Wembanyama, Devin Vassell, Stephon Castle, Julian Champagnie, and De’Aaron Fox as returning starters. That was the best group in the playoffs to go along with an outstanding regular season where they were +17.4.

The Thunder will replace Lu Dort with Cason Wallace in their starting lineup, which returns Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Chet Holmgren, and Isaiah Hartenstein. Because of injuries, that group never played together in the regular season or playoffs, but posted a +64.3 net rating in a very small sample size of just five minutes in the 2025 playoffs.

With Dort in the starting lineup last season, OKC had a +8.1 net rating.

The Nuggets starters disappointed in the playoffs, but were one of the best five-man units in the regular season, sporting a +7.5 net rating.

On paper, the 76ers have a strong group of Tyrese Maxey, VJ Edgecombe, Jaylen Brown, LeBron James, and Joel Embiid, though they haven’t played a minute together.

The Knicks starters deserve respect, and they’ve proven their worth when the pressure is at its highest. But there are valid claims to say they aren’t the best starting lineup in the league.