The 2025-26 season was one of history and defied expectations for the New York Knicks. When the playoffs arrived, they embarked on the most impressive winning streak in NBA playoffs history, winning 13-straight games that sent them coasting into the NBA Finals against the ever-rising San Antonio Spurs. 

While the Knicks had to come from behind in every single game, they took the Spurs down in five games, including pulling off the largest comeback in NBA Finals history by overcoming a 29-point deficit to take the Spurs down in Game 4, which then set the stage for the victory in Game 5 that won them the Knicks' first championship in 53 years. 

Now, with the Knicks' roster all but completed ahead of next season, it's time to look ahead and see where the Knicks stand in the Eastern Conference and the league as a whole and see if they can become the first repeat champions in the NBA since the Golden State Warriors from 2017-18. 

The landscape of the Eastern Conference will look significantly different compared to the conference that the Knicks finished as the third-seed in in 2025-26. 

The Boston Celtics will have a fully healthy Jayson Tatum back on the team more than a year removed from tearing his Achilles, though they have subtracted Jaylen Brown from the equation after trading him away to the Philadelphia 76ers. 

Still, the Celtics should be formidable and will likely be one of the Knicks's toughest competitors. 

The 76ers are likely the most changed team that the Knicks will have to face off against after adding Brown through trade with the Celtics and signing LeBron James in free agency, paring two impactful veterans alongside Tyrese Maxey and Joel Embiid and while it may not immediately make them the de facto one-seed in the conference, they will likely be a formidable threat in the conference. 

The Indiana Pacers are still another wild card. After finishing the 2025-26 regular season with just a 19-63 record, the second-worst in the NBA, they will have star Tyrese Haliburton after tearing an Achilles himself during the 2025 NBA Finals, finally being able to pair him with Ivica Zubac, whom they added at the trade deadline. 

All of these factors make the Eastern Conference far more difficult than it was last season, and the Detroit Pistons, while mostly unchanged after the offseason, should also remain a threat, but barring any significant regression that doesn't seem plausible considering the strength of the roster, the floor for the Knicks should at worst a fourth-seed finish in the Eastern Conference. 

Their ceiling though, is to be the best team in the conference and once again be NBA champions. The core of their roster remains unchanged and the most significant difference is that they lost Mitchell Robinson in free agency, but they replaced him with Andre Drummond who while older, adds more scoring upside than Robinson did. 

When the biggest change to a championship-winning roster is a different backup center, it's reasonable to believe that the Knicks can repeat the success they enjoyed last season and etch themselves even further into history.