Good news, New York Knicks fans: your team is headed to the NBA playoffs for the first time in two seasons and just the second time in the last decade.
The bad news? Oddsmakers don’t expect this year’s run to last very long.
The Knicks are already priced as clear underdogs (+166) to win their first-round series against the Cavaliers (-198), according to the latest odds at FanDuel, in the only matchup that’s officially been set with the NBA regular season ending on Sunday.
As the No. 4 seed, Cleveland owns home-court advantage over fifth-seeded New York in the series, which is set to tip off in just over a week.
The winner will face either No. 1 seed Milwaukee or the East’s No. 8 seed in the second round.
Even though oddsmakers are pessimistic about the Knicks’ chances in the first round, the betting market is expecting a hotly contested series between these two Eastern Conference upstarts.
The most likely outcome in this matchup, according to the latest betting odds, is a seven-game series (+195), followed closely by a series that lasts six games (+200) or five games (+230).
It would be pretty surprising for either team to pull off the four-game sweep (+600), which happened just once in the first round of each of the last two postseasons.
If regular-season results are any indication, New York should feel pretty good about its chances of pulling off a first-round upset over Cleveland.
The Knicks beat the Cavaliers in three of these teams’ four meetings this season, including last Friday’s 14-point win in an epic duel between Jalen Brunson (48 points) and Donovan Mitchell (42 points).
Over a larger sample, though, it’s clear why Cleveland is dealing as the early favorite here.
The Cavaliers rank second this season in net rating (+5.6) – the Knicks rank eighth (+3.0) – with the league’s best defensive rating (110.1) behind the elite interior duo of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen.
That said, New York has been a better team on a per-possession basis since the All-Star break, outscoring teams by 5.8 points per 100 possessions – trailing only the Celtics (+7.3) and Bucks (+6.1) over that stretch.
If you’re looking for postseason precedent between these teams, you won’t find much.
They haven’t met in the playoffs since the mid-1990s, when the Knicks beat the Cavaliers in the first round in 1995 and 1996 before subsequently losing in the second round.