Crazy Knicks Fans Claim 26 Championship Team Better Than 24 Celtics originally appeared on NESN.
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BetMGM made a now-viral tier list of the last 10 NBA Champions. The post with 4.3 million views ranked the 2026 New York Knicks, who were crowned the NBA Champions last Saturday, as the third-best championship team of the decade.
The 2025 Oklahoma City Thunder were ranked fourth, and the 2024 Boston Celtics were ranked fifth.
This Knicks team was ELITE 🔥 pic.twitter.com/MBArTdZY9C
— BetMGM 🦁 (@BetMGM) June 14, 2026
There are no safe-for-work words strong enough to describe how misguided this ranking is.
Have NBA fans already forgotten the ’24 Celtics going 64-18 in the regular season and then cruising through each round of the playoffs virtually unscathed?
Boston’s postseason record was 16-3. They did not play in a single series that went past five games.
They played the same Indiana Pacers team in the Eastern Conference Finals that beat New York last year to advance to the Finals. As the No. 1 seed in the East, Boston dismantled Indiana, sweeping them and ending the series on their home court.
The Celtics then took the first three games of the Finals against Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving’s Dallas Mavericks, before losing in Game 4 and lifting the Larry O’Brien at TD Garden.
The lineup of Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Derrick White, Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis is the single best lineup of the 2020s.
The 24 Celtics hold the NBA record for the most 25-point wins, 30-point wins and 50-point wins. Boston wasn’t beating teams; they were running them out of the gym.
Their success from the three-point line led to discussions over whether or not the game of basketball was legitimately broken.
The scrappy underdog Knicks team was an amazing run. But don’t allow yourself to become a prisoner of the moment and pretend that this roster compares to one of the best ever created.
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