What the Knicks' Championship Run Teaches PT Owners

And as a Philadelphia fan, I cannot tell you that I've not enjoyed watching the Knicks not win the NBA championship for a lot of those years. But I'll tell you, down the stretch of this, I became a Knicks fan. Absolutely, for sure. Now, did the Knicks, the Nets, did the Knicks take the easy road? No, they did not. All right. In the finals, they ended up beating the San Antonio Spurs, as you all know, four games to one. But in every single one of those wins, they came back from doubledigit deficits.

Game four. Game four. You get You look at that at halftime. I'm telling you, I guarantee most of you went to bed. All right. They were down 29 points. Ended up winning 107 106. That is the largest comeback in the history of the NBA playoffs. And as you know, their leader, Jalen Brunson, he put in 45 that night and ended up being the finals most valuable player. And boy, did he deserve it. But let's go back another round. Okay, in the very first round of the playoffs, they fell behind two games to one.

And you heard a lot of talk. Uhoh, the Knicks are going to fall on their faces again. They reeled off 13 wins in a row. That is the second longest playoff winning streak the NBA has ever seen. Imagine that. So, this is not just a lucky run, okay? This was a team that kept getting knocked down, got up over and over and over and they took it all the way to the top. So, here's kind of the part that really gets to the heart of again what I mentioned in the beginning, which is resilience.

And that is why I keep coming back to that message from Journey Church for the Knicks. This didn't just start this year, right? One year ago in 2025, this same core group had a really good season. And they just ended up losing to the Boston Celtics, but they reached the conference final and that was the first time they had done that in 25 years, but they lost. Nobody really remembers that because they lost. We only remember the big wins, the championships, right? But I think for the for the Knicks, that loss in 2025, it could have broken that team.

Instead the organization. It always comes back to the organization and the people that drive these organizations and they looked very hard at themselves and they made some really difficult decisions. And now they come back the next year, right, and finish the job. And that's resilience. Not pretending that the loss never happened, but going into the off season, learning from it, coming back better. And I think every business owner watching has had a year that just didn't go the way you wanted it to. And so the question is, you know, never whether that happens.

The question is, what do you do the next year? All right, let's talk about their players. This this is some exciting stuff because, you know, I think this is where it connects directly to how we run our businesses. You can't win in the NBA with one star. Okay? And some have tried it with two stars and they've had some success, but the Knicks, look, they have a star in Jalen Brunson. He's magnificent. Now, little rattled him during the series, and he finally got rattled when in his postgame speech right after the game, or I should say lack of speech.

But, you know, that's going to be a moment that we all remember. It's like it's like, you know, you go to the wedding that's perfect. Nobody remembers those. You know, you remember when things happened and certainly nothing tragic. You know, they built this team, okay, around Jalen Brunson. Yes. But they also had Carl Anthony Towns, right? He was a center that they traded for and a player that a lot of people out there in basketball land, they thought he was a little too soft to anchor a real contender.

He proved them wrong. Okay, he was tough down the stretch. Also had McCall Bridges, Josh Hart, and as many of you may know, Brenson, Bridges, and Hart all won a national championship. And then many years back and now have won an NBA championship. They're the first group of teammates to win both a national championship in college and an NBA championship. So, you know what stood out to me was not just, hey, these were good players. It was they all seemed to raise their level when the pressure was at its highest point.

Not not just anybody, you know, you can't say anybody can perform, but a lot of players can perform when the game's comfortable, when their lead is safe. Not these guys. These guys performed when they were 29 down at halftime and in the finals. And that is a completely different thing because you're under serious pressure. So, here's what I want to take from that. You do not actually know what your people are made of until they're tested under pressure. You find out who rises and who fades in the difficult moments, not the easy moments.

And this is really why we have we have to test our own staff under pressure kind of on purpose before the moment really shows up on its own. And you know what I mean by this is, you know, let's just say you were to go on a three-month vacation starting tomorrow. Who on your team is going to hang is going to hangry is going to handle the angry patient? And maybe that's why the patient was angry because they're hangry. I'm just kidding. But who's going to handle that angry patient?

Or you know the gap in SPA staffing or the payer denial or the day that a couple therapists all call out sick. If you do not know the answer, it's because you've never really tested your team. The Knicks knew exactly who they could count on in the fourth quarter when they were down because they had done it hundreds and hundreds of times and they've done it in really tight situations. So, your team needs the same thing. Give your people real responsibility while you're while you're still there to coach them through it.

Let them handle that really difficult call and then come into your office and walk through it. Let them run the whole morning without you there. That's how you find out what you have and that is how you can allow them to grow into it. Now, I did some real digging into how this Knicks organization kind of set itself up because preparation is the kind of unglamorous part that nobody really talks about and it's where I really think the real lessons are there for us. First, they were willing to make a change when things kind of looked good with their former coach.

He was a good coach. He taught them, he took them down this one of the best stretches in decades. But the organization still made that hard decision because they wanted more. So they hired Mike Brown. He had been a two-time coach of the year and had worked alongside four championship teams. They wanted kind of in their words, this is directly from general manager, a collaborator, someone willing to experiment and bring a very different voice to the table. Think about how hard that is when you got somebody good.

But ah I love this. Good is what? It's the enemy of great. And so they just were not satisfied with good. And so they made a very uncomfortable change to chase something better than good. And they obviously came down the stretch and did it. You know, they invested heavily in kind of putting the right pieces around their best player. They didn't want to have that roster that if one or two players are out, everything would fall apart. And I think somebody alerted me to an article this morning on how they stopped when now not stopped him on offense, how they stopped him on defense.

Okay? And as you all know, he is better known. 27 foot4 as the alien. I think that's I mean he is an unbelievable athlete. But they stopped him by spreading the court out on offensive possessions and putting five players on the court all who could make those threes. They weren't five players all who were great at making the threes. They were good at making the threes. So they could pass it to anybody who was in that three-point range and took those shots and they spread it out and they made many more threes than San Antonio.

And I think you know that was one of the big difference makers in this court. That was real strategy coming into action bringing back players. All right, this is another strategy they used. They brought back players who had won together before and that wasn't an accident that they did that. There was real value and chemistry of taking those Villanova players and building your team somewhat around those players. Were all those players great? No. But they were all really good. And certainly Jalen Brunson has proved to be great to be great.

They also prepared for the specific moments, not just for the team. This is a team that clearly practiced for the close games, for the comeback, for that final five to 10 minutes. I could just picture them in their facility with the loud noise going practicing those last five to 10 minutes. And they won every five to every five to 10 minutes in that championship run. Those four fi those four g wins they had against San Antonio. They won the last 5 to 10 minutes in all of those wins.

Okay? And that is because they were pressure tested. You can do the same. You know that you don't have to rehearse for these moments, but practice that difficult patient conversation. You know, role play with them. Practice the front desk handling a packed, chaotic morning. And how they will show up and get through that because when the real version ends up showing up, your team has already been there. So yes, look, there's a clear tie to our businesses here. Okay, main things, test your people before the pressure tests them.

Build depth so you are not one injury away from falling apart, right? Be willing to change when good is not good enough and prepare for those specific hard and difficult moments, not just the easy ones. What I also want you to appreciate about this is, you know, a franchise that had not won in 53 years and a team that lost in heartbreaking fashion the team before, the year before, they came back and made the necessary changes that needed to be changed and it took them to the promised land.

As we've said, resilience is not avoiding the fall or the bad time. It's what you do after that. The Knicks gave us about as good a lesson as we could have learned in coming back going through the difficult times and becoming world champions. So, if any of you have any thoughts or feedback or questions about what we just talked about today or in any of my previous podcast videos, just click below. Let's talk. Thank you and have a great rest of your day and a great weekend.