On Friday night in New York City, more than 19,000 Knicks fans poured out of Madison Square Garden and onto Seventh Avenue, celebrating their team’s improbable 4-2 series victory over the Boston Celtics. The NBA’s social media peanut gallery had previously taken issue with Knicks fans for their overly exuberant early-round victory celebrations, but after landing in the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in a quarter-century, this party was as legit as the Knicks newfound title hopes.

New York had beaten their rivals by a franchise playoff-record margin of 38 points, ending Boston’s reign as NBA champs. If you watched the way they suffocated the Celtics, you know it wasn’t even that close. The way this series ended was as stunning as how it began, with consecutive historic Celtic meltdowns at TD Garden, when the home team surrendered 20-point second-half leads not once but twice. Then New York were moments from wrapping up another improbable victory in Game 4 when Boston cornerstone Jayson Tatum went down with an achilles injury. Back in Boston, down three games to one, with their season on the brink and their all-NBA player in the hospital recovering from season-ending surgery, Boston powered through Game 5 on pure adrenaline. That wave of raw energy had crashed by the start of Game 6, and the Celtics finally tapped out. The Garden crowd let out 25 years of shpilkes as they watched their team bounce the champs.

Related: Rampant Knicks blow out Celtics to advance to first East finals since 2000

And so after a season of trying to figure out who they are and what their identity is, the Knicks have finally found a label: Eastern Conference finalists. Up until the clock struck zero in Game 6, accurate adjectives to describe New York’s on-court personality were quite limited, but “resilient” and “inconsistent” probably summed them up best.

Injuries, trades and roster turnover meant that the lunch-pail defense-first teams that had marked the Tom Thibodeau-coached Knicks prior to this season were no more. The loss of their beastly, rim protecting, offensive rebounding big men – Isaiah Hartenstein to free agency and Mitchell Robinson to an ankle injury until late February – were glaring. That weakness in the paint meant newly acquired defensive stalwart Mikal Bridges, and defensive Swiss army knife OG Anunoby were hopeless against perimeter shooting for most of the season.

That said, Karl-Anthony Towns, who came to New York in a late preseason blockbuster deal, jumped out of the gate early, looking like the alpha dog Minnesota rarely got to see, setting a career high for rebounds while combining with Jalen Brunson to average more than 50 points a game. Knicks fans were being treated to blistering ball movement and some of the most explosive offensive play the franchise has ever produced, but as the games piled up, the warts began to show.

Around mid-season, the excitement that had followed the team since their 2021 playoff appearance seemed to crest, with doubts creeping in about the team’s ceiling. The team was haunted by a stat that followed them around for all 82 games: since 2003, among teams that have won 50 games or more, the Knicks had the worst winning percentage against teams .500 or better. They were whipped by the Celtics, the Cavs and the Thunder. New York winning their first title since 1973? This team couldn’t even beat the pre-Luka Lakers at home. Fans braced themselves for another playoff letdown.

Such negativity has context: the New York Knickerbockers, despite their stature as a pillar of the NBA, are mostly a losing franchise that have had just three extended runs of success in their history, one of which was during the NBA’s prehistoric early-1950s. Under the ownership of James Dolan, their fans’ fandom has repeatedly been tested by a leadership that’s provided two of the most inept, perplexing and sometimes dastardly decades a professional sports team has ever known.

Then suddenly, Dolan hired Leon Rose as team president and finally got out of the way. Knicks fans expected the former prominent player agent to attract sparkly free agents such as Kevin Durant. It didn’t happen, but a meticulous rebuild did, and in the span of five seasons, the team transitioned from NBA laughing stock to legitimate title contenders.

These Knicks are arguably one of the most oddly constructed basketball teams in recent memory, and that’s because the Knicks have consistently been one of the worst drafting franchises in NBA history. In an era where teams have tanked to rebuild their franchises, New York’s renaissance hasn’t been buoyed by a homegrown star, or stars, such as the Celtics’ Tatum and Jaylen Brown, but rather a delicate series of trades and under-the-radar free-agent signings made by their under-the-radar president. Rose has not held a single press conference since being hired in March 2020, which is wild in a town of quote-thirsty tabloids.

The result is a starting five that’s arguably unmatched in the NBA, and now that Mitchell Robinson has worked his way back into impacting games with his menacing paint presence and timely offensive rebounds, Knicks fans are starting to see the full complement of what Rose had in mind when he went all-in on pairing Towns with Brunson, and what he saw in Bridges when he gambled a stack of draft picks on the league’s iron man. They figured out a way to get past the NBA’s new junkyard dogs in Detroit, then ousted the champs in six. When it’s all working, Brunson is pushing the ball and finishing with his footwork, Bridges is sticking mid-range jumpers and ripping the ball from his opponents, Anunoby is stifling opponents’ most prolific players, Robinson’s active hands are flummoxing offenses, Towns is involved early, sticking threes and working the post, Hart’s engine is wearing teams out and bench players like Deuce McBride and Cam Payne are making meaningful contributions.

Now they meet Indiana, who beat them in the Eastern Conference semi-finals last season. A year ago the Knicks’ roster was eviscerated by injuries, allowing the Pacers to sneak past New York over seven games. Now the Knicks are a completely different team, a healthy group that’s figuring it all out at just the right time. Meanwhile the Pacers are also much improved, having played some of the best basketball in the league over the past several months. We don’t know who will emerge in what is sure to be a grueling Eastern Conference finals, but we do know the Knicks are taking nothing for granted. I feel like we have a long way to go,” said Brunson after Friday night’s win. “Just the confidence we have in each other and everything. Just knowing who we are. We have to be unsatisfied.”

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