Gonna be poetic if the Knicks of all teams breaks the famous Phil Jackson rule

Gonna be fun. Looking forward to the series. Absolutely love Brunson, my favorite non-Spur player.

I still remember when Brunson was on the mavs and was wondering why the fuck this dude kept cooking the hell out of our players.

Turns out he was going to be pretty good lol

⁴⁰⁄₂₀ rule is a bit goofy because the majority of times it’s been right it predicted teams like the 90s Bulls, Kobe/Shaq Lakers, Duncan Spurs, or peak Steph Warriors would be contenders. Teams where anybody could have told you that they were contenders.

I think it means less in this era of parity. The Knicks are like the 6th non-⁴⁰⁄₂₀ team to make the finals this decade. It’s also why people who like the rule always say “going back to 1980” when they bring it up - the 1970s had a lot of parity with 48 win teams winning the finals year after year so it would make the rule look less accurate if you included the 70s.

The ⁴⁰⁄₂₀ rule is dumb. It’s a dressed up way of saying “championship teams tend to do really well in the regular season” 

I’d actually really love to see Mike Brown bring NY a title. He’s gotten a ton of criticism as a HC but was known as a genuinely good guy when he was an assistant with the Warriors. Everyone behind the scenes absolutely loved him

So for the most part, the Spurs are probably going to win a championship. Especially with Mitchell Robinson playing on a broken pinky.

I hope the Knicks win.

Thank you for this, as a Rockets fan who really, really dislikes KD and pretty much tuned out much of this very non-joyful season we just slogged through, it’s nice to think about the good times and the 94-95 team was the best of times. What an epic run.

ok so lets do it

Yeah but Phil smoked a lot of weed then.

I think we are going to see the rule hold up less in the near future. There’s already a grow parity in the NBA which will only increase with the second apron. Also, with how much teams change in the regular season and post season, I doubt it will matter as much

Spurs and Knicks as a team have a lot of similarities. The fan hood though, this is going to be a series of all time in that respect. lol

This stat is too generic, please add “before 6 o’clock after eating a Pastrami Sandwich”

There have been 92 total finalists since the 1979-80 season. 25 of them (27%) did not reach 40 wins before 20 losses. 5 of last 6 finals runner ups were rule breakers. 4 out of 5 were from the eastern conference.

Since 1998-1999, only 5 times did a 40-20 play another 40-20 team. (07/08 lakers celtics, ¹²⁄₁₃ heat spurs, ¹⁵⁄₁₆ cavs warriors, ¹⁶⁄₁₇ cavs warriors, ¹⁸⁄₁₉ warriors raptors). In 03/04 we had two rule breakers face off, one being phil jacksons own team, after he coined this term.

SInce 1998-1999, it’s safe to assume one 40-20 will be upset each year, and usually it happens in the east. I’d have to dig into the numbers more, but there are usually more 40-20 teams in the west is my instinctual first guess.

01-03 Nets faced zero 40-20 teams for example. 06-07 cavs only had one 40-20 team in the conference, the 40-19 pistons who were aging. since 1998, the east has produced 16 outliers, and the west has produced 5. As opposed to the more top heavy era, between 1980-1997, ¹⁷⁄₁₈ champions followed the rule and only 7 outliers made the finals. From 1998 to current day, 21 outliers made the finals. You definitely need to be in the club to be considered a contender, but it seems like less of a for sure ticket, especially against the field in the east.

I commented this back in January around the time teams were approaching 40-20 territory. The East has produced less 40-20 teams for the last 30 years, so it’s been more prone to outliers reaching the finals without facing another 40-20 team, whereas a western outlier would meet a contender in the 2nd or 3rd round nearly every year.

Knicks in 6

Kinda silly to put so much emphasis on the regular season…especially these days.

The ⁴⁰⁄₂₀ rule was always more useful for identifying contenders than predicting champions. Once you’re in the Finals, weird things happen and historical trends start breaking. To be honest, both teams in this year’s Finals play team basketball, where every player is crucial and can influence the outcome of the entire series, and both Brunson and Wembanyama possess their own unique charisma.

Is this like a super 420 ?

“If the Knicks beat the Spurs”

If is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that fantasy

How many outliers won 11 games straight in the post season?

They only didn’t hit ⁴⁰⁄₂₀ because of that one rough stretch that was an outlier

The rule is not a rule. It’s arbitrary garbage that doesn’t account for strength of schedule, injuries, and a lot of other factors.

If anyone’s curious the knicks were 35-20.

It was Phil’s 420 rule

That 1995 Rockets team had the greatest playoff run in NBA history, as much as younger fans want to say Dirk’s 2011 run was. The Rockets team beat the 4 teams with the 4 best records in the league that year (Orlando was T-4 with Seattle), something no other team has ever done before and no other team has ever done since.

This is the kinda cherry picked ESPN stat that’s kinda annoying to me tbh. Not even the first ⁴⁰⁄₂₀ team to win ever, not the first in 44 years, they’d be the 5th in 45 years..? So like..not that rare? BUT they would be the first to do it WITHOUT beating a ⁴⁰⁄₂₀ team on their way to the finals? Oh but they would play a ⁴⁰⁄₂₀ team in the finals..? This feels like ur trying very hard to make it sound like something really rare is happening when nothing all too rare is actually happening

This is a standard from two eras ago though

To be fair, Knicks would’ve beaten the pistons pretty handily had they made it far enough

Pistons team is a fraud 40-20 team anyway. They got lucky Franz got injured. Would’ve been a first round flame out.