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With the conference finals underway in the 2026 NBA playoffs, there are just four remaining possible matchups for the Finals next month.
Heading into Thursday’s Game 2 between the New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers and Friday’s Game 3 between the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs, let’s take a deeper look at those possibilities, ranking them in order of how compelling each Finals pairing would be.
Most of these assessments are intangible, of course, and there’s no wrong answer with such exciting stars and teams available. But based on a combination of connections between the teams, narrative elements and player matchups, here is what neutral fans should hope for as the conference finals resolve and the Finals take shape.
Home-court advantage: Spurs
Regular-season series: Knicks 2-1 (counting NBA Cup final)
In 1999, in his age-22 season, Tim Duncan won Finals MVP in Madison Square Garden. This was a very different era of basketball; the average final score in that Finals was Spurs 85, Knicks 80.
But 27 years later, could history repeat itself as another 22-year-old Spurs center wins Finals MVP against the Knicks?
Victor Wembanyama’s potential to follow in Duncan’s footsteps — and to show his unique skill set on a national stage at MSG — is one of the three main reasons to be excited about this potential Finals matchup. The second is that a repeat of the NBA Cup final from December could add more excitement to that event in future years.
And the third, of course, is the Knicks’ chance to win their first title in generations. The other three teams in the conference finals have won a title in the past dozen years — but Knicks fans have been waiting since 1973.
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They’d likely have a better chance against San Antonio than Oklahoma City. The Knicks played the Spurs very well this season. They beat them in the NBA Cup final in Las Vegas — right after the Spurs upset the Thunder in the semifinals, coincidentally, which could also repeat in the playoffs — and were also one of just two teams (along with the Denver Nuggets) that beat the Spurs during their 30-4 close to the regular season. And San Antonio needed 11 3-pointers from Julian Champagnie to eke out a two-point win against New York in the teams’ other meeting.
Karl-Anthony Towns presents defensive problems for Wembanyama because he can space out to the perimeter and pull the league’s best rim protector away from the basket. (For that reason, Wembanyama defended Josh Hart more than Towns this season.) And on the other end, OG Anunoby might be the best possible option for a team that wants to use a wing, rather than a big, to guard Wembanyama.
But Wemby vs. the Knicks is far from the only compelling storyline in this potential Finals matchup. Knicks coach Mike Brown has numerous connections to San Antonio. He won the 2003 title as an assistant with the Spurs. He lost the 2007 Finals to the Spurs while working as the Cleveland Cavaliers’ head coach. And he coached Spurs point guard De’Aaron Fox for years with the Sacramento Kings, before both left Sacramento midway through the 2024-25 campaign.
Players who have appeared for both teams include former lottery pick Jeremy Sochan, who’s now a deep bench player for the Knicks after the Spurs waived him in February, and 2024 champion (with Boston) Luke Kornet, who started his career as a stretch-5 with the Knicks and is now a paint-bound backup center for the Spurs.
And finally, the point guard matchup in a Knicks-Spurs Finals would make history, because both Jalen Brunson and Fox are lefties. For now, according to Stathead, only three lefty guards in the modern playoff format (since 1983-84) have been regular starters for championship teams. The most recent is Derek Fisher, who won his fifth title with the Lakers in 2010. And the other two were both Spurs: Manu Ginobili (who started in one title run and came off the bench in three others) and Avery Johnson (in 1999).
Either Brunson or Fox (or backup Dylan Harper, if he stays in the starting lineup with Fox sidelined by a sprained ankle) would be guaranteed to join that list if the Knicks and Spurs met in the Finals.
Both the Knicks and Spurs are competing in their respective conference finals, with New York facing Cleveland and San Antonio facing Oklahoma City. Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images2. Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Oklahoma City Thunder
Home-court advantage: Thunder
Regular-season series: Thunder 2-0
Ten years ago, in 2016, an underdog Cavaliers squad and LeBron James upset a dominant defending champion — the Golden State Warriors — in the Finals, thereby preventing a repeat title. Could a different version of the Cavaliers pull off the same feat a decade later?
It’s unlikely. The Thunder advanced in the playoffs with two sweeps in the first two rounds, while the Cavaliers gutted out two seven-game victories against the Toronto Raptors and Detroit Pistons. And Oklahoma City enjoyed two comfortable wins against Cleveland this season, though it shot an unsustainable 50% on 3-pointers (44-for-88) in those two games, so scores in the Finals would probably be closer.
This seemed like it would be the Finals matchup last year, after both teams landed No. 1 seeds with dueling dominant regular seasons. Cleveland couldn’t uphold its end of the bargain, bowing out meekly in the second round. But still, entering this season, the Thunder and Cavaliers had the two highest over/under win totals, according to Basketball Reference. If they met in the Finals, it would appear to be a winding journey leading to a logical destination.
Beyond Oklahoma City’s attempt to become the first champion in eight years to repeat, the richest storylines from this series would be Chet Holmgren battling Evan Mobley for the unofficial crown of best young American big man, and James Harden’s quest to win his first title, coming against the team that traded him after a Finals trip in 2012. Harden hasn’t returned to the Finals since, and he has gone through several massive career evolutions in the interim. But it would be fun to watch him try, as Oklahoma City’s elite perimeter defenders take aim at the duo of Harden and Donovan Mitchell.
That’s the strategic side: How would veterans Harden and Mitchell handle Oklahoma City’s pressure and ball thieves?
But there’s a rich narrative vein here, as well, because Harden and fellow Cavaliers guard Dennis Schroder represent different, previous eras of Thunder basketball. Harden was part of the young Durant-Westbrook-Harden trio of future MVPs, and Schroder joined Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Chris Paul in a uniquely effective three-guard attack in 2020, the year after the fateful trade that shipped out Paul George and brought back a future multitime MVP. In some sense, you could trace most of the Thunder’s history since they moved to Oklahoma City with Harden, Schroder and Gilgeous-Alexander.
Home-court advantage: Thunder
Regular-season series: Thunder 2-0
Knicks vs. Thunder was many public analysts’ preseason Finals pick, and they’ve lived up to expectations as the two most impressive teams through the first two rounds of the playoffs. New York had a plus-20.0 net rating entering the conference finals, and Oklahoma City was right behind at plus-17.0.
In that sense, both teams would enter the Finals in a similar state. But in another sense, the stakes could scarcely be more different, with one team seeking its second title in a row and the other seeking its first title in 53 years.
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The strategic fulcrum of this series would be each team’s defense against the other’s All-NBA point guard. Could New York’s wings slow down the back-to-back MVP? And could Oklahoma City’s fleet of ace defenders stop Brunson, who’d be attempting to become the rare small guard to lead his team to a title?
As my former colleague Kevin Pelton wrote last year when analyzing a potential Knicks-Thunder Finals, “No team in the NBA seems better equipped to guard Brunson than the Thunder, who could throw a rotating series of on-ball stoppers against him. [Luguentz] Dort would probably get the call when both teams had their starters on the court, followed by the pressure of Cason Wallace, with Alex Caruso’s havoc creation as another option.”
Elsewhere, Isaiah Hartenstein connects both franchises, after he used a lone excellent season in New York — in which he received the first extended starting run of his career — as a springboard to a more lucrative free agent contract in Oklahoma City.
Incidentally, Hartenstein’s departure paved the way for the Knicks’ trade for Towns because they needed a new center. Now, in this scenario, the two could guard each other with a trophy on the line.
Home-court advantage: Spurs
Regular-season series: Cavaliers 2-0
San Antonio and Cleveland could stage a phenomenal Finals. But one of the four options had to be last in this ranking, and Cavaliers-Spurs gets that spot in part because of the memory of their 2007 Finals meeting, when Tim Duncan and Tony Parker swept a 22-year-old James and an otherwise overmatched Cavaliers squad. That series remains the least-viewed NBA Finals on record.
It’s possible that the Spurs would overrun Cleveland this time around, too. Granted, the Cavaliers were undefeated against the Spurs this season, but it’s hard to make too much of that result; both games came in December, and Wembanyama and Stephon Castle missed one of them. And Cleveland’s inconsistency in this postseason, combined with San Antonio’s dominance with Wembanyama on the floor, could complicate the case for a Cleveland upset.
Yet even the least compelling matchup on paper comes with compelling individual storylines. The left-handed guard note would also apply here, as well as in Knicks vs. Spurs, as Harden would battle Fox or Harper. Castle against Mitchell would be phenomenal theater. And Wembanyama and Mobley would make for an intriguing matchup of modern young big men — with international implications beyond just this season.
If Wembanyama beat both Holmgren and Mobley en route to a title, he’d add some juice to an international rivalry two years before the 2028 Olympics, when the French national team will attempt to take down the Americans — who might have both Holmgren and Mobley on the roster by then — in Los Angeles.
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