Every NBA team’s best iteration ever

New York Knicks: 1969-70

After losing in the 1969 Eastern Division Finals, the Knicks began the following season on an absolute tear. They started the season 23-1, and won 18 in a row, setting the since-broken record for most consecutive wins in a single season. They went on to win the most games in team history and earn the best record in the NBA, on their way to defeating the Lakers in the Finals. While the team was brilliant all year, they are best known for Game 7 of the Finals, in which Willis Reed played through injury, scoring the Knicks’ first four points of the game. Walt Frazier was the real star of that game, though, as he scored 36 points and had 19 assists in the pivotal game.

While Willis Reed won MVP — both of the regular season and of the Finals — in many ways, it was Walt Frazier who was the engine that made the Knicks who they were. He was the team’s most dynamic playmaker, leading the team in assists, while also scoring over 20 points a game himself. Frazier was great defensively as well, known for his lockdown perimeter defense and quick hands. Supporting Reed and Frazier were Bill Bradley — the former Princeton star known for his ability to find the open man and score on backdoor cuts — and Dick Barnett — a shooting guard with a deadly, though unorthodox jump shot. Finally, there was Dave DeBusschere, the powerful forward the Knicks acquired from the Pistons the previous year in exchange for Walt Bellamy, who ended up being the proverbial missing piece for them.

The 1970 Knicks team have now become a tad overrated historically due to the fact that seemingly every basketball writer alive at the time wrote a book fawning over them. They were a very good team, certainly, although probably not one deserving of quite that much praise. Regardless, considering the generally bleak history of the Knicks before and since the early 70s, it’s understandable for fans to hold them in such regard as they remain the easy choice for the best in team history.