{"id":126762,"date":"2025-03-03T17:53:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T22:53:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=126762"},"modified":"2025-03-03T17:53:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T22:53:31","slug":"knicks-narrowly-miss-phil-jacksons-40-20-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/03\/knicks-narrowly-miss-phil-jacksons-40-20-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"Knicks Narrowly Miss Phil Jackson’s 40-20 Rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

NBA teams are constantly evaluating themselves throughout the season. There are many benchmarks to look at to determine whether you’re on the right track, and every franchise’s goals are different. When you are a championship-hopeful squad like the New York Knicks, you want to compare yourself to the best of the best, as well as former title teams. New York has a good record with encouraging metrics, but has struggled mightily with the league’s top teams<\/a>. There is one measurement that has proved very predictive throughout NBA history, and the Knicks flirted with it all season.<\/p>\n

Knicks Narrowly Miss Phil Jackson’s 40-20 Rule<\/h2>\n

In 2008, the legendary head coach Phil Jackson<\/a> stated that to be a true championship contender, a team must win 40 before they lose 20. Essentially, you have to take 40 of your first 59 games to meet the benchmark. While this claim certainly isn’t the end-all-be-all, the 11-time champion seemed to know what he was talking about. Only three squads in the last 45 seasons that failed to accomplish the 40-20 feat went on to win the championship. (More information on the rule can be found here.)<\/a><\/p>\n

Well, the Knicks came out of the All-Star break needing to win four of their first five games to get to 40 wins before 20 losses. It seemed like they would look to sweep Chicago, Philadelphia, and Memphis while splitting road matchups against Boston and Cleveland in order to do so. Unfortunately, while they pulled off the former, they were blown off the floor in both contests versus the East’s first and second seeds. It was an extremely concerning pair of games for New York<\/a>, and also meant that they didn’t make the coveted 40-20 club.<\/p>\n

New York Came as Close as Possible<\/strong><\/h3>\n

However, after overcoming a 19-point second-half deficit to beat Miami last night<\/a>, Tom Thibodeau’s group at least got to 40 victories through 60 games. Knicks fans have plenty to be thankful for. For context, their 40-20 record is the franchise’s best record after 60 contests since the 1996-97 team<\/a> was 44-16. That squad went on to win 57 games, but blew a 3-1 lead to the Heat in the second round.<\/p>\n

Obviously, meeting the 40-20 rule doesn’t actually matter, especially when you miss it by just one game. The point is to be a good enough team to win roughly two-thirds of your matchups, and New York has done that. With a 40-20 record (fourth-best), the sixth-best net rating<\/a>, and a 9-3 mark<\/a> against the teams that have the fifth through tenth-best records in the league, they have proven they’re at least a fringe contender.<\/p>\n

The next step is to prove they can hang with the three giants of the NBA. Their matchups against Boston, OKC, and Cleveland have been disastrous so far. Luckily, they’ll get two more chances at Cleveland and another with Boston, all in April. The objective for Thibodeau’s guys is to remain healthy, as they currently have their entire ten-man rotation at full strength. New York needs to figure out their best strategies and lineups<\/a> to take down the East’s titans and take their crack at them in April. After that, the Knicks will get an opportunity to beat both teams in a seven-game series. Their overall performance so far says they have a real chance.<\/p>\n

Photo credit: \u00a9 Brad Penner-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NBA teams are constantly evaluating themselves throughout the season. There are many benchmarks to look at to determine whether you’re on the right track, and every franchise’s goals are different. When you are a championship-hopeful squad like the New York Knicks, you want to compare yourself to the best of the best, as well as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5412,"featured_media":126773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,62,12],"tags":[221],"class_list":["post-126762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-nba","category-knicks","tag-phil-jackson"],"modified_by":"Kenny Kluska","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5412"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126762"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126774,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126762\/revisions\/126774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}