This website’s second NBA Tuesday miniseries is here today, as the New York Knicks won their first NBA title since 1973, amid much hullabaloo from the media world. Can anyone say, “East Coast Media Bias”?! We can. Even though the Knicks were the third-best team in the Eastern Conference—and the fifth-best team overall—during the regular season, they navigated the situation to defeat the mathematically superior San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals over a five-game series where the Spurs blew leads.

San Antonio had home-court advantage, and it lost Games 2, 4, and 5 by a combined six points. We were surprised the matchup did not go six or seven games to maximize television revenue, but here are the facts: the Spurs blew second-half leads in Game 1, Game 4 (a 27-point halftime lead, scoring just 30 points total in the second half), and Game 5 (seven-point lead entering the fourth quarter). The middle one was particularly suspicious as it would have tied the series at two games each, and it changed everything.

That being said, we know the NBA has been rigged since at least the mid-1990s, so nothing should surprise us anymore. But … perhaps this makes up for that nightmarish 1994 Finals the Knicks suffered through way back when, right? Okay; sure; yeah.

2026 NBA FINALS MVP: Jalen Brunson, G, New York (original); OG Anunoby, F, New York (revised)

In way-too-often fashion, the mediots voted someone as the Finals MVP based on counting stats, as guard Jalen Brunson won the award despite finishing third on his own team in postseason Win Shares. He also was fourth on the Knicks in WS/48, which is even more damning, since his usage rate (32.6) was the highest on the team by a lot—even though he was far from being the best player on the court. We really do not understand how the media … alleged experts, no less … still can’t fathom advanced analytics.

That being said, the player who topped New York in both WS and WS/48 was eighth in usage rate (18.5), making the most of his opportunities to also top the team in Offensive Win Shares—and that was forward OG Anunoby. He also was the best Knicks player in the postseason at not turning the ball over. Seriously, this isn’t rocket science even though many people act like it is. Anunoby posted 20.1 ppg, 6.3 rpg, 1.6 apg, 1.5 spg, and 1.1 bpg in 17 playoff games and should have won this vote in a waltz.

2026 NBA DPOY: Victor Wembanyama, C, San Antonio (original); Scottie Barnes, PF, Toronto (revised)

Shockingly enough, the winner of the DPOY vote—Spurs center Victor Wembanyama—also topped the league in Defensive Win Shares (5.0), so we start there to see if anyone within screaming distance of that mark has a case to make in toppling him from his high perch. Toronto Raptors power forward Scottie Barnes (4.5) and Detroit Pistons small forward Ausar Thompson (4.1) are really the only other people to consider for this award. Did they do enough for their teams to make more impact than Wemby?!

Well, the Raptors had the slimmest margin for error in the regular season, as Detroit and San Antonio both won at least 60 games. Meanwhile, Toronto posted a 46-36 record, finishing fifth overall in the East. Without Barnes’ efforts—5.6 defensive rebounds per game, 1.5 bpg, and 1.4 spg—his team would have been much lower in the conference pecking order. We suspect the Raptors still would have made the postseason, but the closest teammate to Barnes in sabermetric value finished with just 3.1 DWS. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, San Antonio had two additional players with at least 3.0 DWS, and Detroit also had two guys with at least 3.6 DWS in addition to Thompson. Thus Barnes was carrying a lot of water for Toronto, defensively, and we will give him this award instead. He did finish fifth in the DPOY voting, so we’re not far off there; the voters still just have no ability to contextualize data using critical-thinking skills. It’s a sad state of commentary on the dummying down of society these days, but hey … target audience, yo.

Sidebar: Barnes adds this hardware to his 2022 ROTY trophy, while we realize this is the second time we have “stripped” Wemby of a voted accolade. We like the guy a lot, for sure, and we have confidence he will win his fare share of hardware going forward in a stellar career. As we point out often, factually, these things have a strange way of equalizing themselves out in the end.