How the Knicks Built a Championship on Grit, Not Star Power

The article traces the unlikely path of John Starks, now 60, as a model for the 2025/26 New York Knicks, who won the NBA title without a single player receiving even one MVP vote. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Starks took a winding route to the pros, with only one year of high school basketball, two high school games, and dismissals from two colleges, one tied to a dorm burglary and another to marijuana use. He later worked as a supermarket cashier for $3.35 an hour while training every day, including practicing his vertical leap in the store.

Starks eventually surfaced at a nearby junior college after being spotted by an assistant coach, then became a late, unlikely college contributor. A defining moment came on December 13, 1986, the day he got married to Jackie and was also summoned to a road game in Kansas, 135 kilometers away. After getting his bride’s blessing, he rushed to the arena, changed from tuxedo to uniform, and scored 22 points despite arriving at halftime. That performance earned him a chance at Oklahoma State and, after going undrafted and spending time with the Golden State Warriors and minor leagues, brought him closer to the NBA.

His Knicks break came in 1990, when he tried out for New York and injured his knee after attempting to dunk on Patrick Ewing. Because league rules prevented the team from cutting an injured player before the end of December, the Knicks kept him, and Starks later called Ewing “the saving grace” of his career. He became one of the franchise’s defining players of the 1990s, known for his intensity in playoff battles with Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and for helping lead New York to the Finals alongside Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason.

The piece argues that the current champions follow that same template: players who arrived by hard routes, carried doubts, and then thrived without fear because they had already exceeded expectations. It highlights Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, Mitchell Robinson, OG Anunoby, Landry Shamet, and Jose Alvarado as examples of a roster built on toughness rather than classic superstars. In that sense, the Knicks are presented as a team of “John Starkses,” a group of fighters whose whole is greater than the sum of their parts.