The Knicks have not won a title since 1973. The man who helped them get the last one is now telling a national late-night audience that the 2026 group looks an awful lot like his.
Walt "Clyde" Frazier appeared on Tuesday's episode of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, just hours after Jalen Brunson and the Knicks opened their second-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers with a comprehensive Game 1 win at Madison Square Garden. Frazier, who has been the team's broadcast voice for decades and remains a fixture courtside, used the appearance to draw a direct line between the current roster and the championship team he led alongside Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere, Willis Reed and Dick Barnett.
The seven-time All-Star did not hide his enthusiasm.
"I'm mesmerized by the way the team is playing," Frazier said.
The comparison to his own roster is a meaningful one in New York basketball circles, where Frazier's 1972-73 title team is still the gold standard for unselfishness and shared accountability. He laid out the parallel in detail.
"They remind me of my team. My team personified team, you couldn't mention Frazier without (Bill) Bradley, without (Dave) DeBusschere, without (Willis) Reed, without (Dick) Barnett. I see similarities to this team, so they're starting to do that. Their camaraderie, their teamwork, they like each other, it's manifested on the court."
That sentiment has been echoed inside the Knicks locker room for much of the season. Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges have repeatedly framed their chemistry as the team's defining trait, and the Game 1 evisceration of the 76ers — Brunson scored 35 points in a 39-point blowout — was held up as the most complete demonstration of that identity to date.
Frazier's appearance also doubled as a soft passing of the torch. The current generation of Knicks fans grew up hearing Frazier's "swishing and dishing" rhetoric on television without having seen the championships he won as a player. The 1972-73 team is now five decades and counting in the rearview mirror, and the gap has become part of the franchise's identity.
That is what made his closing line on the Fallon couch so loaded.
"Hopefully we'll see another championship," Frazier said.
The Knicks' path is still steep. The 76ers are likely to get a healthier Joel Embiid as the series goes on, and the winner of the New York-Philadelphia series almost certainly faces either the Detroit Pistons or the Cleveland Cavaliers in the conference finals. On the other side of the bracket, the Oklahoma City Thunder are -odds favourites to win the title.
But the run to a 2-seed in the East, the 51-point closeout of the Hawks in the first round, and a 39-point Game 1 statement against Philadelphia have created a level of belief in New York that has not existed in recent memory. Brunson was photographed greeting Frazier with a high-five at the Garden after Game 1 — the franchise's past and present sharing the same baseline.
Frazier, for his part, sounded like a man who has been waiting a long time to make the comparison out loud.
