This is the unpredictable matchup everyone saw coming.The New York Knicks versus the Cleveland Cavaliers. A million and one people called it. And at the same time, no one did.From the beginning of the NBA season, these two squads seemed destined for a meeting in the Eastern Conference finals. One team was coming off a 64-win campaign. The other had just fired its coach because a conference finals appearance in 2025 could not satiate the organization’s grander ambitions. The Cavs and Knicks were on a march toward each other, the former entering this season as the Vegas favorites to win the East and the latter ranked just barely behind.Now, they are there, set to tip off the conference finals Tuesday. And yet, none of how either team arrived at this moment seems predetermined. The Knicks and Cavaliers may have been on a crash course, but the road to inevitability was as circuitous as a Jalen Brunson drive to the hoop.Cleveland was supposed to be here — until it was not. The franchise began 2025-26 insisting that this season would be a slower build than the previous one, when the Cavaliers finished with the top record in the conference and flamed out in the second round to the Indiana Pacers.But warnings aside, their start was too slow, the performances too wonky. They searched for a fifth guy, a small forward who could make sense alongside their quartet of All-Stars. De’Andre Hunder wasn’t him. By midseason, Hunter was gone, traded to the Sacramento Kings for more ballhandling and help on the perimeter: a replacement for Lonzo Ball, who didn’t work out either.Cleveland veered so off course that it renovated its core. Darius Garland, a two-time All-Star, couldn’t stay healthy, so the Cavs flipped him for the decade-older James Harden. The move wasn’t just about Harden’s durability, which Cleveland believed would help it more in the postseason. It was also an admission that the foursome of Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen may not work to perfection — and, if it did not, Harden’s contract would give the front office more flexibility to make significant changes in future years.The Cavs were readying for a playoff run while also preparing for the worst. But a team that has played with fire is yet to burn itself.The Cavaliers almost lost to the No. 5 seed Toronto Raptors in the first round but fended them off in Game 7 to move on to the top-seeded Detroit Pistons. They almost fell to Detroit, dropping the first couple of games of the series, but lit it up in another Game 7.They had one day off between their first- and second-round series. They have only one day off between the Pistons series and the conference finals.The Knicks, in turn, have not played in more than a week — because they have rolled over anyone in front of them. New York, like Cleveland, is a master of the zigzag.Unlike the Cavs, who were barely above .500 as late as mid-January, the Knicks’ troubles never sent them plummeting down the standings. Theirs were more existential. After the coaching change, the new man at the helm, Mike Brown, wanted to implement a fresh offense. The team did not take to it cleanly. Karl-Anthony Towns spent much of the season claiming he could not get “comfortable.” By winter, Brown had edited or scrapped many of the offensive actions he hoped would become seamless. The Knicks, stylistically, were actually quite similar to the team from 2024-25.They were inconsistent. On one night, they would destroy the Denver Nuggets. On another, they would mess around too much and almost lose to the Brooklyn Nets.By the time the spring rolled around, the believers weren’t as prominent as they were at the beginning of the season. The Pistons waxed the Knicks all three times they played during the regular season. Jayson Tatum was fully recovered from a ruptured Achilles and was supposed to put the Boston Celtics, who had outplayed expectations, over the top. Boston was the new favorite.Then came the first three games of the playoffs, when the Knicks looked bamboozled and fell down 2-1 to the less-talented Atlanta Hawks. The two losses served as a wake-up call. All of a sudden, the team that was supposed to throttle through the East, or at least the first two rounds of the playoffs, emerged.Brown reinvigorated the offense, putting the ball in Towns’ hands more and splicing in many of the actions from autumn that had faded away over the previous five months. Brunson could receive the ball on the move and attack. OG Anunoby could slice defenses apart with cuts. Since the changes, the Knicks have won seven consecutive games by a combined 185 points, a playoff record.They swept the Philadelphia 76ers in Round 2, routing them by 30 points in Game 4. The Cavs polished off the Pistons in a similar fashion, though it took them longer to get there — a 31-point demolition of Detroit in Game 7.It’s only natural that they would both win in blowouts. Their paths to the conference finals were never in doubt.