Remember 1999? The New York Knicks’ first NBA Finals berth since the turn of the millennium prompts the question.The last time the Knicks represented the Eastern Conference for the NBA championship, Google was literally a few months old. The 11-installment “Fast & Furious” movie franchise was two years away from its first release. Tennis legend Serena Williams basked in the glow of winning her first Grand Slam, the U.S. Open. Eminem dropped his first major-label album, as “The Slim Shady LP” went multiplatinum. The Harry Potter books were up into the third of the series, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” The first iPhone wasn’t to be released until 2007.For New Yorkers, the last Checker cab sold at the end of the year for six figures. And for New York basketball fans, some guy named Michael Jordan, whom many loved to hate every trip in and outside of Madison Square Garden, was in the middle of his second NBA retirement — only to come back two years later and add to his basketball legacy, leaving the greater Chicago area for an address closer to the nation’s capital.How much has changed in the NBA since then? Plenty!After sweeping the Cavaliers on Monday, the Knicks are looking to recapture the feeling they had 27 years ago. They’re now four wins away from securing their first NBA championship since 1973 — almost 19,400 days ago — and adding to their collection and rich history, one decorated with champions (Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe) and Hall of Fame hoopers who get enduring love in New York (Patrick Ewing, Carmelo Anthony).The 2025-26 Knicks, led by Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, have already enjoyed one of the strongest playoff runs in recent memory, winning 10 consecutive games by a total of 262 points, but let’s examine how the NBA has changed in the near three decades since New York’s last finals run.Brunson magicLike this year’s Knicks, the 1999 team had a Brunson on the roster. Jalen’s father, Rick, was a reserve guard. The elder Brunson was in his second NBA season for the Knicks during this finals run and played sporadic minutes during the 1999 playoffs.In the years since, Jalen has blossomed into one of the league’s best guards and, arguably, one of the Knicks’ best players ever. Brunson already is third in Knicks history in playoff points scored, trailing only Ewing (2,787) and Frazier (1,927). Since signing with the Knicks in 2022, Brunson’s 1,618 playoff points are 152 more than second-place Nikola Jokić.The Brunsons join the Bryants (Joe and Kobe), Waltons (Bill and Luke) and Bibbys (Henry and Mike) among father-son duos to make an NBA Finals appearance in their careers.Where were the GOATs?In 1999, as Jordan was in the second of his three retirements, Kobe Bryant was in the early stages of his Hall of Fame career, and LeBron James was still years away from being drafted into the NBA.Jordan didn’t return to the NBA hardwood until 2001 before officially calling it a career in 2003. When the six-time champion and NBA Finals MVP hung up his shoes, he finished trailing only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone for the most points in league history. For the playoffs, Jordan scored 1,176 points in the finals. Frazier holds the Knicks team record with 321 such points.Bryant, who earned his first All-NBA nod in 1999, was poised to begin a run for what remains the league’s most recent three-peat with Shaquille O’Neal. The basketball world never saw him take on the Knicks in the NBA Finals, but it almost happened in 2000, when the Indiana Pacers beat the Knicks in the Eastern Conference finals. Eleven different East teams have won the conference since.James was only 14 years old in 1999, preparing to make his freshman debut for St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio. On Dec. 3 of that year, he scored 15 points and grabbed eight rebounds against Cuyahoga Hills. Now with 23 NBA seasons to his resume, James has made 10 NBA Finals appearances, including eight in a row from 2011 to 2018.Today’s game is very differentSince Stephen Curry was drafted into the NBA in 2009, he has used the 3-pointer to change basketball. The sport’s relationship with long-range shooting has evolved in the decades since being introduced, and the duration of New York’s finals drought provides a glimpse into that.During the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season, NBA teams averaged 4.8 3-point makes and 13.2 3-point attempts per game. Those figures jumped to 13.3 and 37.0, respectively, for the just completed regular season. For Curry’s career, he averages four made triples and 9.4 attempts per game. At the end of the 1998-99 season, Reggie Miller was the NBA’s all-time leader in made 3s, with 1,702. Stephen Curry entered the league a decade later and has since knocked down an NBA-record 4,248 triples.The 3-pointer has been a huge reason for New York’s return to contender status, as evidenced by its franchise-record 1,168 made 3s during the regular season.Also in 1999, NBA teams had an average pace of 88.9 possessions per 48 minutes, the league’s lowest single-season mark since it started tracking possessions in 1973-74. This season, the league’s average mark was 99.4. Its average figure hasn’t dipped below that mark since 2018.It’s a big-money leagueIn 1999, league owners and players argued over salaries as the owners sought a modified pay scale. Almost three decades later, money around the NBA has absolutely ballooned to gargantuan proportions.The league’s average salary cap by team for the 1998-99 season was $30 million, compared to $154.7 million for this season. In 1999, Ewing, then in his second-to-last season with the Knicks, made $18.5 million in salary. This season, Curry led all players with a $59.6 million salary. Ewing’s salary in 1999 would’ve finished right behind 99th-ranked Malik Monk this season.In 1999, Forbes listed the Knicks as the NBA’s most valuable team, at $334 million. This season, the Golden State Warriors, sitting at $11 billion, topped that list. No NBA team is currently worth less than $3.5 billion (Memphis Grizzlies).The dunk contest returned and wentDue to the aforementioned lockout, the NBA did without its All-Star Game, so there was no dunk contest that year. Of course, it returned in a big way in 2000, when Vince Carter put on the best display in dunk contest history with Tracy McGrady, Steve Francis, Larry Hughes, Ricky Davis and Jerry Stackhouse.In the years since, the likes of Dwight Howard, Desmond Mason, Jason Richardson, Zach LaVine and Aaron Gordon have shown us some of the best dunks we’ve ever seen, but the event’s popularity has dwindled in recent years, whether because participants are running out of dunks or big names fear embarrassment. Since 2000, there has been only one dunk contest featuring multiple contestants who were All-Stars that same year (2014, John Wall, Damian Lillard, Paul George). In that time, Wall and Dwight Howard (2008) are the only dunk contest winners to be an All-Star in the same year they competed.Basketball keeps going globalThe Dream Team dominating the 1992 Olympics helped pave the way for the NBA to become a global product, and that trend has continued in the decades since.By 1999, the NBA had already welcomed the likes of Arvydas Sabonis, Toni Kukoč and Dirk Nowitzki, although Nowkitzki, at that point, was still years away from becoming the hall of fame talent we recognized. That year, the NBA had 27 international players on rosters who had been drafted in first rounds. This season, that figure grew to 73, highlighted by the likes of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Victor Wembanyama.Since the 2017-18 season, the NBA hasn’t had an American-born MVP since James Harden took home the honor, meaning the league has had an international MVP for eight consecutive seasons (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander twice, Nikola Jokic three times, Giannis Antetokounmpo twice, Joel Embiid in 2022-23). In the league’s first 63 seasons, there were four non-American MVP winners (Steve Nash twice, Hakeem Olajuwon in 1993-94, Dirk Nowitzki in 2006-07).Points for parityIn recent years, the NBA has done away with dynasties and replaced them with parity so teams of any market can have a shot at competing so long as they do a sound job of building their rosters, coaching staffs and front offices.Through 1999, the league had 16 champions in 52 years, including two titles by the Knicks (1970, 1973). Since then, a dozen champions have been crowned in under three decades, including a run of no repeat champions dating back to the 2017-18 Golden State Warriors, marking the NBA’s longest such streak since the 1970s. Now, the Knicks, who haven’t won the NBA title since the championship trophy was named after former Boston Celtics owner Walter A. Brown, seek to snap the league’s fifth-longest championship drought (53 seasons).