NEW YORK — By now, the story of the ‘Nova Knicks is almost allegorical. Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges and Jalen Brunson played together in college at Villanova and then reunited in New York. Now, the Knicks are in the NBA Finals, and the trio is the backbone of a team two wins away from the franchise’s first title in 53 years.The tale might be a little saccharine if it weren’t important. There are many reasons the Knicks have gone on a dominant playoff run this spring, but their history together surely makes the list. Building a champion is a work of alchemy, and chemistry matters.The best teams are not just talented but also intuitively linked. Relationships forged over time can weld teams together. In a sport that has grown increasingly complex in its offenses and defenses, with wrinkles upon wrinkles like a chubby newborn baby, teams need continuity and cohesion to thrive.“I think you just get a familiarity and a certain comfort level with those guys,” Hart said of what makes the Knicks click. “All of them can go out there and make plays, especially end of shot clock. … I think it’s more so the trust that’s built, and you know where everyone likes the ball and plays for them to execute.”The cohesion of these Knicks has been on display as they hold a 2-1 lead over the San Antonio Spurs in the finals. They have erased double-digit deficits in all three games and eked out tight wins in two of them. While the Spurs have struggled to communicate in key moments, such as Victor Wembanyama’s ill-fated pass to an unprepared Steph Castle at the end of Game 2, the Knicks seem to always be on the same — and the right — page.In a series between a well-oiled team that has played much better than the sum of its parts and a roster of mostly precocious and uber-talented neophytes, that advantage in cohesiveness could matter. The NBA, after a decade-long superteam era, seems to have reverted to a time when continuity is a characteristic for championships.Since 2021, each title winner has had a core of players who have spent years together. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez won a title after three years together in Milwaukee. The Warriors had already won three rings before they beat the Boston Celtics in the 2022 finals. Aaron Gordon, Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokić were in their third season together when the Denver Nuggets triumphed in 2023. Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum had spent nearly their whole careers side by side on the way to a 2024 championship, and the Oklahoma City Thunder grew up together before breaking through last season.Those teams added key players in their title campaigns, but they were complements to long-standing cores. Just as the new CBA and changing of the guard in the league seem to have produced an era of parity, they also seem to have washed out the ability to microwave a new champion over one offseason.“The longer you can keep a group together, I think that’s better,” Knicks head coach Mike Brown said. “And it’s kind of always been that to a certain degree. You know, way, way back, the Lakers, they had Karl Malone, I think Gary Payton and a couple other superstars that they threw together one year, and it was hard. Not to say that it can’t be done. I’m sure it’s been done. But the longer the group can stay together, I feel the better chance they have.”The Knicks are a testament to that. They did not succeed in their first year together. Instead, it took a gradual progression.New York built this roster slowly, layering key players together with one transaction after another. While the Knicks added Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns before the 2024-25 season, they did not gel immediately. They made it to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in a quarter-century, but melted against the Indiana Pacers. They blew a 14-point lead with three minutes left in Game 1 and lost the series.The defeat was emblematic of their occasional late-game wobbles last season. Although Brunson won the NBA’s Clutch Player of the Year award, the Knicks were just 12th in the league in net rating in clutch moments (defined as a five-point difference in the last five minutes of the game). This season, the Knicks owned the third-best net rating in clutch time and were nearly 17 points-per-100-possessions better than the year prior.It was emblematic of how they have played this spring. While they have made a habit of blowing out the Hawks, 76ers and Cavaliers, they have also won close games. Their Game 1 win over the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals was a photo negative of the Pacers’ debacle. A few days later, Bridges admitted that the travails of their first season together provided much-needed experience.“For sure, having another year together builds chemistry, builds just every day learning how to play off each other,” he said. “Yeah, that means a lot. It’s a big time for us. Just going through the experience last year — we played a lot of games, 82-plus — and losing in the Eastern Conference finals and learning a lot of things about each other definitely helps.”In San Antonio, the Knicks have found a perfect foil. The Spurs are young and inexperienced. They have scant time in the NBA at all, let alone together. Victor Wembanyama, just 22, is the towering leviathan who threatens to dominate the entire league for the next decade. But he had no playoff experience entering this season.Last spring, Steph Castle was playing empty-calorie games in March as the Spurs played out a losing season, while Dylan Harper was one-and-done in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament as an 11-seed. De’Aaron Fox is their only rotation player in the finals older than 26 and averaging more than 10 minutes per game.That makes them an anomaly. Every champion since 2000 has won at least a round together in the two years before it won its title or added future Hall of Famers in the preceding offseason to speed up the process. The Spurs have grown organically. They did not make the playoffs last year or the year before. They own no calluses imprinted from playoff failure. Even the Thunder had won a series together before they won the title in 2025.History has not typically been kind to those teams that try to bend time to their will. The 1995 Orlando Magic drafted Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee Hardaway in successive years and made a finals run just three years after O’Neal joined the team; they were swept by the Rockets.The 2007 Cavaliers made the finals four years after they took LeBron James No. 1; they were swept by the Spurs. The 2012 Thunder put together three future Hall of Famers; they lost to the Heat in five.But the Spurs have taken pains to accelerate their future and to build chemistry where none existed. Their youth is a cohesive agent. They spend time together off the court. They grab dinner and game together.“I feel like those kind of events and things like that make up for the years that we weren’t together or the years that we haven’t had,” Harper said. “So, the biggest thing, I feel like, is chemistry when you get in a building like this, when you get in an environment like this. I feel like we have the most chemistry and camaraderie, and togetherness as anyone else.”The rest of the series will determine if that is true. So far, the finals have been decided by the moments in which intuition has overwhelmed all else. The late-game blowout in San Antonio in Game 2. The many possessions late in the shot clock in which the Knicks have thrived. The tug and snap of a New York offense that tries to stretch the Spurs out as far as they can go. The 7-4 wonder who has increasingly found his footing with every night he has taken the floor.If the Knicks win their first title together, it will be on the strength of a team that has spent years finding its flow. The Spurs hope to prove they are the exception that can bypass history.