New York Knicks Trivia
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70 free New York Knicks trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Knicks trivia quiz runs through eight decades of New York basketball: the 1946 founding at Madison Square Garden, Joe Lapchick's early Finals teams, the Red Holzman championship years with Willis Reed, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley and Earl Monroe, the Ewing-Starks-Oakley wars with the Bulls, Pacers and Heat, Linsanity, Carmelo's 62, and the Jalen Brunson team that finally ended the drought in 2026. There are questions on the players, the coaches, the trades and the rivalries, plus a few on the uniforms, the logos, the retired numbers and the broadcasters who called it all. Easy ones for anyone who watched a game at the Garden, hard ones for the fans who remember who Trent Tucker was. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer has been checked against a reliable source.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which arena did the Knicks move into in 1968?
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, the fourth arena of that name, was built over Penn Station; the outcry at losing the old station building led New York to create its Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Q 02The Knicks and which team are the NBA's only charter franchises still in their original cities?
Boston Celtics
Boston Celtics. Both clubs date from the league's first season in 1946; the third surviving charter team, the Warriors, started out in Philadelphia before moving west.
Q 03The 'Knickerbocker' name traces back to a pen name used by which American writer?
Washington Irving
Washington Irving published his 1809 satire A History of New York as 'Diedrich Knickerbocker', and the name came to mean a descendant of the city's Dutch settlers, then any New Yorker.
Q 04Which big man joined the Knicks in July 2010 for about $100 million over five years?
Amar'e Stoudemire
Amar'e Stoudemire left Phoenix after eight seasons, and in his first year in New York the Knicks reached the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
Q 05The Knicks played the first game in BAA history on November 1, 1946, against which team?
Toronto Huskies
Toronto Huskies. To sell the league's first game, the club let in free any fan taller than its tallest player, 6-foot-8 George Nostrand; the Knicks won 68-66.
Q 06Which Knicks executive fronts a blues-rock band that has opened for the Eagles?
James Dolan
James Dolan sings with JD & the Straight Shot; the band and the Eagles shared a manager, who was also Dolan's business partner.
Q 07Which St. John's coach took over the Knicks in 1947 and led them to three straight NBA Finals?
Joe Lapchick
Joe Lapchick was the Knicks' choice from the start, but he wanted one more season at St. John's first, so Neil Cohalan coached the team's opening year as a stand-in.
Q 08Which 5-foot-7 guard, signed in 1947, became the first non-white player in the BAA?
Wataru Misaka
Wataru Misaka, a Japanese American from Utah, played just three games before the Knicks cut him; he turned down the Harlem Globetrotters and went home to finish an engineering degree.
Q 09Which former Globetrotter nicknamed 'Sweetwater' joined the Knicks in 1950 as one of the NBA's first Black players?
Nat Clifton
Nat Clifton was driving a taxi in Chicago in his final years, long after his pioneering career; the Basketball Hall of Fame inducted him in 2014, 24 years after his death.
Q 10Wilt Chamberlain scored his record 100 points against the Knicks in 1962 in which town?
Hershey, Pennsylvania
Hershey, Pennsylvania, was an occasional second home for the Philadelphia Warriors; that night Chamberlain, a famously poor foul shooter, made 28 of his 32 free throws.
Q 11Which Duke star did the Knicks draft third overall in 2019?
RJ Barrett
RJ Barrett went two picks after his Duke teammate Zion Williamson: the Knicks had the NBA's worst record that season but slipped to third in the lottery.
Q 12Which coach's 613 victories with the Knicks are honored by a retired 'number' in the rafters?
Red Holzman
Red Holzman's 613 wins hang in the rafters among the retired numbers; two decades before coaching the Knicks to a title he beat them for one, as a guard on Rochester's 1951 champions.
Q 13Which team broke the 1969-70 Knicks' single-season record 18-game winning streak a year later?
Milwaukee Bucks
Q 21Which Knicks forward scored 60 points on Christmas Day 1984, only for his team to lose?
Bernard King
Bernard King had 40 by halftime, but the Nets won 120-114; he took the scoring title that season and wrecked his knee three months after the game.
Q 22Which commissioner drew the Knicks' winning envelope in the 1985 lottery?
David Stern
David Stern pulled the envelopes on live television; theorists claim the Knicks' had been chilled so that he could pick it out by touch, since the prize was center Patrick Ewing.
Q 23Knicks great Patrick Ewing won a national title at which college, where he later coached?
Georgetown
Georgetown. Ewing won the 1984 title there, scored 23,665 points as a Knick, then went back to coach the Hoyas for six seasons until they fired him in 2023.
Milwaukee Bucks. They won 20 in a row in 1970-71 with a center still known as Lew Alcindor, then took the title the Knicks had won a year earlier.
Q 14Which team did the Knicks beat in Game 7 of the 1970 Finals after their injured captain limped onto the court?
Los Angeles Lakers
Los Angeles Lakers. The captain had torn a thigh muscle in Game 5, made the Knicks' first two shots of Game 7 and never scored again as New York won 113-99.
Q 15Which Knicks guard had 36 points and 19 assists in Game 7 of the 1970 Finals?
Walt Frazier
Walt Frazier dominated, yet the game goes by his captain's name: the injured center limped out, made the Knicks' first two shots and never scored again.
Q 16Which actor's on-screen fedora inspired the 'Clyde' nickname of the Knicks' Hall of Fame point guard?
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty played the outlaw Clyde Barrow in 1967's Bonnie and Clyde, and a rookie's similar fedora earned him the name; by 1973 Puma had put it on a sneaker, the Clyde.
Q 17Knicks forward Bill Bradley later spent 18 years as a United States senator representing which state?
New Jersey
New Jersey sent Bradley to the Senate three times from 1978; the Princeton star and Rhodes Scholar then ran for president in 2000, losing the Democratic nomination to Al Gore.
Q 18Which guard nicknamed 'The Pearl' arrived from Baltimore in 1971 and formed the 'Rolls-Royce backcourt'?
Earl Monroe
Earl Monroe's Bullets had knocked the Knicks out of the 1971 playoffs; months later New York sent Mike Riordan, Dave Stallworth and cash to Baltimore to bring him to New York.
Q 19Which forward on the Knicks' 1970s title teams had earlier pitched two seasons for the Chicago White Sox?
Dave DeBusschere
Dave DeBusschere threw a shutout against Cleveland in 1963 before giving up baseball; at 24 he was also the Pistons' player-coach, the youngest head coach the NBA has had.
Q 20Which Hall of Fame coach won two championship rings as a Knicks forward in the early 1970s?
Phil Jackson
Phil Jackson missed the whole 1969-70 title season after spinal fusion surgery, then was a top reserve for the 1973 champions; he came back as team president in 2014 and the Knicks went 80-166.
Q 24NBC broke into Game 5 of the Knicks' 1994 Finals to show which live event?
O. J. Simpson's Bronco chase
O. J. Simpson's Bronco chase shared the screen with the game on most NBC stations, with host Bob Costas passing viewers back and forth between courtside and the news desk.
Q 25Which point guard, drafted in 1987, won Rookie of the Year for the Knicks?
Mark Jackson
Mark Jackson, a Brooklyn schoolboy star who stayed home at St. John's, was still available at the 18th pick; he then handed out 868 assists, the most by an NBA rookie to that point.
Q 26Rick Pitino stunned New York in 1989 by leaving the Knicks to coach which college?
Kentucky
Kentucky was starting three years of NCAA probation when Pitino took the job; by 1993 he had it back in the Final Four, and in 1996 it won the national title.
Q 27Which coach left NBC's broadcast booth in 1991 to take over the Knicks?
Pat Riley
Pat Riley had spent one season as an NBC commentator after leaving the Lakers; his rough, defense-first Knicks won 51 games in his first year, twelve more than the season before.
Q 28John Starks' famous 1993 left-handed 'Dunk' came over Horace Grant and which Bulls teammate?
Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan was the second defender at the rim in Game 2 of the 1993 conference finals; the win put the Knicks up 2-0, and Jordan's Bulls answered by taking the next four games.
Q 29Who beat the Knicks in seven games in the 1994 NBA Finals?
Houston Rockets
Houston Rockets. Hakeem Olajuwon got a hand to John Starks' last-second shot for the title in Game 6, and Starks then missed 16 of his 18 attempts in Game 7.
Q 30John Starks' 217 three-pointers in 1994-95 topped a record set in 1969 by Louie Dampier of which league?
The ABA
The ABA used a three-point line from its first season, a dozen years before the NBA adopted one, and Dampier's 199 lasted until Starks became the first player to make 200.