photo by: AP Photo/Michael Conroy

Indiana Pacers forward Johnny Furphy (12) drives to the basket against Cleveland Cavaliers guard Craig Porter Jr. (9) and center Tristan Thompson in the second half of Game 4 in the Eastern Conference semifinals of the NBA basketball playoffs in Indianapolis, Sunday, May 11, 2025.

One of the former Kansas men’s basketball players drafted in 2024 will have the chance to advance to the NBA Finals in his first professional season.

The Indiana Pacers, who acquired Johnny Furphy No. 35 overall via a trade with the San Antonio Spurs, and the New York Knicks, who got Kevin McCullar Jr. at No. 56 by trading with the Phoenix Suns, will meet in the Eastern Conference Finals beginning on Wednesday.

The Pacers needed just five games to take down the top-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers in the conference semifinals, while the Knicks advanced past Boston in six following an injury to Celtics star Jayson Tatum.

It hasn’t been long since a Jayhawk won a ring — Svi Mykhailiuk got one as a member of the Celtics just last season — but this year’s postseason runs have certainly been many years in the making for Furphy and McCullar’s respective franchises. The Pacers have never won an NBA title and their one and only trip to the Finals was in 2000. That’s actually more recent than the Knicks’ last trip, which was in 1999, although New York actually won the title in 1970 and 1973.

Furphy or McCullar could have the unexpected privilege of taking part in a title-winning team as rookies, just like former KU national champion Christian Braun did with the Denver Nuggets in 2023.

Whoever wins the seven-game series between these teams will face the winner of the Western Conference Finals, which includes the Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City Thunder, two more teams that have not previously won titles. The Thunder knocked out Braun and the Nuggets with a blowout 125-93 victory in a decisive Game 7 on Sunday.

Granted, Braun was a far more significant contributor to Denver’s 2022-23 title run — he was a first-round pick and consistent part of the rotation — than either Furphy or McCullar has been this season for their respective teams.

Furphy, who fell to the Pacers after an unexpected draft-day slide that Bill Self called at the time “a very tough and humbling night” on which “the assurance that he and his representation had been told that he would be drafted didn’t turn out that way,” has shone at times for the Pacers.

He played in 50 games for Indiana during the regular season and averaged 2.1 points and 1.4 rebounds. In his final two regular-season games, Furphy saw his most extensive playing time, first with 17 points and six rebounds on 60% shooting (and a posterizing dunk over Orlando’s Goga Bitadze), then with 15 points, nine rebounds and five assists in an overtime victory over Cleveland.

Furphy also frequently made the most of his trips to the Indiana Mad Ants of the NBA G League over the course of the winter and spring. In 10 games with the Mad Ants, he averaged 14.3 points and 9.6 rebounds, including a game-high 29 points in a three-point loss to the Windy City Bulls on March 24; he also joined the G League team for playoff games on April 1 and April 3 and acquitted himself well. (Those were the team’s last games ever as the Mad Ants before rebranding to the Noblesville Boom.)

Furphy returned to the NBA roster for that impressive late-season stretch and since then has played 21 combined minutes in five playoff appearances at the end of the Pacers’ bench.

McCullar took much longer to begin his rookie season because he was continuing to deal with the aftereffects of the bone bruise to his knee that derailed his final campaign at Kansas (the 2023-24 season in which he missed the NCAA Tournament). He did not debut for the G League’s Westchester Knicks until Jan. 30, more than a calendar year after he first started battling the knee issue. In that first appearance, he scored 10 points on 4-for-9 shooting.

The longtime college standout was a bit erratic in his first six weeks or so playing for Westchester, but in late March he attracted plenty of attention for repeating a feat he had once accomplished at KU: back-to-back triple-doubles. He posted 20 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists and then 23 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists in consecutive games against the College Park Skyhawks.

Four days later, on March 25, he made his long-awaited NBA debut and scored his first NBA points, a hard-won bucket in the post, against the Dallas Mavericks.

He went on to appear in three more G League contests, including one 21-point showing in a playoff game, and three NBA games. On April 13 he played 22 minutes against Jalen Wilson and the Brooklyn Nets, scoring four points and grabbing eight boards as Wilson had 18 points and four rebounds in 38 minutes; the Knicks came away with the victory.

McCullar has not played in the postseason.

Furphy was an unexpected one-and-done Jayhawk after breaking out early in conference play as a freshman for the 2023-24 KU team. McCullar spent two seasons in Lawrence after the first three of his career at Texas Tech.

photo by: Westchester Knicks

Westchester Knicks guard Kevin McCullar Jr. shoots a free throw in a game against the Long Island Nets on Tuesday, March 11, 2025, in White Plains, N.Y.