Mostly cause of ESPN. They have a weird monopoly over most folks understanding of what's good and what isn't. Most of their NBA analysts would hardly recognize any team as good outside of the Heat. I bet their producers collectively shyt their pants when the Heat went down to the Pacers because they'd have to cover another team. They like WWE style headlines and sometimes they say shyt, Stephen A and Skip, to rile up fanbases. A riled up Knick fanbase is good for them. An overconfident Nets fanbase is good for them.
Any person that says:
1. A 22-44 team that added Joe "Empty Stats" Johnson will be better than a 36-30 team who lost their star and switched coaches and PG's mid season because of Joe Johnson after one off season is being obtuse.
2. Saying the Knicks team are terrible or had a bad season because of a first round exit to the eventual champs is just being plain stupid. The Knicks would've most likely gotten out of the first round against everyone except the Heat and Celts. They beat the Heat the same amount of times as OKC did and those were the two series that the Heat were playing their best from top to bottom.
3. Melo not being top 10 is just stupid. I'm not even arguing that point. His playoff woes though are even explainable. He's mostly been on 6-8 seeded teams. Twice the nuggets were in the top 3 (meaning the whole team was good) and one of those times they went to the WCF and the other time they got upset. Melo's always performed in the playoffs regardless.

@ Love being better than Melo. He's as athletic as a desk from Ikea and he gets garbage points AKA put ins and wide open looks. He ain't creating shots. You don't give the ball to him when you need points.