If anyone thought this season that the New York Knicks would not end a long drought of not winning the NBA championship, then they were dead wrong. The New York Knicks would win their first championship in 53 years (1973) in San Antonio 94-90, on Saturday night at Frost Bank Arena.
The Knicks were lead by Jalen Brunson with 45 points, whom became the Finals MVP.
It wasn’t a record 29-point comeback like New York pulled off in Game 4 but rather a methodical walking down of the Spurs, outlasting San Antonio as the Knicks had every playoff opponent. The Spurs led 83-73 with 8:21 left Saturday night. Then the Knicks went to work.
A team full of players who had been given up on and a coach who many believed couldn’t put it together turned in one of the most gratifying victories in recent NBA memory.
“I couldn’t believe it, that was the first thing,” Knicks head coach Mike Brown said. “It was surreal. I couldn’t believe that it was happening. And I am so tired. I mean, I’m gassed. And you know, just this stuff is harder than what you think. And you know, you have to have great assistants. You have to have great players, but I was gassed.”
Many experts believed that Knicks owner James Dolan, president of basketball operations Leon Rose, and senior president Quentin Dolan made a bad mistake hiring Brown this past offseason after firing Tom Thiodeau.
“I felt that I had great chemistry with [Knicks president] Leon Rose and [senior vice president] Quentin Dolan and [team owner] Mr. [James] Dolan, when I met with him,” Brown continued. “But you never know. You try not to guess, because if you guess, it could drive you crazy because you don’t really have the answer. I was pretty nonchalant about it as time went on. I just let it unfold the way it unfolded.”
Brunson, Josh Hart, and Mikal Bridges all graduated from Villanova and were expecting to be together this off season to help this team not just win the NBA Cup but also the entire championship. They were known as the “Nova Knicks” and proud of how they worked hard together.
“I have no words,” Brunson said during the on-court celebration. “It’s everything I ever dreamed of.”
Dylan Harper had 25 for the Spurs and Victor Wembanayama had 19 points, 14 rebounds, and 5 blocked shots.
The Spurs lead at the half, 42-37, but the resilience of the Knicks would not give up in the second half. The Knicks improved to 4-0 in closeout opportunities this season, winning them all on the road. It didn’t feel like the road, though — not with thousands of New York faithful having made the trip to Texas to see a moment 53 years in the making.
And back home, on the streets of the Big Apple, celebrations broke out everywhere. Fireworks lit up the night sky, people honked horns on jampacked streets and firefighters — from their trucks — slapped high-fives with delirious fans.
“HISTORY,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote on social media, then added that the Knicks’ championship parade will be Thursday.
The game followed the same script in the opening minutes as all the others in the series, with the Spurs taking a double-digit lead in the first quarter and then frittering most of it away in the second quarter.
The Spurs became the first team in the play-by-play era, which started in the 1996-97 season, to lead five finals games by 10 points or more in first quarters.
The Knicks simply could not make a shot, missing on 16 of their first 18 tries and each of their first 11 two-point attempts. There was even a point in the second quarter when Wembanyama had more blocked shots (five) than the Knicks had made shots (four). San Antonio’s lead was as many as 10 in the first quarter, as many as 16 in the second.
Of course, none of it mattered much. As always, the Knicks came back.
A 22-9 run in the second quarter got New York within three, before Devin Vassell scored just before the halftime buzzer to give San Antonio a 42-37 edge at the break.
And that capped an opening 24 minutes of either offensive ineptitude or defensive prowess, depending on perspective. The 79 combined points in the first half were the lowest in a finals game since Game 7 of Lakers-Celtics in 2010, and the combined 31.8% field goals shooting by the Knicks and Spurs was the lowest in the first half of a finals game in the play-by-play era.
Brunson won NCAA crowns twice with Villanova — both in Texas, the 2016 one in Houston and the 2018 one in San Antonio, just a few miles away from the arena that the Spurs call home.
A Texas three-step of titles, and this one was surely the sweetest of all.
“It’s why I came to New York,” Brunson said.
