53 years in the making: the New York Knicks are NBA champions

It finally happened. After 53 years, after decades of broken promises and false dawns and names that still make Knicks fans wince, after all of it – Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks are NBA champions.

The Knicks closed out the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5, winning their first title since May of 1973. Back then, Willis Reed was the MVP, Walt Frazier was gliding through defenders like a ghost, and Red Holzman‘s team beat Jerry West and the Lakers in five games to bring a championship back to Madison Square Garden. The world looked a lot different in 1973. The first mobile phone call hadn’t even been made yet. And yet somehow, impossibly, that was the last time this franchise had felt this. That 1973 title was the second in four years for the Knicks – a brief dynasty that New York has been chasing ever since. More than half a century later, number three is finally here.

The game itself was exactly the kind of gut-punch drama you’d expect from a series that’s been this intense from the start. The Spurs came out swinging, building a 16-point lead and silencing what was supposed to be a raucous crowd ready to party. Victor Wembanyama was doing Victor Wembanyama things in the first half – floating, shooting, altering everything in his orbit. Stephon Castle was running the Spurs’ offense with a maturity that belies his age. For long stretches, it looked like San Antonio was going to force a Game 6 and make New York sweat a little longer.

But then Jalen Brunson decided it was time.

Number 11 went to work in the fourth quarter with the kind of cold-blooded focus that’s become his trademark throughout this entire run. Every time the Spurs needed a stop, Brunson found a way to get a bucket. Every time New York needed someone to take the weight of the moment, he stepped into it without hesitation. He broke San Antonio’s heart down the stretch, hitting shot after shot while the Spurs’ defense scrambled to contain him. He was magnificent – and when it was all over, it was Brunson hoisting the Finals MVP trophy, which might be the least surprising development of the entire postseason.

Wembanyama, for his part, hit a wall in the fourth. The alien who’d been so dominant for stretches of this series shot just 1-of-5 from the field in the final quarter – a night where the gravity of the moment seemed to weigh on even the most gifted player on the planet. He had a chance to make it a true one-possession game with 1:53 left, stepping to the free throw line with an opportunity to cut the lead, and missed one of his two attempts. That miss will haunt him. The Spurs needed every single point they could get at that stage and couldn’t afford charity.

What sealed it was Mitchell Robinson. With 22 seconds left and the Knicks clinging to an 88-91 lead, Robinson muscled in for a huge offensive rebound – the kind of gritty, ugly, absolutely vital play that doesn’t show up in highlight reels but defines championships. The possession led to OG Anunoby getting fouled, and OG went 1-of-2 from the line to push the lead to four. At that point, it was over. The Spurs weren’t coming back from that.

And Anunoby – it feels right that he played a role in closing this thing out. Because Game 4 at MSG will be talked about for as long as the Knicks exist. That tip, that miraculous, chaotic, perfect tip at the buzzer that sent Madison Square Garden into full-on delirium. It was one of those moments that locks itself into the city’s memory permanently. It’ll be on the highlight reel forever. OG Anunoby, right-hand tip, New York wins. Four-point lead, series lead, destiny.

Karl-Anthony Towns‘ Game 5 was not the night anyone would have drawn up for him. He went 1-of-7 from the field, finished with two points in 23 minutes and fouled out before the final buzzer – a tough sendoff for a player who’d been so crucial to getting New York to this point.

But that’s the thing about team championships: they don’t always hand you the Hollywood script for the closing act. Brunson carried the scoring load, and KAT’s absence down the stretch actually forced the Knicks to dig deeper and find another gear. Zoom out from Game 5 though and the picture looks very different. Towns averaged 19.5 points, 12.5 rebounds and 4.0 assists across the series, shooting 56 percent from the floor and 43 percent from three, while holding his counterparts to just 34.5 percent shooting. His plus/minus through the postseason was +239 – second-best all-time, trailing only Steph Curry’s +244 from 2017. The man who’d never won a playoff series in Minnesota, who came to New York and came up short in his first year here, now has a ring. Game 5 wasn’t his night. The championship is still his.

This whole playoff run goes in the history books too. First, there was Atlanta. The Hawks came into that first-round series having gone 20-6 down the stretch of the regular season – the best mark in the East and the third-best record in the NBA after the All-Star break – and they played like it. The Hawks won Games 2 and 3 back-to-back, and for a moment it genuinely felt like New York’s postseason might end before it had barely started. CJ McCollum hit a fadeaway jumper with 12.5 seconds left to give Atlanta a 2-1 series lead, and the noise around this team got real loud real fast. Then Brunson dropped 39 in Game 5, New York took a 3-2 lead, and Game 6 ended with a 51-point blowout and a fight between Dyson Daniels and Mitchell Robinson that got both of them ejected – the Knicks winning by so much the ejections barely registered. New York set an NBA playoff record with a 47-point halftime lead in that game. The Knicks swept through the 76ers without breathing hard, dismantled the Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference Finals, and showed up in San Antonio and took the first two games on the road – something almost nobody does in the Finals. Then they lost Game 3 at MSG and for one brief, panicked moment, Knicks fans who’d been burned too many times before braced for the worst. But this group is different. They always found a way back.

And here’s something that’s never happened before in NBA history: the Knicks won the NBA Cup back in December, beating these same San Antonio Spurs in the championship game in Las Vegas, and now they’ve gone ahead and won the whole thing too. The first team ever to pull off both in the same season. Brunson was the MVP of that one as well, by the way. So when people try to figure out when exactly this Knicks team announced itself to the league, maybe it was that December night in Vegas – a preview of what was coming, against the exact same opponent, with the exact same result. The Spurs had to watch Brunson lift two trophies on them this season. That’s a particular kind of cruel.

Now let’s talk about what this actually means. Because if you’re a Knicks fan of a certain age, this isn’t just a basketball championship. This is the resolution to a story that’s been torturing you for your entire life.

New York returned to the Finals in 1994 and 1999 but came up short both times. Patrick Ewing never got his ring. He carried that franchise on his back for more than a decade, took them further than they’d gone in years, and came agonizingly close – losing to the Rockets in seven in ’94, falling to the Spurs in ’99 – and it never happened for him. That was the last real era of Knicks basketball that felt legitimate. After Ewing, the franchise fell off a cliff and spent the better part of two decades trying to figure out how to climb back up.

The early 2000s were an exercise in suffering. The organization made one disastrous decision after another. They traded away Antonio McDyess, Charlie Ward, Maciej Lampe, Howard Eisley and a first-round pick just to bring Stephon Marbury to New York. Marbury was supposed to be the answer. He was the hometown kid, the point guard from Coney Island, the guy who was going to lead the Knicks back to relevance. It never worked. And the players who went out the door to get him – some of those picks became players the Knicks could have used for years. It was a textbook Knicks move of the era.

Knicks fans had actually started believing that Maciej Lampe might develop into a real piece. That Frank Williams might be the point guard of the future. That Eddy Curry, this massive, physical center, was going to be the guy Stephon Marbury ran the offense through to get New York back to the promised land. None of it materialized. The Eddy Curry trade with the Bulls cost the Knicks two draft picks that became LaMarcus Aldridge and Joakim Noah.

Marbury was supposed to be the answer. He was the hometown kid, the point guard from Coney Island, the guy who was going to lead the Knicks back to relevance. It never worked. And the players who went out the door to get him – some of those picks became players the Knicks could have used for years. It was a textbook Knicks move of the era.

The franchise was a punchline. The laughing stock of the league. While other teams were building through the draft and developing young talent, New York was making every wrong move available on the menu.

Then came Amar’e Stoudemire, who arrived in 2010 and for one beautiful, electric moment made everyone believe again. Raymond Felton ran the show that year and played some of the best basketball of his career – he was the closest thing to a real point guard the Knicks had managed to find since Charlie Ward was doing it in the Ewing era. Carmelo Anthony followed, and suddenly MSG had some genuine star power again. But as exciting as it all was, the Knicks couldn’t get out of the first round. The team never quite had the depth or the defensive identity to compete with the elite. The flame got reignited and then sputtered out again.

Kristaps Porzingis showed up in 2015 and gave the fanbase something it hadn’t had in years – a player who felt genuinely special, a 7-foot unicorn who could shoot from anywhere and protect the rim and fill arenas with energy. In just three seasons with the Knicks, Porzingis put up numbers that put him among franchise all-time leaders in multiple categories. And then he was gone, traded to Dallas before he could ever be part of a real playoff run with New York. His entire tenure came and went without the Knicks making the postseason. Twenty years passed from the end of the Ewing era before any kind of real rebuild started to take shape.

That’s the context. That’s what makes tonight so staggering. The Knicks’ list of starting point guards in recent decades reads like a horror story – an endless parade of players who never quite worked out, from Chris Duhon to Sergio Rodriguez to Jose Calderon to Derrick Rose and everyone in between. Before Jalen Brunson, there wasn’t a real, bonafide, franchise-level point guard in New York since Charlie Ward was quietly, dependably running the offense during the Ewing years. Raymond Felton had his moments but was never quite that guy. Nobody was. It took until 2022 and a quiet, slightly-under-the-radar signing out of Dallas to finally fix the position.

And Brunson didn’t just fix it. He became one of the best players in the league. He willed this team forward in moments when nobody else could. He won the Finals MVP in the most fitting, storybook way possible. He is everything this franchise has been searching for since Patrick Ewing walked out the door.

Bill Bradley once said: “Once a Knick fan, always a Knick fan, and for 40 years we’ve been suffering Knick fans.” He said that back in 2013. It’s been 53 now. The suffering is over. The wait is done. The Knicks are champions.