SAN ANTONIO — As if a 53-year wait wasn't long enough, the New York Knicks needed to be the conqueror of comebacks before they could again be kings of the NBA.
Mission accomplished.
The Knickerbockers, residents of the world's most famous arena, an original NBA franchise founded in 1946, named for the city's Dutch settlers, are champions for the first time since 1973 and for just the third time in team history. They stunned the San Antonio Spurs, again, with another come-from-behind win in Game 5 of the 2026 NBA Finals, 94-90.
Jalen Brunson, the finals MVP and heart and soul of this team, carried an otherwise struggling Knicks offense in the clincher with 45 points. He scored 15 in the Knicks' last, furious fourth-quarter comeback and averaged 32.6 points in the series.
“I put a lot of time and effort to be best player I can be for this team and organization,†Brunson said. “Tonight, we played like we wanted to go home as champions. Not to start but at the end.â€
New York took down the Spurs, 4-1, winning all three games in San Antonio and setting an NBA Finals record by coming from 29 points down in the second half to win Game 4 with the OG Anunoby tip heard 'round the world. The Knicks' only loss in the series was also historic, coming on a night when a sitting U.S. president, Donald J. Trump of New York, attended a finals game.
Their average margin of victory for the entire playoffs of 14.9 points is an NBA record. And yet, this series was a lot closer than 4-1. The Knicks outscored the Spurs by 12 points, tying the closest margin for a five-game series in finals history.
The Knicks mounted yet another comeback in Game 5. This one was smaller (16 points), but they nevertheless won a series in which they trailed by at least 10 points in the first quarter of every game. New York trailed by seven when the fourth quarter began and was down 10 before mounting one more rally for the ages.
“I couldn't believe it. That was the first thing. It was surreal. I couldn't believe that it was happening,†Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “I am so tired. I mean, I'm gassed. And you know, just this stuff is harder than what you think.â€
The final four minutes were tense, with teams trading buckets and leads. Brunson's 12-footer with 1:05 left gave the Knicks a 90-88 lead. Spurs rookie Dylan Harper, their best player on Saturday night with 25 points, missed a 3, and Josh Hart sank a foul shot with 26.1 seconds remaining. He missed the second, but Mitchell Robinson, on the court because Knicks star center Karl-Anthony Towns fouled out, saved the possession with a rebound. Anunoby, New York's Game 4 hero, made one of two free throws also to put the Knicks up four.
Stephon Castle, suffering through his worst game of the finals, made his first field goal of the game on a put-back dunk off a Victor Wembanyama missed 3 with 16.3 seconds left. The Knicks won the ensuing free-throw contest, finished by Anunoby's make with 7.7 seconds to go.
Wembanyama, the 22-year-old French sensation who is angling to be the next standard-bearer for the sport, has to wait on that. He finished with 19 points, 14 boards and five blocks. When his final 3-point try missed near the buzzer, the thousands of New York fans in the upper deck erupted in thunderous applause.
“It's painful, but I'm not running away from that,†Wembanyama said. “I'm using to fuel me.â€
During the trophy ceremony on the Spurs' Frost Bank Center court, with probably all of the locals gone home to nurse their collective wounds, most of the upper arena remained stocked with Knicks fans. Thousands more moved their way into the first rows of seats, in a breathtaking visual of a fan base that would not be denied a chance to witness history after five decades of frustration.
“The weight of that jersey, the expectations, the pressure of that jersey,†Hart said. “And like I say, today, right now, it's the lightest it's ever felt.â€
Fifty-three years is a long time for the Larry O'Brien trophy to travel the few blocks from NBA offices on Fifth Avenue back to the Garden on Eighth Avenue. Five-plus decades ago, a haze of smoke floated above the fans at the Garden. Willis Reed limped onto the floor for the 1970 title. Walter “Clyde†Frazier dominated. Red Holzman worked the sideline.
And then, more than five decades of waiting, was it nothing? There were the near-misses in 1994 and 1999. Names that will be a part of Knicks lore forever. Bernard King and Patrick Ewing and John Starks. Charles Oakley and Allan Houston and Jeremy Lin and Carmelo Anthony.
New York's last appearance in a finals before this came in June 1999. James Dolan took over the Knicks that October when he was appointed chairman of Madison Square Garden. For more than 26 years, he fought with the NBA, with famous Knicks alumni and with fans who booed him. Even toward the end of this magical championship run, he clashed with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in a blame fest over outdoor watch-party cancellations.
But Dolan's reign will forever be viewed differently than it otherwise would have, because of the 2026 championship.
It's a new dawn, a new day and New Yorkers are feeling good.
From journeyman coach Brown to the Nova Knicks. From an alumnus of the franchise's last finals team, who happened to take a job as an assistant coach one month before his budding superstar son signed as a free agent, to trades for a stray KAT and the newest of the city's Bridges, the Knicks are again kings of the biggest city on basketball's biggest stage.
The Big Apple is no stranger to major sports titles, of course. The Yankees have won seven World Series since 1973; the Giants won four Super Bowls, and the Islanders captured four Stanley Cups; the Mets, Rangers, and Liberty each have a championship since then.
But the Knicks? This one hits differently in a place known as the mecca of basketball. The wait had stretched more than a half-century.
“We want to say ‘salute the wives of Knicks fans' because they went through a lot their whole life,†said Joseph Cartagena, a South Bronx native better known as hip-hop star “Fat Joe.†Cartagena, who was born a few months after the Knicks' first championship in 1970, is one of the many dedicated Knick fans who populate Celebrity Row at the Garden.
“I've seen Hasidic Jews breakdancing with Black kids outside the stadium,†Cartagena added. “This is the greatest unification you've ever seen of New York City in your life since 9/11. If you want to know what we felt like in 9/11 after the tragedy.
“It's what you're seeing around New York City, it's everybody together. This is insane.â€
New York finished the regular season in third place in the Eastern Conference, at 53-29, becoming the lowest seed since the 2022 Golden State Warriors to win the finals.
There was no singular turning point for the Knicks during the regular season, who won the NBA Cup in December (over the Spurs, no less) but shortly thereafter endured a losing stretch of nine defeats in 11 games through mid-January. An eight-game winning streak followed, and they were 23-11 from Feb. 1 through the end of the regular season.
Brunson led the Knicks in scoring for the second consecutive year at exactly 26.0 points per game. He didn't get a single MVP vote but was an All-NBA Second Team selection. Towns, the Knicks' other All-Star, saw dips in his points and rebounds year over year, to 20.1 points and 11.9 boards, as he and coach Brown worked throughout the year to find common ground for Towns' places on both offense and defense.
The playoffs got off to a bad start — falling behind the No. 6 Atlanta Hawks, 2-1 — before going on a run nearly unrivaled in NBA playoff history. They won the next 13 games, second behind only the 2017 Warriors with 15 consecutive playoff wins, and outscored opponents by 273 points during that span, an NBA record.
It was after the Knicks' second loss to the Hawks when the Knicks' singular adjustment of moving Towns to the top of the offense, giving Brunson more room to work off the ball, ignited them. The Knicks entered halftime of Game 6 against the Hawks with a 47-point lead, setting the all-time NBA record for the largest halftime lead in postseason history, and basically didn't look back. Eleven of their 13 wins during the streak came by double-digits.
“It's my job as a coach to fit whatever scheme we have on both sides of the floor to all of our players, and if you're a great player, I've got to make a little bit more adjustments or I've got to give a little bit more than you do,†Brown said. “And we finally got to a point where he was comfortable, I was comfortable. … The regular season is about finding your way so you can prepare for this time of the year, and there's going to be a lot of ups and downs.
“And I hope there's adversity. I hope like hell there's adversity. Because we have to see if we're strong enough when it comes to being connected to see if we can get through it during the regular season.â€
New York destroyed the Hawks, Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers, in succession, with perhaps the sternest test on their way to the finals coming in Game 1 of the conference finals against Cleveland. Trailing by 22 with about eight minutes left, the Knicks went on a torrid, stunning comeback, led by Brunson, who scored 15 of his 38 points in the fourth quarter, including the tying basket that forced overtime. The Knicks cruised in the extra session and easily dumped the Cavs in four.
The Knicks also reached the NBA's final four last season, but lost in six games to the Indiana Pacers in the conference finals. Former superagent Leon Rose, who has overseen basketball operations for the Knicks since 2020, and Dolan swapped out coach Tom Thibodeau and replaced him with Brown, who had won four titles as an assistant and endured the trials and tribulations of being a head coach four different times before taking the job in New York.
Brown became the 15th coach in league history to win a championship in his first season coaching the team. He inherited a team built around Brunson, who signed with the Knicks in the summer of 2022, just after his dad Rick joined Thibodeau's staff (and remained when Brown took over). How strong are the ties between the Knicks and the Brunsons? Rose is Jalen's actual godfather and former agent; Rose's son Sam took over as Jalen's agent when Leon took the job with the Knicks.
Anunoby was added via a blockbuster trade with Toronto just before New Year's Eve in 2023, and Hart came to the Knicks in a trade with Portland at the 2023 trade deadline. In the summer of 2024, the Knicks traded for both Bridges (the “all those picks†trade with Brooklyn in which the Knicks sent their crosstown rivals five first-round picks and Towns (for Julius Randle, among others, sent to Minnesota).
Brunson, Hart and Bridges all played together at Villanova, where they won championships together in 2016 and, in Brunson and Bridges' cases, 2018 as well. The Nova Knicks are champions together, again.
“Obviously, the way last year ended, we thought we had an opportunity,†Brunson said. “I think what's most important is that every year is a new journey. Every year is a new season, a new way to grow as a team. I think the way we learn, the way we grow as a team every single day brought us to this moment.â€
The Spurs, meanwhile, another proud franchise with five titles, the last coming in 2014, hadn't reached the playoffs in six years before this one. The coach for San Antonio's dynasty, Gregg Popovich, missed almost all of last season because of a stroke, and formally stepped aside as a coach last summer for Mitch Johnson, who was his interim replacement in 2024-25.
San Antonio drafted rookies Dylan Harper and Carter Bryant, signed Luke Kornet as a free agent from the Boston Celtics, and signed De'Aaron Fox to a four-year, $229 million extension after trading for him at the 2025 deadline. Castle, the Rookie of the Year in 2025, returned as a better player across the board with improvements in most major statistical categories. Keldon Johnson, the longest-tenured Spur who was drafted late in the first round in 2019, transitioned to the bench this season and became the NBA Sixth Man of the Year.
But this team was always going to go as far as Wembanyama could take it. For the first time in his three seasons, Wemby finished the regular season healthy. He appeared in just 64 total games, one shy of being eligible for postseason awards, but was granted an exception in part because he also competed in the NBA Cup Finals — the only game on the schedule that doesn't count.
Wembanyama was the runaway winner for NBA Defensive Player of the Year, leading the league in blocks for the third consecutive year at 3.1 per game. He posted career highs in points (25.0), rebounds (11.5) and field-goal percentage (.512) and finished third in the league's MVP race.
The Spurs first put the league on notice in December, beating the 2025 champion Thunder in the semifinals of the NBA Cup in Las Vegas. They beat Oklahoma City twice more the following week, in consecutive games, including one on Christmas, a harbinger of things to come. San Antonio found its stride in February and didn't slow down until the finals. From Feb. 1 through the end of the regular season, the Spurs were the NBA's best team at 30-4 and led the league with a plus-13 net rating — which means they were outscoring opponents by an average of 13 points per 100 possessions. Only the Cavs had a better offense than San Antonio during that stretch, but a complex, physical defense anchored by Wemby carried the Spurs to the No. 2 seed, just 2.0 games behind the Thunder.
Wemby's first-ever playoff game ended with him scoring 35 points against Portland. He posted 39 points, 15 rebounds, and five blocks in a second-round win over Minnesota, and Game 1 of the conference finals against the Thunder took the league's collective breath away: a Wilt-like 41 points and 24 boards in double overtime.
The Spurs fell behind, 3-2, in the conference finals, but rallied to take the final two games and unseat the champs, guaranteeing that there would be an eighth different champion in as many years. Wembanyama wept tears of joy after Game 7 of that series. He was headed to the finals, where his team held home court.
“Personally, I think I could have been better in recovering from the high of the conference finals,†Wembanyama said during the finals, as his team dropped the first two games at home and never fully recovered.
The Spurs and the Thunder, without making a single change to either of their rosters, will be favorites to emerge from the West next season. Wembanyama should only be more motivated after his near-miss at such a young age (22). Two-time reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Thunder hope to be healthier than they were at any point this season.
In the East, the Knicks could face a much more crowded picture. The Celtics should be stronger with a fully healthy Jayson Tatum. The Detroit Pistons, the No. 1 team in the East, will look to improve around Cade Cunningham. Indiana should be back with a healthy Tyrese Haliburton. The Cavs shouldn't be discounted. Will they have Giannis Antetokounmpo? Or LeBron James? Or both? Or, will they choose the path of the Knicks: keep the roster together and take the step next season that New York took in this one?
All fair questions for another day. It is now the Knicks' turn to try to break the NBA's curious streak of eight different champions, the longest drought for back-to-back winners in league history. Not since the Warriors of 2017 and 2018 has the same organization lifted the O'Brien trophy in consecutive seasons.
Looking for any historical markers to think the Knicks have a chance to be the next team to do it? Well, the Warriors' two-year jaunt began, after all, with that long playoff winning streak.
The Knicks already checked that box.
“I talked about the word ‘hope.' Hope has been brought back to the city,†Towns said. “We've revitalized that word. But the word ‘success' hasn't been seen in this city for a long time. So, we have to continue to fight to bring that word back to fruition.â€
