Jalen Brunson scored 45 points, including 13 consecutive in the fourth quarter, as the New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 on Saturday night to win the NBA championship, ending 53 years of heartbreak and false dawns for one of basketball’s most storied and most tortured franchises.
The Knicks won the series four games to one, rallying from double-digit deficits in all four of their victories. The deficit Saturday night was 16 points.
They were never fazed.
“I have no words,” Brunson, named NBA Finals MVP, said during the on-court celebration. “It’s everything I ever dreamed of.”
What We Know So Far
The Knicks trailed by as many as 16 points in the first half before gradually clawing their way back, as they have done repeatedly throughout this playoff run.
With 1:53 remaining in the fourth quarter, New York led 88-85. Brunson pushed that lead to 90-88 with a decisive basket after the Spurs’ Dylan Harper briefly tied the game. Trailing 93-90 with 8.5 seconds left, Harper missed his first free throw and was forced to intentionally miss the second in hopes of an offensive rebound. The Knicks grabbed it instead. OG Anunoby sealed the title at the other end with a free throw, according to NBC Sports.
Brunson set a Knicks record for points in a Finals game, surpassing the 38 scored by Willis Reed against the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 3 of the 1970 series, the Associated Press reported.
Mikal Bridges added 14 points and Josh Hart contributed 13. Together with Brunson, the three former Villanova NCAA champions formed the core the Knicks called their “Nova Knicks” trio.
For the Spurs, Harper finished with 25 points. Victor Wembanyama posted 19 points, 14 rebounds and five blocked shots in a performance that underlined his enormous potential despite the defeat.
“This is the biggest lesson of my life,” Wembanyama said. “I can’t tell exactly what the lesson is, but we’re learning.”
What Coaches And Players Are Saying
Knicks coach Mike Brown, hired just one year ago as the franchise’s 24th head coach since their last title in 1973, was visibly overwhelmed at the final buzzer. “It’s surreal,” Brown said. “I still can’t believe it’s happened.”
Spurs coach Mitch Johnson was measured and gracious in defeat. “We weren’t ready to win an NBA championship,” he said. “The better team won. We did a lot of good things, and we didn’t finish the job. That’s what it is.”
Knicks owner James Dolan addressed the celebrating roster with the Larry O’Brien trophy nearby. “Sorry it took so long!” he said.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted a single word on social media: “HISTORY.” He confirmed the Knicks’ championship parade would take place Thursday.
Back in New York, celebrations broke out across the city. Fireworks lit the night sky, cars jammed the streets with horns blaring, and firefighters leaned from their trucks to slap high-fives with fans, the Associated Press reported.
Why This Matters
New York last ruled the NBA in 1973. What followed was one of the longest championship droughts in the league’s history, marked by a decade and a half of aimlessness after the mid-1970s, near-misses in the 1990s with Finals losses in 1994 and 1999, and 25 years of consistent underachievement that saw 15 head or interim coaches produce just seven winning seasons between 2001 and 2025.
This title was built differently and deliberately.
Team president Leon Rose, hired in 2020, assembled the roster almost entirely through trades and free agency rather than the draft lottery. Only center Mitchell Robinson among the regular rotation players was drafted by the Knicks. Rose built the team around Brunson, previously a backup point guard in Dallas, and completed the roster with bold moves including trading five first-round picks for wing Mikal Bridges and dealing Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to Minnesota for Karl-Anthony Towns during the 2024 offseason.
The fit was not always clean. But in the postseason it came together into something historic.
The Knicks finished the playoffs with a 16-3 record and a point differential more than double that of the next closest team, NBC Sports noted. They rallied from 22 points down in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Cleveland, and produced the largest comeback in NBA Finals history in Game 4, erasing a 29-point deficit to win 107-106 on an Anunoby tip-in with 1.2 seconds remaining.
By comparison, Saturday’s 16-point rally felt almost routine.
Patrick Ewing, the greatest Knick of the generation that never won, was on the court at the final buzzer. He embraced filmmaker Spike Lee as Brown walked among his staff in a daze of disbelief. Earlier in the evening, Ewing had paused in the visitors’ locker room to acknowledge Towns with a silent gesture. No words were needed.
What Happens Next
The Knicks enter the offseason as NBA champions for the first time in more than half a century, with a core young enough to compete for more.
For the Spurs, the defeat closes a painful chapter on what had been a remarkable postseason run. Wembanyama, just 20 years old and playing in the first postseason of his career, showed enough across five games to confirm that San Antonio’s future remains in capable hands despite the loss.
The Knicks’ championship parade is set for Thursday in New York City.
For a franchise and a fan base that has waited 53 years, Thursday cannot come soon enough.
NBC/AP
