For 53 years, New York Knicks fans have waited. Through decades of dysfunction, heartbreak, and missed opportunities, the wait ended Saturday night in San Antonio.
The Knicks defeated the Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals, claiming their third championship in franchise history and first since 1973, the year the U.S. withdrew from the Vietnam War.
Jalen Brunson took home MVP honors. The 29-year-old guard torched the Spurs with 45 points, a Knicks Finals record, including 13 straight in the fourth quarter to erase a 16-point deficit and seal the title. It was a performance that fit the theme of a series defined by comebacks.
The Knicks clawed back from double-digit holes in all four of their victories. None was more stunning than Game 4, when New York trailed by 29 points before OG Anunoby tipped in the winner with 1.2 seconds remaining, completing the largest comeback in NBA Finals history.
The road to the title wound through a franchise history littered with near-misses. The 1973 Knicks, led by Willis Reed and Walt Frazier, defeated the Lakers in five games. New York didn’t return to the Finals until 1994 and 1999, when they fell to the Houston Rockets and, fittingly, the Spurs both times. The decades that followed brought little more than losing seasons and front-office chaos, including a largely disappointing seven-year stint with Syracuse alum Carmelo Anthony from 2011 to 2017 that yielded just one playoff series victory. It wasn't until Brunson's arrival in 2022 that the franchise became a force to be reckoned with in the league.
After Saturday’s victory, the Empire State Building lit up blue and orange with tens of thousands pouring into the streets. The celebrations turned chaotic overnight, with five school buses set ablaze in Times Square, a 17-year-old shot in the foot near 42nd Street, and 63 people arrested by morning. Ten NYPD officers were injured.
On Thursday, the city gets its formal moment of celebration. Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes, the iconic stretch of lower Broadway where New York has honored its greatest champions since 1886 with processions of shredded confetti cascading from the skyscrapers above. It will be the first parade for a men's New York team since the Giants in 2012.
