Key Points
- Knicks beat the Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 to win the Finals 4-1.
- New York's first NBA championship since 1973, a 53-year drought.
- Jalen Brunson scored 45 points and was named Finals MVP.
- A ticker-tape parade is set for June 18, the franchise's first.
The New York Knicks are NBA champions for the first time since 1973. On Saturday night they closed out the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5, taking the series 4-1 and ending the longest title drought in the franchise's history. Jalen Brunson scored 45 points, including 13 in a row in the fourth quarter, and walked away with the Bill Russell Trophy as Finals MVP.
How Game 5 went
New York trailed by 16 and won anyway — the fourth time in the series it erased a double-digit deficit in a victory. Brunson carried the close, but the margins came from the supporting cast: Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart combined for 27 points, and the Knicks held Victor Wembanyama's Spurs to 90 in the clincher. Wembanyama finished with 19 points, 14 rebounds and five blocks in his first Finals; rookie Dylan Harper added 25. San Antonio's future is real, but it ran into a team that refused to lose a closeout game.
The Nova Knicks
The core of this title traces back to a college locker room. Brunson, Bridges and Hart all won NCAA championships at Villanova, and on Saturday they became the first trio of former college teammates to win both a national title and an NBA championship together. Head coach Mike Brown, hired a year ago as the 24th head coach in franchise history, built the season around that continuity — a roster assembled deliberately, with Brunson signed in 2022 and Bridges, OG Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns added by trade rather than tanked into.
What a title does for Madison Square Garden
This is a business story as much as a basketball one. The Knicks are the most valuable franchise in the NBA, and Madison Square Garden sits at the center of that valuation — a building that fills regardless of how the team plays. A championship moves the ceiling, not the floor: ticket renewals, suite demand, merchandise and the Garden's brand all compound when the banner is real. Game 1 of this series already drew 16.9 million viewers, ABC's most-watched Finals opener since 2018, and a New York champion is the storyline the league monetizes nationally. The city answers June 18 with a ticker-tape parade up the Canyon of Heroes — the first in Knicks history.
The NBA's 2026-27 schedule opens New York's title defense at Madison Square Garden against the 76ers and brings the Spurs back to the Garden for a Christmas Day Finals rematch.
Source: ABC7 New York, NBA.com
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