By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer
SAN ANTONIO — Jalen Brunson and the Comeback Knicks did it again. And now they’re the Champion Knicks.
For the first time in 53 years, New York rules the NBA. Brunson scored 45 points, including 13 straight for New York in the fourth quarter, and the Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs, 94-90, in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday night.
The Knicks won the series 4-1, rallying from double-digit deficits in all four of those victories. The deficit was 16 on Saturday night, and Brunson and the Knicks were never fazed.
“I have no words,” Brunson, the NBA Finals MVP, said during the on-court celebration. “It’s everything I ever dreamed of.”
Brunson, fittingly, closed with a flourish. He set a Knicks record for points in a Finals game; it had been 38 by Willis Reed against the Lakers in Game 3 of the 1970 series. It now belongs to the left-handed point guard who changed the franchise’s fortunes when he arrived four years ago.
“It’s surreal,” Knicks coach Mike Brown, who was hired a year ago – making him the franchise’s 24th coach since the franchise’s last championship in 1973. “I still can’t believe it’s happened.”
Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart – the other two parts of the “Nova Knicks” trio that also includes Brunson, three players who were NCAA champions at Villanova and teamed up in New York to try to do the same – combined to score 27 points. Bridges had 14, Hart 13.
“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” Brunson said. “I’m in awe. Whenever someone counted us out, we found a way to come back and do something about it.”
Dylan Harper scored 25 for the Spurs, who got 19 points, 14 rebounds and five blocked shots from Victor Wembanyama.
“This is the biggest lesson of my life, the biggest learning moment,” Wembanyama said. “I can’t tell exactly what the lesson is, but we’re learning.”
The Knicks improved to 4-0 in closeout opportunities this season, winning them all on the road. It didn’t feel like the road, though – not with thousands of New York faithful having made the trip to Texas to see a moment 53 years in the making.
And back home, on the streets of the Big Apple, celebrations broke out everywhere. Fireworks lit up the night sky, people honked horns on jampacked streets and firefighters – from their trucks – slapped high-fives with delirious fans.
“HISTORY,” New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wrote on social media, then added that the Knicks’ championship parade will be Thursday.
New York got to the brink of this title by rallying from 29 points down in Game 4 to win, 107-106, on OG Anunoby’s tip-in with 1.2 seconds left on Wednesday night. It was the largest comeback in NBA Finals history and the biggest comeback in any game this season, regular season or playoffs.
By comparison, then, a 16-point rally in this one seemed easy. And San Antonio had to shuffle off into the offseason, listening to Knicks fans celebrating in their building.
“We weren’t ready to win an NBA championship,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “The better team won. We did a lot of good things, and we didn’t finish the job. That’s what it is.”
The game followed the same script in the opening minutes as all the others in the series, with the Spurs taking a double-digit lead in the first quarter and then frittering most of it away in the second quarter.
The Spurs became the first team in the play-by-play era, which started in the 1996-97 season, to lead five Finals games by 10 points or more in first quarters.
The Knicks simply could not make a shot, missing on 16 of their first 18 tries and each of their first 11 two-point attempts. There even was a point in the second quarter when Wembanyama had more blocked shots (five) than the Knicks had made shots (four). San Antonio’s lead was as many as 10 in the first quarter, as many as 16 in the second.
Of course, none of it mattered much. As always, the Knicks came back.
A 22-9 run in the second quarter got New York within three, before Devin Vassell scored just before the halftime buzzer to give San Antonio a 42-37 edge at the break.
And that capped an opening 24 minutes of either offensive ineptitude or defensive prowess, depending on perspective. The 79 combined points in the first half were the lowest in a Finals game since Game 7 of Lakers-Celtics in 2010, and the combined 31.8% field goals shooting by the Knicks and Spurs was the lowest in the first half of a Finals game in the play-by-play era.
Brunson won NCAA crowns twice with Villanova – both in Texas, the 2016 one in Houston and the 2018 one in San Antonio, just a few miles away from the arena that the Spurs call home.
A Texas three-step of titles, and this one was surely the sweetest of all.
“It’s why I came to New York,” Brunson said.
BRUNSON BETS ON HIMSELF AND WINS
Brunson was fully aware of how much money some people spent to see the Knicks finally become champions again. Some tickets during the Finals sold for $5,000, some for $50,000, some for probably more.
Of course, Brunson parted with more money than any of those fans.
Brunson is now an NBA champion and NBA Finals MVP in large part because of what he did against the Spurs in the Finals – though, really, his biggest contribution to this title run likely came in 2024, when he left as much as $113 million on the bargaining table to allow the Knicks the financial flexibility they needed to finish building a championship roster.
It was considered an unprecedented move.
It paid off.
“I knew it was achievable,” Brunson said.
Saturday night was a storybook finish to a story like none other; not only did Brunson make the Knicks champions, he made his dad one as well. Rick Brunson played for the Knicks, and now is an assistant coach on his kid’s team.
“I have all of his trophies,” Rick Brunson said. “He has not one trophy at his house. I’m going to get his MVP trophy, too.”
Brunson now has a seat at the table of sports kings of New York, alongside the likes of Derek Jeter, Eli Manning, Mark Messier and others. Deliver a championship to the Big Apple and you get celebrated for life. Brunson doesn’t seek attention – in fact, he genuinely seems to dislike it – but such is the risk one takes when he leads a storied franchise to its first title in more than half a century.
There was no doubt Brunson would win Finals MVP. Brown doesn’t understand why he wasn’t among the top vote-getters for the regular-season MVP award as well.
“I hope you guys will listen to me: He’s a top-three MVP candidate,” Brown said, holding his grandson on his lap in the championship celebration. “Everybody kind of mentions his name in passing. They don’t do it seriously enough. … He is a fricking 1-A. He is a MVP candidate and I hope tonight you guys recognize what this man is about.
“He is him.”
There are countless reasons why the Knicks have turned their fortunes around over the last four seasons, but the list starts with Brunson. New York had just four winning seasons in a 21-year span before Brunson arrived; the Knicks have had four winning seasons in the four years that he’s worn the franchise’s colors. They’ve now won eight playoff series with Brunson in the lineup; they won seven series, total, from 1998 through 2022.
He’s a bona fide superstar as well, with three consecutive All-Star selections and three consecutive seasons in which he’s averaged at least 26 points. The only other players to do that in each of the past three years – be an All-Star and average 26 points in every one – are Denver’s Nikola Jokic, Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Houston’s Kevin Durant and Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo.
They’ve all been NBA champions, too. So, now, is Brunson.
“He’s a tremendous player that’s skilled, picks his spots, knows his angles, shoots contested shots without being sped up,” Johnson said earlier in the Finals. “He’s a phenomenal player.”
Texas has been good to Brunson when it comes to titles with his two Villanova titles and now this one all won in the state.
Oddly, Texas wasn’t always that good to Brunson as a pro – which is how he ended up in New York.
Brunson joined the Knicks in 2022 after leaving Dallas, which didn’t offer him a contract anywhere near what the Villanova guard felt he deserved.
And then, two years later, Brunson took far less than he had earned.
In 2024, Brunson signed a four-year extension with New York that could be worth $156.5 million if he accepts his option for the 2028-29 season. If Brunson waited until 2025 for his extension, he would have been eligible for a five-year, $269 million deal.
Brown said, if he was in that position, he wouldn’t have taken the discount deal.
“He set the bar before he even stepped on the floor,” Brown said.
Brunson will almost certainly recoup some if not all of that money in his next extension, one that could top $300 million – possibly by a lot. But by passing up the much larger guarantee then, he provided the Knicks with the ability to make other moves that are paying off now.
And among the ones that followed his June 2024 decision: The Knicks brought in starters Bridges and Towns.
Could all that have happened if Brunson didn’t accept the smaller extension? Maybe, but unlikely.
“I think he’s still underrated in the league, and he keeps proving people wrong, game by game, series by series, playoff appearance by playoff appearance,” Hart said. “As a friend, as a teammate, it’s funny because you know he’s one of the best players in the league, and you’re happy that he’s starting to get some recognition.”
He’s getting more than some recognition. He’s getting a ring.
“Just thankful that this opportunity presented itself,” Brunson said, “and we were able to get it done.”
FUTURE IS BRIGHT FOR FRUSTRATED SPURS
As Vassell reflected on what could have been for the Spurs, reality loudly interrupted his thoughts.
The sounds of the Knicks and their fans celebrating the team’s championship spilled into the recesses of the Frost Bank Center, drowning out Vassell’s postgame interview.
“Our goal was to win, obviously,” Vassell said. “We don’t want a participation trophy to where we just got here; we wanted to win.”
Brunson stymied that dream again, closing a series in which the Spurs built double-digit leads in the first quarter of every game but watched the Knicks rally to win all but Game 3.
That San Antonio was even in the conversation was surprising to most.
“Shout out to the Spurs, they are the real deal,” New York center Karl-Anthony Towns said.
The Spurs exceeded preseason expectations by toppling 2024-25 champion Oklahoma City to win the Western Conference title with a youthful roster led by 22-year-old Wembanyama.
San Antonio won 62 games to tie for the second-most victories in franchise history just two seasons after a second straight 22-win season.
There was much for the Spurs to celebrate this season, just not on Saturday night.
“Yeah, it’s a little early to go there,” Johnson said.
The Spurs were seeking their sixth league championship and first since 2014 after missing the postseason for six straight seasons.
The lack of postseason success hurt San Antonio in the closing minutes of each loss as New York took advantage of every mistake to rally.
“The margin of error is very thin,” Wembanyama said. “Our domination stats are absolute. We absolutely dominated for most of the series. But our errors, our mistakes, are punished so hard that we can’t have ups and downs like this.”
Along with Wembanyama, the Spurs have 21-year-old Stephon Castle and 20-year-old Harper to build around and now they have the anger and frustration of what might have been to add to it.
“I hope they take the same thing that we’ve taken from our success,” Johnson said. “I hope it leads to them be hungrier than they’ve ever been, and I hope it leads them to be more motivated than they’ve ever been, and hopefully that leads them to be more – yeah, just to continue to improve in every facet.”
AP sports writer Raul Dominguez contributed to this story.