SAN ANTONIO — The New York Knicks are NBA champions.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.It is a sentence that has not been written in 53 years.It is a reality that was out of reach for the franchise from the late 1970s through the 1980s and felt oh-so-close in the 1990s, only to be laughably far away for much of the last quarter century.Yet, Saturday in Texas, a Knicks roster that had been assembled, taken apart and overhauled over the past six years ended more than a half-century of waiting by closing out San Antonio, 94-90, in five games to clinch New York’s third NBA title, and first since 1973.The young Spurs, playing in just the first postseason of 7-foot-4 superstar Victor Wembanyama’s career, entered these Finals having beaten 2025 champions Oklahoma City Thunder to win the Western Conference.
New York had reached its first Finals since 1999 by taking what seemed to be a less arduous route.New York, however, won the first two games in San Antonio and clinched a championship while holding off the Spurs in the series’ emotional, unpredictable fourth and fifth games.Knicks fans arrived in Texas’s hill country in droves Saturday, wearing jerseys bearing last names such as Monroe and Starks, Ewing and Anthony, Anunoby and Brunson, all in orange and blue.They filled out sections from the arena’s upper-most rows to its swankiest courtside seats, and they all hoped to witness the Knicks claim their first NBA title in five decades years.
They received their wish after the Knicks completed a 16-point comeback, a fitting coda to a series where New York overcame double-digit deficits to win all four of its games.Trailing 93-90 with 8.5 seconds left, San Antonio’s Dylan Harper missed his first free throw, then was forced to intentionally miss the second in hopes San Antonio would grab an offensive rebound.But the Knicks grabbed the miss instead, and sealed their win with an OG Anunoby free...