Cut above the rest: Karl-Anthony Towns (in pic, No. 32) was the heart of the Knicks’ five-out offence, which was also powered by the mercurial Jalen Brunson. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

The birthplace of the National Basketball Association. The largest basketball market, in terms of both metro population and TV market size, in the U.S. The most valuable franchise in the NBA, playing out of what most aficionados of the sport call an iconic venue, Madison Square Garden. These are the facts that characterise the Big Apple and its beloved basketball team, the New York Knicks.

Yet it took the Knicks, originally called the Knickerbockers, 53 years since their second championship in 1973 to finally climb back to the apex of the NBA. They managed it by defeating the San Antonio Spurs 4-1 in a series far more closely fought than the scoreline suggests.

The championship win rounded off an astounding post-season run by the Knicks. After falling behind 2-1 to the Atlanta Hawks in the first round, dropping two consecutive games by a single point each, they reeled off a searing 13-game winning streak, the second-longest in a single post-season in NBA history, which included beating the Spurs twice in San Antonio to open the Finals. By the time the playoffs finished, the New York Knicks had a 14.9-point differential — the average difference between the Knicks’ and their opponents’ scorelines — the best such mark in NBA playoff history.

Yet no one would have predicted this success at the beginning of the season. The Knicks were not thoroughgoing favourites to win the title in October 2025. That honour belonged to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the defending champion, who continued its march from the previous season by topping the league with 64 wins in the regular season. The Knicks were merely third in the Eastern Conference, behind another upstart in the Detroit Pistons and another surprising performer in the Boston Celtics. Meanwhile, the Spurs, an upstart who had finished in the draft lottery in 2024-25, surprised everyone by finishing a strong second in the Western Conference, just two games behind at 62-20.

Former Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon had emphatically argued that a team whose best player was as small as the 6 ft 1 in point guard Jalen Brunson could never win a title — a supposed structural defect in an era dominated by much taller wings, forwards and centres. Yet as the post-season wore on, the Knicks turned on the jets and began to dominate at both ends of the floor, with Brunson leading the way on offence and team-wide cohesion underpinning their defence.

The formula for the Knicks’ success in the run-up to the Finals was the read-and-react system installed by first-year coach Mike Brown, which featured a sharp break from the isolation-heavy, slow-tempo offence of his predecessor, Tom Thibodeau. Brunson ran the point, but the engine was relentless ball and player movement. In the post-season, this movement also flowed through Karl-Anthony Towns as a passing hub at the top of the key in a five-out offence, reading coverages and feeding cutters off screens and handoffs — a scheme Brown had built in Sacramento around Domantas Sabonis.

When defences clamped down, the Knicks had two reliable counters: Brunson isolations, in which the shifty guard cooked his defender with footwork and midrange jumpers off screens and cuts, and Towns post-ups that punished single coverage. New York leaned into the Towns-based offensive hub only in the post-season, and it carried them through the early rounds. But this ran into a new juggernaut — the Victor Wembanyama-led San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals — where the Knicks had to improvise further to retain their edge after Towns was relatively neutralised by the 7ft 4in centre.

That said, the Knicks’ success was not limited to off-the-shelf plays they used in the post-season. It was largely due to the chemistry in the squad, honed over the last few years ever since Knicks President Leon Rose took over the reins of the front office. He systematically built the squad around Brunson by recruiting his old college teammates — Brunson spent three seasons at Villanova, winning two national championships (2016 and 2018) and the 2018 national player of the year award before turning professional. These included the hard-working Josh Hart, one of the best rebounding guards in the league, and wing defender Mikal Bridges, prised from the neighbouring Brooklyn Nets for a large trove of first-round picks. Rose also landed one of the league’s most versatile defenders in OG Anunoby  from the Raptors, whose post-season play was among the key factors in the Knicks’ triumph.

The Knicks had come close in previous seasons too, reaching the Eastern Conference Finals in 2025 — their first in a quarter-century — only to fall to the Indiana Pacers, two wins short of the Finals.

But under Tom Thibodeau they seemed to hit a ceiling: the veteran coach leaned on a tight rotation and heavy starter minutes, and the team grew predictable as it fell short each post-season. Brown, by contrast, trusted a far deeper bench across both the regular season and playoffs, and managed his starters’ minutes so they had something left when it mattered. The result was the title that had eluded the same core under Thibodeau.

The Spurs, meanwhile, had a fairytale run all season and into the playoffs. In just his third year, Wembanyama won the league’s Defensive Player of the Year trophy unanimously.

He also significantly upped his offensive game and remained a cheat code for the Spurs, and was near-unsolvable for opponents until the NBA Finals.

He was helped by a young core that had quickly graduated into key rotation players. Sophomore guard Stephon Castle built on his Rookie of the Year performance from last year to become a solid two-way player.

Dylan Harper, the second pick of the 2025 NBA draft, was a revelation. His ‘downhill’ offensive game translated well from college to the pros as he eased his way to the rim and remained a key contributor deep into the post-season while also providing perimeter defence.

All-Star guard De’Aaron Fox fit well with the Spurs’ unit, as his smooth point-guard play eased their offence throughout the regular season. Devin Vassell and Julian Champagnie played effective roles as wing players who spread the floor when needed. Veteran Spur Keldon Johnson won the Sixth Man of the Year award due to his strong play off the bench.

This three-guard core of Fox, Castle and Harper gave the Spurs the edge they needed to upend the Oklahoma City Thunder, a team they had tormented all year. San Antonio took the regular-season series 4-1 (including a win in the NBA Cup semifinals after snapping a franchise-record 16-game OKC winning streak).

By June, the defending champion finished just 4-8 against the Spurs while going 71-14 against everyone else. But it still took the Spurs seven games to oust the Thunder. San Antonio was banged up: Fox played through a high ankle sprain that limited him into the Finals, and Harper had an adductor issue that limited him in the Western Conference Finals (WCF).

But they also caught a break as the Thunder lost two key players — forward Jalen Williams to a hamstring strain and guard Ajay Mitchell to a calf injury — both sidelined for the decisive Game 7.

Very few teams have managed to become contenders in such a short period, and the Spurs will still be encouraged by their performance in 2025-26. Their core remains intact, and they will take the same lessons the Knicks learned — that a longer run in the post-season requires a deeper bench — and will rejig at their edges to provide more support to Wembanyama and the young core. NBA fans can hope that the Spurs–Thunder rivalry continues for a long time, considering how both teams have been constructed and how their front offices have built up draft assets well into the future.

As the Finals began, the Knicks held a distinct advantage: they were far better rested. San Antonio had slogged through two gruelling series — a tough Western semifinal against the Timberwolves and a seven-game war with the Thunder — while New York had swept Cleveland in the East.

Having come through a tougher conference with a better regular-season record (62-20 to the Knicks’ 53-29), the Spurs were the pick of some. That said, in the playoffs the regular-season record counts for little; match-ups and experience matter more.

The Knicks, with their ability to play five-out around Karl-Anthony Towns — perhaps the best shooting big man the game has seen — had already troubled the Spurs once that season, beating them 124-113 in the NBA Cup final. This was thanks to Towns’ ability to draw Wembanyama from the paint and make him defend on the perimeter, lessening the impact of the world’s best shot blocker and rim deterrent.

On balance, this promised to be a tough, close contest. And the games were indeed closely fought across the Finals. One statistic was telling — the Spurs led in close to 72 per cent of the minutes played across five games according to  ESPN Analytics, after dominating the first quarters in most games.

But the Knicks always finished better, either aided by mental mistakes by the Spurs — such as the turnover by Wembanyama in Game 2 or a brain fade by Fox late in Game 4 when he could have retained possession and drawn a foul with the Spurs a point ahead, instead of getting blocked near the rim by Anunoby.

In fact, Game 4 was an epic and historic disaster for the Spurs. They led by 29 points (27 at half-time), but the Knicks mounted a decisive comeback in the second half — the biggest turnaround in NBA Finals history.

Game 5 also began similarly, with the Spurs dominating the first quarter and keeping it even in the second, but the Knicks were clinical again in the second half, completing another comeback to win the championship.

Fox, hampered by injury, was outshone by the younger Harper, who established himself as San Antonio’s second-best player behind Wembanyama across the five games. But the Spurs’ relative inexperience and their stars’ misfiring in clutch moments were enough for the Knicks to seize the decisive stretches.

The moment belonged to the Knicks. Brunson was brilliant in Games 4 and 5, orchestrating both comebacks. In Game 5, he scored 45 points and was unstoppable. Anunoby provided solid two-way play throughout the playoffs and was stellar in the Finals, shooting 58 per cent from the field and a whopping 56 per cennt from three. His defence against the Spurs’ wings and guards was menacing, and he authored the winning play in Game 4 — a tip-in of Brunson’s miss in the dying seconds.

Towns was relatively neutralised and became more of a non-factor in the later Finals games, largely due to foul trouble against Wembanyama. But coach Brown still managed to relatively hamper the French superstar, nicknamed the ‘Alien’, by deploying backup centre Mitchell Robinson to good effect.

Wembanyama, strong statistically but increasingly ineffective on the offence in crunch moments of every Spurs loss, was worn down by the rotating defence of Towns and Robinson, compounded by the inability of San Antonio’s own backup centre, Luke Kornet, to replicate his steady regular-season role.

The Knicks’ victory was followed by a collective burst of celebration in the Big Apple, giving long-awaited joy to a franchise that had not tasted success in over half a century, which included years of failure fashioned by the incompetence of its ownership.

The title this year was a culmination of a series of right decisions made by the Rose-led front office, clearly learning their lessons from the previous two decades’ worth of failures, a major coaching change, and the chemistry of a squad that played unselfishly throughout the post-season. The Larry O’Brien trophy is now finally at what many consider the Mecca of basketball, after nearly five and a half decades.

Published on Jun 17, 2026