SAN ANTONIO — For the first time in 53 years, the New York Knicks rule the NBA.
Jalen Brunson scored 45 points, including 13 straight for his team in the fourth quarter, and the Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday night at Frost Bank Center, wrapping up the franchise’s third title overall but first since 1973. New York’s first league championship came in 1970.
The Knicks won this best-of-seven series 4-1, rallying from double-digit deficits in all four of those victories. The deficit was 16 on Saturday night, but Brunson and the Knicks were never fazed.
“I have no words,” Brunson, who was voted the NBA Finals MVP, said during the on-court celebration. “It’s everything I ever dreamed of.”
Brunson, fittingly, closed with a flourish. The 29-year-old point guard from New Jersey set a Knicks record for points in an NBA Finals game; it had been 38 by Willis Reed against the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 3 of the 1970 series. It now belongs to the left-handed shooter who changed the franchise’s fortunes when he arrived four years ago, signing with the Knicks after playing his first four pro seasons for the Dallas Mavericks, who took him in the second round of the 2018 NBA draft.
“It’s surreal,” said Knicks coach Mike Brown, who was hired a year ago, making him the franchise’s 24th coach since the franchise’s most recent championship before this one. “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 win another title — combined to score 27 points. Bridges had 14 and 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, the 7-foot-4 Frenchman and former overall No. 1 draft pick whose third pro season ended with his first NBA Finals trip but no celebration.
“This is the biggest lesson of my life, the biggest learning moment,” said Wembanyama, who was an All-NBA first-team selection. “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 each of those series-clinching games away from their own court at Madison Square Garden. 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 five-plus decades 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 Wednesday night at MSG. 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,” said Spurs coach Mitch Johnson, who took over in May 2025 and filling the role an interim basis for most of the 2024-25 season. “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 since the NBA began keeping detailed play-by-play in the 1996-97 season to lead five games in the NBA Finals by 10 or more points in first quarters.
The Knicks simply could not make a shot Saturday, 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 an. NBA Finals contest since Game 7 between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers in 2010, and the combined 31.8% field-goal shooting by the Knicks and Spurs was the lowest in the first half of a game in the title series 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 the Spurs call home.
Now it’s a Texas three-step of titles, and this one was surely the sweetest of all.
Said Brunson: “It’s why I came to New York.”