SAN ANTONIO — Knowing fans in the Big Apple had waited 53 years to see the New York Knicks hoist the NBA championship trophy, team owner James Dolan didn’t even wait to be handed the 30-pound gold-plated prize.
He grabbed it and lifted it skyward with a yell.
“I want to say something to New York,” Dolan shouted as he held the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy. “Hey New York! I’m sorry it took so long! But here we are, and hopefully it won’t take that long again!”
The Knicks are NBA champions for the first time since 1973, beating the San Antonio Spurs in five games for this title. The clincher came Saturday night in a 94-90 comeback victory at Frost Bank Center, the Knicks’ fourth comeback win of the best-of-seven NBA Finals.
Some will say it’s the first “major” professional sports championship for New York in more than 14 years; that would be true when counting only Major League Baseball and the NBA, NFL and NHL, which would mean ignoring the New York Liberty’s run to the 2024 WNBA title and New York City FC winning the MLS Cup in 2021.
As far as the teams that have been part of the city’s fabric for generations and generations, though — yes, this 14-year drought is finally over. The Giants won Super Bowl XLVI in February 2012, capping the NFL’s 2011 season with their eight league title overall.
The Yankees — the most decorated team in U.S. major pro sports history — haven’t won the World Series since 2009; the Mets last did so in 1986. The NHL’s Rangers last hoisted the Stanley Cup in 1994, the Islanders in 1983. The Jets won their lone Super Bowl title in 1969.
None of that matters, at least not right now. The Knicks — who won 13 consecutive games at one point in this playoff run and rallied from 29 points down to win Game 4 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden — are the toast of the town.
“Of course I’ve never seen anything like it, because it’d never happened before,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said of the Game 4 comeback during an NBA TV interview Saturday. “But it’s been amazing.”
The Amazin’ Knicks, indeed.
It took them 80 years — the Knicks won the first game in NBA history in 1946, three years before what was then the Basketball Association of America started being known as the National Basketball Association — but the franchise has now become the ninth that can say it has at least three such championships.
The Boston Celtics have 18, the Los Angeles Lakers have 17, the Golden State Warriors have seven, the Chicago Bulls have six, the Spurs have five, and the Detroit Pistons, Miami Heat and Philadelphia 76ers have three apiece.
Welcome to the club, New York.
“I enjoy watching these guys,” former Knicks star Larry Johnson said. “The Garden is back. … It’s back like when we played and made our little run. The city is behind us.”
It’s a franchise that has gone through 24 different coaches and more than 400 players since what was, until now, the most recent championship season (1972-73, with the first title coming in the 1969-70 campaign). Some of the game’s biggest superstars called Madison Square Garden home and couldn’t end the title drought, names like Carmelo Anthony, Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston and Bernard King.
The Knicks lost a Game 7 in the 1994 NBA Finals to the Houston Rockets, then made a miracle run to the 1999 title series in a lockout-shortened season only to lose in five games as the Spurs won their franchise’s first league crown.
“We didn’t get it done. … I always say the third time is the charm,” former Knicks guard John Starks said.
Starks was right. It took the Knicks 27 years to get back to the last series of the season, had the Spurs again standing in their way, and to fully flip the script, it was New York prevailing in five games.
And finally, the world’s most famous arena — which has raised banners for singers Billy Joel, Elton John and Harry Styles more recently than it had hoisted one for the Knicks — will be adding to the collection swaying from the rafters. If it follows form from the others, the banner will only have the Knicks logo, then 2025-26 World Champions beneath that.
It’s a simple message. Getting to the place where the Knicks could say those words again? That wasn’t so simple.
“There are a couple of franchises that are pretty iconic just because of the history that they have, the location that they’re in, sometimes even the building that they’re in,” said Knicks coach Mike Brown, who won this title in his first season with the club. “New York is definitely one of the few that you could say that to in all three facets.
“Everybody goes through their ups and downs. I don’t really think much about the tough times that they had, because everybody has tough times, including individuals. You just want to try the best you can to be a part of whatever you can to bring joy to the city, to the organization. At the end of the day, the chips are going to fall how they fall. I feel blessed, fortunate, lucky, to be a part of what is going on now.”
It is, to put it mildly, an interesting organization. Dolan rarely speaks publicly but isn’t afraid of clashes, including with former Knicks greats like Charles Oakley, who was at road games in this title run but has remained away from MSG for years. Leon Rose, the team’s president, typically doesn’t make himself available to reporters either, so there is an absolute mystique around the team and how it operates.
It has not always worked. Over a 25-year stretch that ended with the 2021-22 season, the Knicks had the worst record in the NBA. In the four seasons since, starting with the acquisition of point guard Jalen Brunson — a second-round pick of the 2018 draft who had played his first four NBA seasons for the Dallas Mavericks — the Knicks have the league’s fifth-best record.
And now, Brunson, voted the NBA Finals MVP, is the best player on the best team in the world.
“It means the world to me,” Brunson said.
And this year, as Frank Sinatra said, the Knicks are king of the hill, top of the heap. Some in the fan base grumbled when the Knicks declined to hang an NBA Cup championship banner after beating San Antonio for the in-season tournament title in December. Turns out, the Knicks were just waiting for something better.
So the 53-year wait is over. It was a very different league, and a very different game, in 1973.
There were 17 teams in the NBA that season, barely half of the 30 there are now. Teams called places like Buffalo, Baltimore, Kansas City-Omaha and Seattle home then; the league has expanded many times since, adding 13 teams in nine states, plus Canada and the District of Columbia.
The top salary in the league then was close to $380,000, or roughly $2.9 million in today’s dollars. There was no 3-point line then, no multibillion-dollar television deal, no international players.
The Knicks flew home on a United Airlines flight from the 1973 title clincher in Inglewood, California, and officials at Kennedy Airport expected what was then called a “rabid” crowd of fans present to greet the plane. They braced for “hundreds” of people that day.
This celebration, culminating with a championship parade Thursday in New York, will obviously be a little bigger.
“To have the fans that we have in New York City and be able to bring home a championship after all these years is absolutely amazing,” Brown said. “It’s a surreal feeling.”