New York's Long Wait Is Finally Over: Knicks Win the 2026 NBA Championship

53 years of heartbreak, near-misses and a franchise's worth of broken promises. The New York Knicks are NBA champions.

Jalen Brunson scored 45 point as New York defeated the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 to win the series 4-1 and bring a championship back to Madison Square Garden for the first time since 1973.

All four of those wins came after being double-digits down.

Brunson Joins The Greats

This wasn’t supposed to happen, let alone with a 6-foot-1 point guard against a 7-foot-4 alien named Victor Wembanyama. But Jalen Brunson doesn't care about what's supposed to happen.

Brunson scored 45 of his team’s 94 points in Game 5, 15 of them in the last quarter after New York found itself down 10 with just over eight minutes remaining to play.

Then he scored 10 in a row to tie it, capping a 21-7 match-ending run.

Brunson's floater with 1:06 remaining did the trick, getting over Stephon Castle and giving the Knicks the lead for good.

Those 45 points tied Michael Jordan for the most scored on the road in a closeout game. Brunson was the unanimous choice for Finals MVP, getting all 11 media members’ votes. He averaged 32.6 points, 4.6 assists and 4.2 rebounds in the series.

He also now owns Knicks franchise records for most 30-point games in the NBA Finals (four) and most points in a Finals game (45), passing legends Walt Frazier and Willis Reed.

A Series Like No Other

The Spurs weren't a pushover. The Spurs led by as many as 29 in Game 4 and outscored the Knicks in the first quarter of all five games by a combined 57 points.

In fact, this is the only Finals series in history where each and every game was within five points in the last five minutes, according to ESPN.

But the Knicks, battle-scarred from years of playoff heartbreak, knew how to end games. Spurs continued to build leads. New York kept erasing them.

The Journey So Far

This team earned it the hard way. The Knicks entered as the No. 3 seed, swept Philadelphia in the second round and then swept Cleveland 4-0 in the Eastern Conference Finals, winning 11 straight games on the way to the Finals.

Meanwhile, San Antonio had just dispatched the Oklahoma City Thunder in a brutal seven-game Western Conference series.

Josh Hart had 11 rebounds in the championship game. Mikal Bridges had 14 points and three threes. Mitchell Robinson dominated the glass but all in all this was Brunson’s team, Brunson’s moment, Brunson’s title.

The 53 year wait is over, New York is a city of Champions once again.