'Surreal': New York Knicks win NBA championship for first time in 53 years

Jalen Brunson and the Comeback Knicks did it over again. And at present they're the defend Knicks.

For the number one clip in 53 years, New York rules the NBA. Brunson scored 45 points, including 13 straight for New York in the fourth quarter, and the Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday night.

The Knicks won the series 4-1, rallying from double-digit deficits in all four of those victories. The deficit was 16 on Saturday night. Brunson and the Knicks were never fazed.

"I have no words," Brunson said during the on-court celebration.

"It's everything I ever dreamed of."

Brunson, fittingly, closed with a flourish. He set a Knicks record for points in a 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 point guard who changed the franchise's fortunes when he arrived four years ago.

"It's surreal," Knicks coach Mike Brown, who was hired a year ago — making him the franchise's 24th coach since the franchise's last championship in 1973. "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 the same — combined to score 27 points. Bridges had 14, 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.

"This is the biggest lesson of my life, the biggest learning moment," Wembanyama said. "I can't tell exactly what the lesson is, but we're learning."

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The Knicks improved to 4-0 in closeout opportunities this season, winning them all on the road. 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 53 years 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 truck — 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 on Wednesday night. 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," Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. "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 in the play-by-play era, which started in the 1996-97 season, to lead five finals games by 10 points or more in first quarters.

The Knicks simply could not make a shot, 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 a finals game since Game 7 of Lakers-Celtics in 2010, and the combined 31.8 per cent field goals shooting by the Knicks and Spurs was the lowest in the first half of a finals game 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 that the Spurs call home.

A Texas three-step of titles, and this one was surely the sweetest of all.

"It's why I came to New York," Brunson said.

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