Brunson's 45 Carries the Knicks to Their First Title Since 1973
The Knicks hadn't won it all since 1973. Behind 45 points from a Finals MVP who kept rallying his team out of double-digit holes, that wait is finally over.
San Antonio was supposed to be the hard place to win it. Jalen Brunson made it look like home, scoring 45 points, 13 of them in a row in the fourth quarter, to push the New York Knicks past the Spurs 94-90 on Saturday and end a championship drought that stretched back to 1973.
The win closed out the NBA Finals 4-1 and handed the Knicks their first title in 53 years, the third in franchise history after the championships of 1970 and 1973. It arrived the way every New York victory in the series did: from behind. The Knicks rallied from double-digit deficits in all four of their wins, a pattern that stopped looking like luck somewhere around the third comeback.
Brunson carried the load all month. His 45 points lifted his series average to 32.6 a game and, as ESPN noted, matched Michael Jordan for the most points ever scored in a title-clinching game on the road. The Finals MVP vote was a formality. He took the Bill Russell trophy unanimously, all 11 votes, capping a playoff run Yahoo Sports called one of the great individual postseasons in league history.
The fourth quarter was the series in miniature. New York trailed, Brunson stopped sharing the ball, and the 13-point personal run turned a deficit into a lead the Knicks would not give back. Karl-Anthony Towns and Josh Hart did the unglamorous work around him, the rebounding and the defense that kept the comebacks within reach until their guard took over.
For a franchise whose drought had become its identity, the number that matters is the year. Not since 1973, the Willis Reed and Walt Frazier era, had the Knicks been champions. Two generations of fans inherited the wait. The second-seeded Spurs, a year or two ahead of most people's timelines, were expected to be the story of a building project; instead they leave as the runner-up that pushed the eventual champion to four straight escapes, a sign of how close their own window already is.
A title in New York carries a business charge, too. A championship at Madison Square Garden resets everything from ticket demand to the franchise's leverage in keeping its core together, and it ends a drought that had become a standing joke at the league's most valuable arena.
The box score will keep the 45 and the 32.6. It will not keep the moment that followed the final buzzer, when Brunson went looking through the scrum for his father. Rick Brunson is a Knicks assistant coach, and also the man who raised the kid now holding the trophy. The embrace between them said the part the stat line never reaches.
