Brunson delivers again as Knicks win NBA title
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Jalen Brunson and the Comeback Knicks did it again and now they’re the Champion Knicks, beating San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals.
It secured New York a 4-1 series win and their first NBA title in 53 years.
Brunson scored 45 points, including 13 straight for New York in the fourth quarter on Saturday night (Sunday AEST), and was awarded the NBA Finals MVP award.
The Knicks have overturned 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
AP