New York Knicks win 2026 NBA Finals over San Antonio Spurs in San Antonio; 53-year title drought ends

New York Knicks 2026 NBA champions: The stats and graphics behind their first title since 1973

Jalen Brunson’s unanimous Finals MVP run, the greatest comeback in Finals history, and an international foundation carried New York to its first NBA title in 53 years. Olympics.com breaks down the numbers that defined the championship.

The New York Knicks are NBA champions for the first time since 1973, closing out the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 to win the Finals 4-1 and end a 53-year wait that had become one of the longest title droughts in men’s professional basketball .

It’s the third championship in franchise history, after the 1970 and 1973 sides led by Willis Reed and Walt Frazier , and the first delivered in the Jalen Brunson era.

Olympics.com breaks down the key numbers behind New York’s Finals triumph.

Five decades of frustration, finally over

To grasp what 2026 means, it helps to look at the wilderness years. Since their last Finals appearance in 1999, the Knicks failed to post a winning record in any season from 2001 to 2010 and missed the playoffs for seven straight seasons between 2014 and 2020.

Brunson’s arrival in free agency in 2022 reset the trajectory. New York has reached the playoffs every season since, and won 50 or more games three years in a row for the first time since the Patrick Ewing and Pat Riley teams of the 1990s. The 2025-26 side finished 53-29, took the NBA Cup in December, and was the dominant team of the playoffs.

The Knicks won their third NBA title in franchise history.

Jalen Brunson — a second-round draft pick, taken 33rd overall by the Dallas Mavericks in 2018 — was a tour de force in his first NBA Finals, averaging 32.6 points across the five games, including a Knicks Finals single-game record 45 in the Game 5 clincher in San Antonio.

For his efforts he was awarded the Bill Russell Trophy as the unanimous Finals MVP, becoming only the fourth player to win the award after being drafted in the second round, joining Knicks great Willis Reed , three-time NBA champion Dennis Johnson , and three-time league MVP Nikola Jokić .

With both players making their Finals debuts, it was Brunson (#11) who came out on top against Wembanyama.

The greatest comeback in Finals history

Game 4 will be replayed for as long as the Finals exist. Trailing by 27 at half-time and by as many as 29 in the third quarter, the Spurs looked like they were sure bets for a critical win that would even the series at 2-2 and swing momentum back in San Antonio’s favour. Instead, the Knicks outscored the Spurs 55-25 over the final 21-and-a-half minutes and won 107-106 on OG Anunoby ’s tip-in with 1.2 seconds left.

It was the largest deficit ever overturned to win a Finals game; the previous record half-time deficit overturned was 21 points, set by the Baltimore Bullets back in 1948. Brunson scored 36 and Anunoby 33 to drag New York back from the brink.

It was the latest (and most important) comeback in a postseason run filled with them. The Knicks went 6-2 in playoff games they trailed by double figures — the best such record in the 30 years of play-by-play tracking, and a world away from the middling 14-26 they managed in those spots during the regular season. Remarkably, they trailed in all five Finals games by double-digits, losing the opening quarters by a combined 57 points, yet still won four of them.

A roster drawn from around the world

The champions are also a snapshot of the modern, global NBA. New York’s roster was born across four countries: the United States, France ( Mohamed Diawara and Pacôme Dadiet ), Germany ( Ariel Hukporti ), and Great Britain, with OG Anunoby born in London.

Several other players also represent other nations while on international duty: Karl-Anthony Towns the Dominican Republic, Jordan Clarkson the Philippines, Jose Alvarado Puerto Rico, and Jeremy Sochan — who pocketed a ring after being traded from the Spurs in February — turns out for Poland. Several will carry that championship pedigree onto the world stage, with the Olympic Games Los Angeles 2028 now firmly on the horizon.

Jose Alvarado #5 of the New York Knicks and Puerto Rico.