Knicks win first NBA title in 53 years. No champion has kept the title since 2018.
New York beat San Antonio 94-90 in Game 5 to win the NBA Finals 4-1, a first title since 1973. Jalen Brunson scored 45 and was named Finals MVP.
What happened
The Knicks beat the Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 in San Antonio to win the Finals 4-1 — their first NBA championship since 1973, with Jalen Brunson named Finals MVP.
The New York Knicks won the NBA Finals four games to one. They beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 on . It is the club’s third championship and its first since 1973. Jalen Brunson scored 45 points in the last game and was named Finals MVP, the best player of the series.
The series ran from 3 to and was full of close finishes. New York came back from 10 or more points down in all four of its wins, and won the title away from home. For San Antonio, the first Finals of the Victor Wembanyama era ended one round short of a sixth title.
New York waited 53 years, one of the longest waits in major American sport. The title also fits a pattern of the modern NBA. No team has won two titles in a row since Golden State in 2018, and the Knicks are the eighth different champion in eight seasons.
The Pattern
No team has kept the NBA title since Golden State in 2018. We looked at recent champions to see how often the same team won again. Every season since 2019 has had a different champion, and teams that waited a long time keep winning. The last ten years ended more long waits for a title than the thirty years before them.
Show the other 3 cases
The Read
The result fits the story of this era. Under the current rules between the league and its players, heavy tax on the most expensive teams breaks up costly squads, so it has become very hard to keep a team of stars together. The title has gone to eight different teams in eight years. New York built around Brunson, a player picked in the middle of the first round of the draft, not around three big stars, and that is the kind of team the rules now favour. The Knicks had the East’s most durable core and the best player in the Finals.
The doubt is that the score flattered New York. Four wins from 10 or more points down owe as much to luck as to strength. Change two of those close finishes and the Spurs could have won. San Antonio returns next season with the best young player in the game and Finals experience. The Knicks now face the other side of the pattern: no champion has kept the title since 2018. The trophy is theirs for ever, but on recent evidence the crown lasts one year.
Disclaimer
Hunch works only from sources that are publicly available, and publishes on the basis of analysis of that material. We do not form an editorial opinion or take sides, we give a simpler and wider view of news that already exists. If information in a source we used was inaccurate, distorted, or later disputed but had already entered our analysis, Hunch accepts no liability for that. Predictions are not advice. Phase 1 markets use Hunch Points, not money.
Published by Hunch under the Editorial Code. Complaints and corrections: /contact/.