{"id":735961,"date":"2026-06-14T12:16:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T12:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/735961\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T12:16:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T12:16:18","slug":"new-york-knicks-win-first-nba-championship-since-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/735961\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Knicks Win First NBA Championship Since 1973"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-testid=\"paragraph-element\" class=\"rich-text mb-6 font-graphik text-body-large text-black-coffee mt-8 focus-visible:outline focus-visible:outline-black-coffee focus-visible:outline-2 focus-visible:outline-offset-2 focus-visible:shadow-focus-color text-left\">Fans love the Knicks, but especially these Knicks. New York\u2019s starters form a cohesive five. Three of them, Brunson, Hart, and Mikal Bridges, went to the same college, Villanova, <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/7284022\/pope-villanova-leo-xiv-robert-prevost\/\" title=\"undefined\" target=\"undefined\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Pope Leo\u2019s alma mater<\/a>, where Hart won an NCAA title and Brunson and Bridges won two. \u201cMy mayor\u2019s still Muslim!\u201d a fan shouted after the Game 4 win. \u201cMy bagel\u2019s still Jewish! The Pope\u2019s on our side, Knicks in five!!!\u201d Brunson, the series MVP who scored 45 points in the clincher,\u00a0and Hart have taken their buddy act to a podcast, Roommates Show, where they talk shop and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1n64L-YW7iI\" title=\"undefined\" target=\"undefined\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">needle each other<\/a>. Brunson, whose father Rick was on the Knicks during their 1999 Finals run and is now an assistant coach with the team, is a stand-in for the outer-borough striver, underestimated at first glance, but blessed with moxie. The second-team All-NBA player is not particularly fast or athletic\u2014how does he dribble, dribble, go one way, spin the other way, take a ridiculous fadeaway at an awful angle, and sink it anyhow? Towns, imported from Minnesota, via trade, before the 2024-2025 season, has lived up to his elite rep: his shotmaking early in the series and effort to stop Wembanyama\u2014fans have given KAT flack for his D\u2014were crucial. He\u2019s also the local, a Knicks fan from central New Jersey, striving to raise a trophy for his late mother, who passed away of COVID complications in 2020, and hugging his dad, a regular presence at both home and away games.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fans love the Knicks, but especially these Knicks. New York\u2019s starters form a cohesive five. Three of them,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":735962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,726,590,85],"class_list":["post-735961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=735961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/735961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=735961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=735961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=735961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}