The New York Knicks defeat the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 to win the 2026 NBA Finals.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Complete coverage:\u00a02026 NBA Finals<\/a> Steve Aschburner<\/p>\n The league might be able to wring one more year out of its quirky parity streak of eight different franchises <\/a>winning championships in the past eight years. The math is getting dicey and the probability greater that one of these eight recent champs since 2019 will find its way back to a second Larry O\u2019Brien Trophy. But from what Victor Wembanyama and his San Antonio teammates and coaches showed across four rounds of the playoffs, they would be an easy favorite if you were picking the group most likely to be the ninth.<\/p>\n The Spurs showed up a little early in their life cycle for the Finals. They got stuck against a Knicks team that got blistering hot at precisely the right time. But the lessons they absorbed along the way<\/a> against Portland, Minnesota, especially OKC and New York will stoke Wembanyama\u2019s and the other players\u2019 summers and be on display from the start in 2026-27. The trophy is going to keep traveling.<\/p>\n Brian Martin<\/p>\n Check out the best highlights from Jalen Brunson’s MVP-winning performance in The Finals.<\/p>\n Jalen Brunson is undeniable. It doesn\u2019t matter that he\u2019s undersized. It doesn\u2019t matter that he\u2019s a second-round pick. It doesn\u2019t matter that he didn\u2019t get a contract extension from Dallas. It doesn\u2019t matter that his signing with New York received mixed reactions. Brunson has forever silenced his doubters and his critics by leading the Knicks to their first championship in 53 years.<\/p>\n And he capped it off with a performance matched only by the great Michael Jordan, scoring 45 points on the road in a Finals-clinching game. That included a stretch of 13 straight Knicks points in the fourth quarter, a personal 13-2 run that gave New York its first lead since the score was 5-4 in the first quarter. Once again, New York had overcome a double-digit deficit, and once again, it was Brunson leading the charge. After the final buzzer sounded, Brunson was the unanimous choice for Finals MVP<\/a> after averaging 32.6 points, 4.2 rebounds and 4.6 assists in the series. His selection was \u2026 undeniable.<\/p>\n Shaun Powell<\/p>\n The Spurs couldn\u2019t keep a lead. This will serve as the historical footnote of the series after Jalen Brunson\u2019s sheer will to win. The Spurs led by double-digits every game and held the lead for roughly 70% of the series \u2026 and only won one game. That\u2019s almost unfathomable, simply from the standpoint of basketball logic. The knee jerk will give them a pass because of their youth \u2013 but youth wasn\u2019t an issue in the seven-game Western Conference Finals<\/a> against the defending champs. If the Spurs don\u2019t return to The Finals for a spell, they might rue this first experience and how they let it slip away.<\/p>\n John Schuhmann<\/p>\n Jalen Brunson scores 45 points as the Knicks clinch Game 5 on the road, beating the Spurs to win their first title since 1973.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to be comfortable being uncomfortable. This was an incredibly competitive series, the first Finals in the 30 years for which we have play-by-play data where every game was within five points in the last five minutes<\/a>. And it was closer than that, because all five were within two points in the last two minutes.<\/p>\n In gut-check time, the Spurs just weren\u2019t comfortable, making both mental and physical mistakes. The Knicks, however, knew exactly what they were doing. Jalen Brunson had the ball in his hands (he had an incredible clutch usage rate of 53.3%<\/a> in the series) he was going to determine where it was going, and it didn\u2019t matter if he had a 7-foot-4 guy<\/a> in front of him.<\/p>\n
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