2025-26 NBA Finals

Result

Games

Finals MVP

Jalen Brunson. Brunson won Finals MVP, averaging roughly 32.6 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 4.6 assists per game, and scored 45 points in the closeout Game 5.

Series context

The 2025-26 NBA Finals brought together the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs in a rematch of the 1999 Finals, which San Antonio won. New York entered on the back of a historic playoff run, having won 13 consecutive postseason games and posting one of the best point differentials in playoff history. San Antonio, led by Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle, reached the Finals for the first time since the Tim Duncan era. The Knicks won Game 1 105-95, overcoming a 14-point deficit behind 30 points from Jalen Brunson. New York took Game 2 on the road as well, winning 105-104 after a costly late Wembanyama turnover and a missed potential game-winner, making the Knicks one of only a few teams in Finals history to win the first two games away from home. San Antonio responded in Game 3, snapping New York's postseason winning streak with a 115-111 win behind big games from Wembanyama and Castle. Game 4 produced one of the most dramatic moments in Finals history: trailing by nearly 30 points midway through the third quarter, the Knicks erased the deficit, the largest comeback in Finals history, capped by OG Anunoby's put-back with 1.2 seconds left for a 106-105 win. New York closed out the title in Game 5, with Brunson scoring 45 points in a 94-90 win, one of the highest single-game scoring totals by a guard on the road in a championship-clinching game. The championship was the Knicks' third in franchise history and their first since 1973, ending a 53-year title drought that had been among the longest active droughts in the league. The win was built around Brunson, an undersized guard who had steadily grown into a superstar and franchise cornerstone after signing with New York in 2022, alongside a supporting cast featuring Anunoby, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Mikal Bridges. For the Spurs, the loss capped a rapid rebuild centered on the generational talent of Wembanyama, the top pick in the 2023 draft, whose rise had reestablished San Antonio as a contender only a few years after finishing among the league's worst teams. This Finals was widely noted for its historically tight competitiveness, with several games decided in the closing seconds, and for representing a passing of the torch toward a new generation of stars, even as the Knicks' long-suffering fanbase finally celebrated a title after more than five decades. The series drew historic national attention, becoming the most-watched NBA Finals since Michael Jordan's Bulls beat Utah in 1998, averaging 20.6 million viewers per game. New York's 53-year title drought had been the longest active drought in the league, pushing the Milwaukee Bucks' 50-year gap (1971-2021) into second place among modern droughts. San Antonio, the No. 2 seed at 62-20, had ended its own six-year playoff drought and completed a rebuild from a 22-60 season only a few years earlier. The Knicks' postseason was defined by comebacks: they erased double-digit deficits in all five Finals games and won four of them, finishing the full playoffs 6-2 in games they had trailed by double digits, the best such mark in the 30 years the league has tracked play-by-play data. Their 13-game playoff winning streak was the second-longest in postseason history, and their point-differential mark for a single postseason surpassed the previous record held by the 2017 Golden State Warriors.

Sources

• Wikipedia - 2026 NBA Finals
• NBA.com - The 2026 NBA Finals prove historically clutch as Knicks win 3rd championship
• ESPN - Knicks' title-clinching win vs. Spurs most-watched NBA Finals Game 5 since 1998
• NBA.com - 5 stats that define the New York Knicks' championship run
• Fox Sports - Wembanyama leads Spurs to end 6-season playoff drought