Jalen Brunson entered a sports pantheon reserved for legendary figures. Names such as Ruth, Mantle, Jeter, Taylor, Namath, Reed, and Frazier are revered in New York.

Brunson added his name to this exclusive club after leading the New York Knicks to their first NBA title since 1973. Brunson will be worshiped like a conquering hero for the rest of his life. His story will be told thousands of times. There will be a generation of young players who will emulate him. His legend will only grow as time passes.

Because he brought home an NBA championship to New York, Brunson earned a special badge of honor. When you win a basketball chip for New York, you get extra special treatment and recognition. He is arguably the greatest Knickerbocker. Basketball is deeply embedded in the fabric of New York. There are dozens of basketball courts spread across the five boroughs. And outside of a few pockets of Nets fans across Brooklyn, the vast majority of New Yorkers are Knicks fans.

“People don’t understand the weight of that jersey,” Knicks forward Josh Hart, Brunson’s teammate at Villanova, said about being a New York Knick.

Brunson understood the weight of wearing a New York Knicks jersey. He understood the assignment when he signed a team-friendly four-year, $104 million free agent contract in 2022. In four years, Brunson did something other Knicks greats like Patrick Ewing, Bernard King, and Carmelo Anthony couldn’t do. The fan base loved all of them. But none of them completed the job. Brunson was the one who carried the Knicks across the finish line. He won a chip. He ended decades of heartache and misery for a proud franchise.

Brunson has only been a New York Knick for four years, but winning a championship puts him on a whole different level.

“He’s a top-three MVP candidate,” Knicks head coach Mike Brown said of his point guard, who received the Bill Russell award for winning MVP of the 2026 NBA Finals.

“People say he’s too small,” Brown said. “People say he’s a 1-B or 2-B or whatever. He is a freaking 1-A. He is an MVP candidate, and I hope — and I’m talking to the media more than the fans — I hope you guys recognize what this man is about because he is an A1 MVP. He is him. He is him.

“Jalen Brunson is him when it comes to New York basketball. He is freaking him, man.”

Brunson, who is listed at 6-2, became the fourth second-round pick to win Finals MVP. The last second-round pick to win Finals MVP was Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic in 2023.

Despite winning two NCAA titles at Villanova, Brunson kept hearing the same negative scouting reports. Too short. Too slow. But all he does is win. He keeps proving the doubters wrong. He certainly made a believer out of the San Antonio Spurs.

The Knicks captain averaged 32.6 points per game in the five-game series against the Spurs. He didn’t shoot particularly well (42.1% from the field), but he was magical when it mattered most. He scored 15 of his 45 points in the fourth quarter of Game 5. It was the most points scored in a road close-out game of the NBA Finals since Michael Jordan did it in 1998.

Game 5 played out the same as the previous four Finals games. The Spurs jumped out to a big lead in the first quarter. The Knicks slowly chipped away. The Spurs struggled to close out the game. Once the game got tight, it was Brunson — dubbed Captain Clutch for making big shots in the weighty moments — who seized the moment and put the Knicks on his back.

Brunson made a driving layup with 4:38 left in the fourth to tie the game at 83, capping off a 10-0 Knicks run. Then with 3:40 remaining, he drew a foul on Devin Vassell while shooting a 3-point shot. He knocked down all three free throws to give the Knicks the lead at 86-85.

Karl-Anthony Towns picked up his fifth foul with 1:53 left while defending 7-foot-5 Victor Wembanyama. The Spurs pushed the lead to 88-86 after Wemby made one of two free throws.

After Spurs rookie Dylan Harper tied the game at 88 with a short turnaround jumper in the paint, Brunson delivered a quick and decisive response on the next possession as he dribbled past Stephon Castle, who made him work for every shot in the series, with a floater from inside the dotted lines to give the Knicks the lead at 90-88 with 1:06 remaining in the game.

The Knicks never relinquished the lead. Brunson finished Game 5 making 14 of 27 shots from the field and four of seven 3-pointers. It was his fourth game with 30-plus points. No other Knick scored more than 14 points in Game 5, and only four tallied double figures.

“He is generationally great offensively,” Knicks guard Landry Shamet said of Brunson, the NBA’s clutch player of the year in 2025.

“There’s not a whole lot to say,” Shamet added. “We all saw it. He carried us in many different ways. What he does is not really a surprise to us anymore.”

When a reporter asked Brunson if he felt any added pressure to deliver a title to New York, he said there was “no pressure whatsoever.”

“I’ve described pressure in the past, my dad being on eight or nine unguaranteed contracts for his career,” Brunson said. “Not knowing whether he’ll get cut, when a team needs to move on from you while your family is on the East Coast or wherever you are in the country, that’s pressure.”

Jalen Brunson witnessed his dad, Rick, work out three times a day in the summertime and watched him push himself just to get a training camp call-up. He said that was real pressure.

“I’m very fortunate to be in the position I am, and I’d like to think I’ve worked pretty hard,” the 29-year-old Brunson said. “So when an opportunity presents itself like it did [in Game 5], I just trust my work. I’m never afraid to fail.”

Brunson has skyrocketed into the national consciousness this postseason after barely being a blip on the radar. The NBA is seeing historic viewership thanks to Brunson’s Knicks and Wemby’s Spurs. The Knicks-Spurs series averaged nearly 20 million viewers, the highest viewership in 28 years. The basketball world is now seeing what New York has known.

Euphoric New Yorkers flooded the streets to celebrate the Knicks’ historic moment, many of them chanting Brunson’s name. One New York superfan captured what many Knicks fans feel about their newest idol.

“Jalen Brunson is my doctor. He’s my engineer. He’s my mechanic. He’s my subway driver. He’s my pilot. He’s my dad,” the fan said.

“Everything I did was for Jalen Brunson.”

The Knicks had four winning seasons in a 21-year span before Brunson arrived. They’ve had four winning seasons since Brunson’s arrival. They’ve now won eight playoff series with Brunson in the lineup; they won seven series, total, from 1998 through 2022. With Brunson leading the way, the Knicks have been to two conference semifinals, two conference finals, and one NBA Finals.

After completing a season in which he led the Knicks to an NBA Cup title and the franchise’s first NBA title in five decades, it’s safe to say that Jalen Brunson has earned the title of KNY — King of New York.

Joel Huerto is editor and publisher of OneManFastBreak.net. He hosts a sports podcast on YouTube @onemanfastbreak1.

Karl-Anthony Towns had a great view of the greatest offensive rebound in NBA Finals history. Towns was fighting for position under the basket when the “right hand from God” suddenly appeared and handed the New York Knicks a miracle win.

With the San Antonio Spurs clinging to a one-point lead with 5.7 seconds left in the game, Jalen Brunson took an inbounds pass from OG Anunoby and launched a long 3-point shot over two players, one of them being 7-foot-5 Victor Wembanyama. The contested shot clanked off the front of the rim and went straight up.

After seeing his defender De’Aaron Fox double team Brunson, Anunoby crashed the boards and timed his jump perfectly, soaring over Dylan Harper and Devin Vassell. Anunoby’s tip-in with 1.2 seconds left lifted the Knicks to a 107-106 victory and a 3-1 lead in the series.

“I inbounded the ball to Jalen [Brunson]. He got a pretty good look. I just went in and crashed,” Anunoby said of one of the most iconic plays in New York sports history.

“That has to be the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “I’m not you guys. You guys know better than me. But it was just unbelievable.”

A euphoric crowd inside Madison Square Garden — many of whom bought tickets averaging around a staggering $7,200 — sang along to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” a few minutes after watching something that seemed almost impossible.

The Knicks were down by 29 points in the third quarter, and they were down 20 with under 10 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. They could have folded their tent and shifted their focus on the next game. Instead, they kept battling. After the dust settled, it was the largest comeback in NBA Finals history.

“Shout-out to our fans. They stuck with us,” Towns said. “We found a way to get it done.”

Towns gave OG a big bear hug as he ran down the court. After the Knicks made one final stop on the Spurs’ last possession, Towns let all his emotions out after the buzzer sounded.

“We gave ourselves a chance,” Towns said. “Sometimes you get lucky. We made our luck today.”

The Knicks may have been lucky to win the game, but luck had little to do with Anunoby’s hustle. Prior to his game-winning putback, Anunoby made the game-saving play with 12 seconds left.

After Brunson missed a floater while being defended by Wembanyama, the ball ricocheted off Harper and Josh Hart. Towns went after the loose ball, but he slapped the ball into the Knicks backcourt. Fox and Anunoby both chased down the loose ball. Fox won the foot race and could have ran out the clock or get fouled. Either one of those two choices would have been the smart basketball play. But Fox inexplicably went for a layup and his attempt got rejected by Anunoby.

Jose Alvarado grabbed the loose ball and the Knicks called time-out, setting up one of the craziest sequences you’ll ever see.

“I fell on the floor. I couldn’t really see. I don’t know. I just saw the block,” Wembanyama said on Fox’s decision to go for the layup instead of running out the clock.

Wembanyama admitted the loss was a painful one to absorb, knowing how close the Spurs were in tying the series.

“We stopped moving the ball,” Wemby said. “We stopped executing.”

When asked why the Spurs managed just 30 points in the second half after a scorching 76-point first half, Wembanyama said there were a multitude of factors that contributed to the collapse. He mentioned greed being one of them. The Spurs kept jacking up 3-pointers early in the shot clock throughout the fourth quarter, allowing the Knicks to chip away at the lead.

“I think it began before [the fourth quarter],” Wembanyama said of the Spurs’ collapse. “I can’t really explain it right now. I don’t know. … We clearly weren’t the most hungry in the second half.”

The last 39 seconds of Game 2 in the 2026 NBA Finals wasn’t Victor Wembanyama’s finest moment.

The San Antonio Spurs’ 7-foot-5 all-world center came up small in the most crucial time. He missed two shots that could have given the Spurs the lead. He committed a crucial turnover that led to a Jalen Brunson free throw, giving the New York Knicks a 105-104 victory to take a 2-0 lead in the series.

“I threw that one away. I messed up,” Wembanyama told reporters after the game. “We didn’t play great as a team. We needed to win that game. That game was ours. But at this point, it’s done.”

The late-game gaffe was so unexpected given how Wembanyama had been playing throughout his first playoff run.

With the game tied at 104, the Spurs called on Wemby’s number to break the tie. He took a tough, contested 18-foot pullup jumper from the left wing against Mitchell Robinson and missed. OG Anunoby grabbed the rebound and the Knicks called timeout.

Jalen Brunson, who was spectacular in closing the show in Game 1, missed a 16-footer with 13.5 seconds left. The Spurs regained possession after Wembanyama grabbed the rebound. For a brief moment, the Spurs had a great opportunity to take the lead and tie the series at 1-1. It was three seconds Wembanyama would love to have back. All the work the Spurs put forth in erasing a 14-point deficit in the fourth quarter came crashing down in three forgettable seconds.

The play started with a Wemby rebound after he forced Brunson into a tough shot. As Wemby turned up the court, he took one dribble and inexplicably tossed the ball off Stephon Castle’s back, who clearly wasn’t expecting a pass as he ran up the court. Castle said once he saw Wembanyama secure the rebound he wanted to give Wemby “some space” to dribble up the court, so he was anticipating Wemby would bring the ball up himself, especially with time winding down.

Spurs coach Mitch Johnson could have called timeout to set up a play, but it’s difficult to blame the coach for not calling timeout because his best player already had the ball in his hands with a full head of steam. It was Wembanyama’s game to win or lose.

“I need to have more poise, more control over the game,” Wembanyama said. “That’s the most frustrating thing, to throw it away after putting in all this work.”

Brunson grabbed the loose ball and a frustrated Wembanyama compounded the mistake by fouling Brunson near the sideline. Brunson made one of two free throws to give the Knicks a one-point lead with 9.5 seconds left.

Wembanyama had one last opportunity to redeem himself. On the final possession, a two-man action between Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox freed up Wembanyama for a clean look from about 20 feet on the right wing with 2.0 seconds left. The shot clanked off the rim and the Knicks were able to hang on for the win.

Wembanyama was asked after the game if he liked the look he got on the final shot.

“I like the shot. But I feel like at this moment you need to shoot to score,” said Wembanyama, who finished with a game-high 29 points, grabbed nine rebounds and had four blocked shots. None of those statistics matter to him because he didn’t get the job done when his team needed it most.

“In moments like this, results matter more than process,” he said. “We just need to score. I need to score.”

As the leader of the youngest team to reach the NBA Finals in 49 years, the 22-year-old Wembanyama is doing the right thing by owning his mistakes and not pointing fingers. And the Spurs wouldn’t be in this position without Wembanyama. He is the biggest reason why the Spurs are ahead of schedule. He will learn from this “blurry” moment as he called it. The game got blurry down the stretch because the action was moving too fast for the young Frenchman.

“Am I going to regret it? Yes, of course. Am I going to use that to fuel me? Yes, absolutely,” said a humbled Wembanyama.

There is no manual for winning championships. You have to experience it for yourself to gain championship knowledge. And sometimes you have to be humbled in order to be great.

Michael Jordan got humbled by the Detroit Pistons before he won six championships. Before he became the Black Mamba, Kobe Bryant shot three air balls in a humbling playoff loss to the Utah Jazz. LeBron James got swept by Tim Duncan’s Spurs the first time he reached the NBA Finals.

Every great player goes through growing pains. Wembanyama is going through it as well.

The Knicks are now just the third team to win the first two games of a finals on the road, joining Jordan and the 1993 Chicago Bulls, and Hakeem Olajuwon and the 1995 Houston Rockets. Both of those teams won championships. The Bulls needed six games to oust the Phoenix Suns, the Rockets going home after winning those first two games in Orlando and sweeping Shaquille O’Neal and the Magic.