But here we are, and hopefully it won’t take that long again! He grabbed it and lifted it skyward with a yell. “Hey New York! I’m sorry it took so long!
Knowing New York had waited 53 years to see the Knicks hoist the NBA championship trophy, owner James Dolan didn’t even wait to be handed the 30-pound gold-plated prize. The New York Knicks are champions of the NBA for the first time since 1973, beating the San Antonio Spurs in five games for this title. The clincher came Saturday night in a 94-90 victory, the Knicks’ fourth comeback win of the series.
“I want to say something to New York,” Dolan shouted.
The Knicks — who won 13 consecutive games at one point in this playoff run and rallied from 29 points down to win Game 4 of the finals at MSG — are the toast of the town.
“But it’s been amazing. “New York is definitely one of the few that you could say that to in all three facets. And now, Brunson — the finals MVP — is the best player on the best team in the world. Turns out, the Knicks were just waiting for something better.
It took them 80 years — the Knicks won the first game in NBA history in 1946, three years before what was then the Basketball Association of America started being known as the National Basketball Association — but the franchise has now become the ninth that can say it has at least three championships. There were 17 teams in the NBA that season, barely half of the 30 that there are now. Teams called places Buffalo, Baltimore, Kansas City-Omaha and Seattle home then; the league has expanded many times since, adding 13 teams in nine different states, plus Canada and the District of Columbia.
Some will say it’s the first “major” professional sports championship for New York in more than 14 years; that would be true when counting only Major League Baseball, the NFL, the NHL and the NBA, though it would be wrong to ignore the New York Liberty’s run to the 2024 WNBA title and New York City FC winning the MLS Cup in 2021. “Of course I’ve never seen anything like it, because it’d never happened before,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said of the Game 4 comeback in an interview on NBA TV on Saturday. “There are a couple of franchises that are pretty iconic just because of the history that they have, the location that they’re in, sometimes even the building that they’re in,” said Knicks coach Mike Brown, who won this title in his first season with the club. And this year, as Frank Sinatra said, the Knicks are king of the hill, top of the heap.
Some in the fan base grumbled when the Knicks declined to hang an NBA Cup championship banner after beating San Antonio for the in-season tournament title earlier this season.
