06/13/26 10:44:00
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06/13 22:42 CDT The Comeback Knicks are the Champion Knicks. Brunson scores 45,
and New York tops Spurs for title
The Comeback Knicks are the Champion Knicks. Brunson scores 45, and New York
tops Spurs for title
By TIM REYNOLDS
AP Basketball Writer
SAN ANTONIO (AP) --- Jalen Brunson and the Comeback Knicks did it again. And
now they're the Champion Knicks.
For the first time in 53 years, New York rules the NBA. Brunson scored 45
points, including 13 straight for New York in the fourth quarter, and the
Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday
night.
The Knicks won the series 4-1, rallying from double-digit deficits in all four
of those victories. The deficit was 16 on Saturday night. Brunson and the
Knicks were never fazed.
"I have no words," Brunson said during the on-court celebration. "It's
everything I ever dreamed of."
Brunson, fittingly, closed with a flourish. He set a Knicks record for points
in a finals game; it had been 38 by Willis Reed against the Los Angeles Lakers
in Game 3 of the 1970 series. It now belongs to the left-handed point guard who
changed the franchise's fortunes when he arrived four years ago.
Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart --- the other two parts of the "Nova Knicks" trio
that also includes Brunson, three players who were NCAA champions at Villanova
and teamed up in New York to try to do the same --- combined to score 27
points. Bridges had 14, Hart 13.
"I don't know what I'm feeling," Brunson said. "I'm in awe. Whenever someone
counted us out, we found a way to come back and do something about it."
Dylan Harper scored 25 for the Spurs, who got 19 points, 14 rebounds and five
blocked shots from Victor Wembanyama.
The Knicks improved to 4-0 in closeout opportunities this season, winning them
all on the road. It didn't feel like the road, though --- not with thousands of
New York faithful having made the trip to Texas to see a moment 53 years in the
making.
New York got to the brink of this title by rallying from 29 points down in Game
4 to win 107-106 on OG Anunoby's tip-in with 1.2 seconds left on Wednesday
night. It was the largest comeback in NBA Finals history and the biggest
comeback in any game this season, regular season or playoffs.
By comparison, then, a 16-point rally in this one seemed easy.
The game followed the same script in the opening minutes as all the others in
the series, with the Spurs taking a double-digit lead in the first quarter and
then frittering most of it away in the second quarter.
The Spurs became the first team in the play-by-play era, which started in the
1996-97 season, to lead five finals games by 10 points or more in first
quarters.
The Knicks simply could not make a shot, missing on 16 of their first 18 tries
and each of their first 11 two-point attempts. There even was a point in the
second quarter when Wembanyama had more blocked shots (five) than the Knicks
had made shots (four). San Antonio's lead was as many as 10 in the first
quarter, as many as 16 in the second.
Of course, none of it mattered much. As always, the Knicks came back.
A 22-9 run in the second quarter got New York within three, before Devin
Vassell scored just before the halftime buzzer to give San Antonio a 42-37 edge
at the break.
And that capped an opening 24 minutes of either offensive ineptitude or
defensive prowess, depending on perspective. The 79 combined points in the
first half were the lowest in a finals game since Game 7 of Lakers-Celtics in
2010, and the combined 31.8% field goals shooting by the Knicks and Spurs was
the lowest in the first half of a finals game in the play-by-play era.
Brunson won NCAA crowns twice with Villanova --- both in Texas, the 2016 one in
Houston and the 2018 one in San Antonio, just a few miles away from the arena
that the Spurs call home.
A Texas three-step of titles, and this one was surely the sweetest of all.
___
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
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