New York Knicks’ NBA Finals victory delivers a new identity

SAN ANTONIO — The New York Knicks will have their championship parade Thursday, one the team, the city, and generations of fans and players have been awaiting since 1973, when the franchise won its last title.

In the immediate aftermath of the Knicks’ championship-clinching 94-90 victory over San Antonio on Saturday, the corridors in the bowels of Frost Bank Center were congested like an intersection in Midtown Manhattan. There were Knicks players, family members, friends and media recording the moment.

From player and team executives, the most commonly used word was “surreal.” The phrase everyone used was, “I can’t put my mind around this yet.”

Everyone was simultaneously in the moment and outside of the moment.

“It’s really hard right now to put it into words,” Allan Houston, the Knicks senior advisor of leadership development, said as he walked down a corridor toward the Knicks’ jubilant locker room. Houston, who played for New York from 1999-2005, is also the general manager of the G League Westchester Knicks. “I’m processing the win, but I haven’t processed the championship yet.”

Jalen Brunson, the Knicks’ engine that could and the Finals MVP, told reporters that he was overwhelmed. After coming through time after time when the Knicks needed him and largely remaining stoic, Brunson finally allowed himself a moment.

After shaking hands with Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson, Brunson said that when he turned around and saw his father, Knicks assistant coach Rick Brunson, he was overcome.

“I walked right to halfcourt, shook Mitch Johnson’s hand, and then turned around and my dad was there, and felt emotional from that point on,” Brunson said.

Brunson’s clutch performance during these NBA Finals will propel him up the ladder of Knicks legends — past Bernard King and past Patrick Ewing.

This puts him at the right hand of Walt Frazier, 81, who has two Knicks championships rings. During the Eastern Conference finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers, I asked Frazier if he thought his stature would change if Brunson led the Knicks to an NBA title. He said it would not, “because people are going to say, ‘He’s only got one ring. Clyde has two.’”

Brunson was a second-round draft selection by the Dallas Mavericks in 2017 and was doubted and second guessed for much of his early career. Asked how he felt about being on top of the NBA world at age 29, he said it was surreal.

“It hasn’t sunk in,” he said. “I honestly don’t know right now.”

For generations of Knicks supporters, an entire identity has been formed around being “long-suffering Knicks fans.” The new identity of being NBA champions will take some getting used to.

Even for a journalist with more than five decades of experience, putting this moment and these emotions in perspective is a challenge. The only comparison for a fan base is being present when the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs won their first World Series championships this century. Boston’s 2004 championship ended the franchise’s 86-year dry spell; the Cubs’ 2016 title ended a 108-year drought.

Try those on for size.

Still, for a former Knicks player-turned executive like Houston, and a basketball lifer like Rick Brunson, this championship moment marks a series of incredible full-circle moments.

Houston was 2 years old in 1973 when the Knicks won their last championship, and was 25 when he joined the Knicks in 1996. Houston said that before Saturday night’s championship, his best Knicks moment came in 1999, when they reached the NBA Finals.

While they lost that series to the San Antonio Spurs 4-1, Houston said the joy of even reaching the Finals that year set New York City on fire.

“Even though we didn’t win it, it was the greatest moment, because it’s the highest stage you can ever play on,” he said.

Houston said sharing this Knicks team’s climb to the championship was gratifying beyond anything he could have imagined.

“It’s hard to get here,” he said. “Very hard. Being able to be a part of seeing the journey for these guys who you get to spend time with — to see their journey and process individually and collectively — it’s incredible. It’s incredible to be a part of a championship team in New York. It’s kind of hard to process right now.”

Rick Brunson, who celebrates his 54th birthday today, was a month old in May 1973. He was Houston’s teammate on that 1999 Knicks team. On Saturday, he and Jalen became the first father-son duo in NBA history to each reach the NBA Finals with the same franchise. Brunson was able to hug and cry with his son on the victory stand.

“In ’99, it was a great run for us, but I would say now it’s more exciting for me as a father to see your son on the stage and performing,” Brunson said during a recent interview.

When asked about his relationship with his son, Rick Brunson once told me, “The most important thing about a father is that you can’t be a fan. You’ve got to be a father. With my son and me, I’m his father. I’m not your friend, I’m not your buddy, I’m not a fan. He doesn’t cross that line, and I don’t cross that line.”

After Saturday’s victory, Brunson hugged his son in a long embrace that went viral. They crossed the line together.

Jalen Brunson is an NBA superstar. His father was a journeyman player. Brunson said watching his dad claw and scrape for his career taught him how to be clutch and redefined pressure.

“I’ve described pressure in the past,” he said. “My dad being on eight or nine unguaranteed contracts throughout his career and not knowing when you’re going to get cut, when a team is going to move on from you, while your family is on the East Coast, and you are wherever you are in the country — that’s pressure. Working out three times a day in the summertime and watching him push himself just to get a training camp deal, that’s pressure.”

Saturday was an evening of lessons learned, and goals achieved.

While the Knicks celebrated on the Spurs’ home court, Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs’ 22-year-old, 7-foot-4 center, spoke to reporters about disappointment.

Throughout the playoffs, Wembanyama has been projected to become one of the greatest players in NBA history, and the Spurs have been touted as a young team destined for multiple championship appearances.

In their finals debut, they lost three game at home after building double-digit lead in each.

“I think that compared to anything before, this is the biggest lesson of my life, the biggest learning moment,” Wembanyama said. “I can’t tell you exactly what the lesson is, but we’re learning from that, for sure. I’m learning more than any other time in my life before.”

Much as had happened at Madison Square Garden after Game 4 when the Knicks came back from a 29-point deficit to win, fans lingered here two hours after the final buzzer.

These fans were not the rioters, not the hyenas who had beaten a Spurs fan in New York into a coma, not the fools who had thrown eggs at Wembanyama. They were a legion of long-suffering Knicks fans who had become as much a part of the story as the team.

They took over State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia and Rocket Arena in Cleveland earlier in this championship run. Now they were out in force here, fans allowing players to celebrate and bask in the glow of a special moment.

In the end, things turned out perfectly. The Knicks won the championship, but did so away from Madison Square Garden, which become a political landmine in a war of words between New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Knicks owner James Dolan.

Had there been a Game 6 in New York, the Garden one again would have been transformed into a moshpit of obscene ticket prices, celebrity wealth and grandstanding politicians.

Saturday night was perfect. The joy was focused on the players, friends, family and fans. Now, Mamdani can get back to governing the city while Dolan can bask in the glow of a championship and get back to running the Garden.

There will be a parade Thursday. On that day, the New York Knicks will have their moment and the greatest city on Earth can, at long last, cheer.