The New York Knicks are in the NBA Finals tonight. Knicks vs Spurs Game 1, 8:30 PM ET, Frost Bank Center in San Antonio. I’ve been waiting 27 years for this sentence and I’m absolutely going to throw up reading it.
Yes, we built this team with a credit card. Yes, Jalen Brunson came from Dallas as a free agent. Yes, Karl-Anthony Towns arrived in a trade that cost us Julius Randle and required significant financial commitment. Yes, OG Anunoby came from Toronto. Yes, Mikal Bridges cost us five first-round picks and somehow we still did it. I know. I KNOW.
Winning doesn’t care how you got there.
The last time the New York Knicks played in the NBA Finals was 1999. I was in third grade. I didn’t fully understand what was happening. What I do understand now, as a 35-year-old who has watched this franchise commit malpractice on itself for two and a half decades, is that 27 years of drought doesn’t wash away because of your methodology.
You think the 1973 championship rings have asterisks on them because of how that roster was constructed? Nobody cares. A banner is a banner.
https://twitter.com/NBA/status/2060919273644560440
Jalen Brunson just had 26.9 points and 6.6 assists per game through 14 playoff games. Unanimous ECF MVP. He swept the Cleveland Cavaliers with 25.5 PPG and 7.8 APG and won Game 4 by 37. The Knicks have won 11 consecutive games. ELEVEN. This team is actually good.
And yet.
Game 1 is in San Antonio. At Frost Bank Center. In the building where Victor Wembanyama — 22 years old, 7-foot-4, 3.1 blocks per game, unanimous Defensive Player of the Year, casual Western Conference Finals MVP — will be playing in front of a crowd that has been waiting for this since the Tim Duncan era ended. The Spurs went 62-20 this season. Sixty-two wins. They’re favored by 4.5.
I’m choosing to interpret playing Game 1 in San Antonio as a compliment. It means we’re here. It means we made them earn home court. It means we’re the reason Wembanyama has a Finals.
(My dad just texted me “1999 was different they were an 8 seed” and I am not responding to that right now.)
The 1999 thing is real, though. We lost in five. Avery Johnson hit the game-winner in the clincher. Tim Duncan collected his first ring. That Knicks team was an 8-seed miracle, Patrick Ewing hurt, running on chaos and Allan Houston’s floater against the Heat. These Knicks are different — they’re a 53-win team on an 11-game heater, built around a guy who was born to play in this moment.
I’ve watched the the 1999 rematch nobody saw coming framing obsessively for a week. Same two franchises, different universe. This is a team that did what it had to do to win, and now has to prove it in the hardest possible building on the hardest possible night.
Stephon Castle is the wrong Spur to sleep on, by the way. I’m not sleeping on him. I’m terrified of him.
But I’m also terrified in the way that means something matters. The New York Knicks, the team I have watched break my heart in 1,000 different ways since I was old enough to understand heartbreak, are playing Game 1 of the NBA Finals tonight.
Revis the dog is sitting on my foot. He doesn’t know why I’m nervous. Honestly, neither do I. They won 11 straight. They swept two series. Brunson is locked in.
I just need them to win one game in San Antonio tonight. One.
We bought our way here. Fine. Now let’s earn it.
