The Knicks broke all the rules and won everything

With a small guard as their best player, a flighty center anchoring a still impressive defense and a thin bench, the Knicks beat everyone to bring a championship back to New York.

Good morning. It's the final newsletter of the 2025-26 NBA season. Let's basketball.

The belief that you can't win an NBA championship with a small guard as your best player is so well-worn, so ingrained in the discourse that some of the most famous proponents of that theory (Becky Hammon, head coach of the Las Vegas Aces and former Spurs assistant) were sticking by it while the New York Knicks were on a 13-game playoff winning streak. Isiah Thomas was the last to do it, and Chris Paul never crossed the Rubicon to claim a title, so it was written: Jalen Brunson couldn't be the best player on a championship team.

The belief that you can't win an NBA championship with a defensive minus as your center is similarly ingrained though perhaps less discussed. Karl-Anthony Towns has shown, over the years, specifically from 2024 on, that he can play tough defense, but no one would put him in the top 15 (maybe 20) of the best starting fives on that end of the court. And yet: for the most part, he did better than anyone in the Western Conference playoffs at slowing down the great and amazing Victor Wembanyama in the Finals.

You need depth!, we all scream. New York's bench was a journeyman vet they signed off a non-guaranteed deal (Landry Shamet), the rare lead guard smaller than Brunson they picked up in a cap dump at the deadline (Jose Alvarado) and two homegrown second-round picks (Deuce McBride and Mitchell Robinson), the latter of which is all-time great rebounder and literally the worst free throw shooter in NBA history. This might have been the 10th best bench out of 16 playoff teams, and yet: those dudes and the others in warm-ups next to them – your Jordan Clarksons and Tyler Koleks and Ariel Hukportis and your Mo Diawaras – are NBA champions now.

Why did all this work? How did the Knicks break all the rules to bring an NBA championship to New York for the first time since 1973? It all goes back to this.

The Mavericks believed in Jalen Brunson, but didn't believe a Jalen Brunson-Luka Doncic backcourt could survive in the modern NBA, which may or may not have been accurate. The Knicks, who employed Brunson's father as a coach and were Jalen's childhood team owing to his father's Clarksonian role on the last Knicks Finals team in '99, orchestrated the heist that was frankly not universally heralded as a sign of a Knicksian triumph.

In any case, that was the foundation slab on which everything else was built. That, and this.

Months after originally signing Brunson, the Knicks gave up a first and Cam Reddish to bring in Josh Hart. Months later they signed Donte DiVincenzo. Next up was trading for O.G. Anunoby, followed by trading a lot more for Mikal Bridges, followed by trading DDV and Julius Randle for KAT. They could afford those contracts due to the Brunson discount. Then they fired Tom Thibodeau, struck out on their first four coaching targets, and hired Mike Brown. Now, this is happening.

It all comes back to Brunson, and the belief Worldwide Wes and Leon Rose had in Brunson's ability to be a No. 1 option, and Brunson's own belief that it was possible, and Rick Brunson's machinations from God knows how long ago, and the front office's mix of sentimentality (building a team of dudes, three of which were college teammates, who all seem to like each other) and unsentimentality (trading the fourth Nova Knick to get KAT, firing Thibs) to build a Brunson team that could win it all.

It all comes back to Brunson, who had one of the best close-out Finals performances in memory. Nothing will ever top Giannis Game 6 for me – my imagination doesn't stretch that far – but this came pretty damn close.

Brunson kept the Knicks in the game in the second and third quarters, and was the biggest factor other than the Spurs' shooting that got them the win. His shotmaking throughout this epic playoff run has been incredible – it's a superhero that rewrites the rules for NBA players and prospects. If you can build the lower body strength, immaculate footwork and supreme shotmaking ability needed to hold up and get to your spots, there's nothing you can't do.

Towns had a classic Towns defensive performance, which is not a compliment: he fouled out in 23 minutes, and had two points, one assist and five turnovers. It was a total disaster, and if the Spurs had pulled out the win in Game 5 to send the series back to New York, the narrative would have had the potential to go quite sour. This was among the worst big-game performances from a legit star I can remember. But Brunson and the Knicks defense papered over it, just as Towns papered over some Knicks problems over the past couple of years. It's what a team does: they save each other from themselves, they lift each other up. Some just don't have the luxury of falling down lest it all fall apart. And Brunson is that guy for the Knicks.

Rules are made to be broken. Jalen Brunson is the latest proof.

Call Me Nostradumbass

Yes, I picked the Knicks before the season began in my 13 fearless predictions column. And then I picked Knicks over Spurs in the Finals in my playoff predictions column. Here's a peek into the science of my brain: it was all vibes. Obviously the Knicks were going to be one of the better East teams coming into the season, and the way they beat the Celtics in the playoffs last season has stuck with me. The Pacers were a team of destiny and I do think Tom Thibodeau, a great NBA coach, had squeezed all he could from the Knicks by that point. So no, the Knicks weren't clearly the team to beat coming into the season. But I wasn't terribly spooked by any of their Eastern foes in either October or April. That's a good first step to winning a title: be a favorite in your conference.

The other part is that even I didn't see the Spurs being this good coming into the season (I had them in the play-in) and didn't think the Thunder would repeat on account of the whole no team can ever seem to repeat any more thing. The West looked like it'd be a war, and that was before the Spurs won 60 games. So I thought Oklahoma City, the team with the best repeat chance in years, would get into the Finals battered and bruised. Instead, the Spurs did after knocking off the Thunder. And so it goes: that all adds up to a Knicks win. So it was written. So it happened.

I'm picking the Pacers next year, by the way. Book it.

(By the way, don't look at any of the other predictions in either column, please and thank you.)

Programming Notes

The season is over but the newsletter keeps rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin'. This is the 12th NBA championship won since I started Good Morning It's Basketball at SB Nation, and the seventh since I went independent. The champs during the independent era, in order: Lakers, Bucks, Warriors, Nuggets, Celtics, Thunder, Knicks. That's a crazy line-up of franchises!

Barring major news, I hope to write about the Spurs on Monday, a catch-up brief on the stakes of an Aspiration-Clippers punishment announcement on Wednesday, the top of the NBA draft at some point, and some other stuff. It's also time for an update to Consensus Best Player Alive.

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Back on Monday for paid subscribers. Be excellent to each other.