Grange: Knicks snap drought with one of NBA’s most impressive playoff runs

I’m not sure we’ll ever see a five-game NBA Finals that close any time soon. I’ll say we won’t.

It will go in the books as a win for the New York Knicks, which culminated in their first NBA championship in 53 years, breaking a drought that had seemed like a curse at times — for long stretches of time — for one of the NBA’s marquee franchises.

Hopefully, the island of Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs survive this, as Knicks fans’ joy levels will likely need to be measured on the Richter scale. And hopefully the good city of San Antonio — which hosted so many Knicks fans who made the trip to Texas for Game 5 — will survive this, too.

The hard-fought 94-90 win topped a hard-fought series for the Knicks over the up-and-coming San Antonio Spurs, with the Knicks completing one of the most impressive playoff runs in NBA history.

The team that won 53 games in the regular season and was the third seed in the Eastern Conference went 16-3 on their way to the title. And even with all five games in the Finals coming down to the final two minutes, and the two teams being separated by just 12 total points, the Knicks’ 15.5-point average victory margin for the playoffs was the largest in the 30 years that the NBA has tracked it.

But even at that, Game 5 was there for the Spurs to win, or the Knicks to lose. For the fifth straight game, the Spurs opened a double-digit lead in the first quarter and for the fifth straight game, the Spurs held a fourth-quarter lead.

San Antonio was up by 10 with 8:21 to play before the Knicks went on a 10-0 run to tie the game, with all 10 points coming from Jalen Brunson, who took his rightful place in both Knicks and NBA lore by scoring 15 of his 45 points in the final frame to lead the Knicks to the win.

Meanwhile, the Spurs stumbled and fumbled through the fourth quarter once again, the part of the game when the NBA’s most talented young team and a group that seems poised to make several Finals appearances over the next 10 years will need to figure out if they are going to win the number of titles their youthful talent suggests they can.

The Spurs shot 7-of-22 in the fourth quarter Saturday with Stephon Castle, De’Aaron Fox and Victor Wembanyama — their three primary scorers — combining to go 2-for-12. For the series, the Spurs’ offensive rating in the fourth quarter was 90.5 points per 100 possessions. For context, the Washington Wizards, a team trying to lose as many games as possible during the regular season, had a fourth-quarter offensive rating of 111.4.

The Spurs will deeply regret costly mistakes that burned them at the end of Game 2, and especially in Game 4 when the Spurs surrendered a 29-point lead in the second half and a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter in the biggest collapse in Finals history. But as the youngest Finals team since 1977, the Spurs should have plenty of time to learn and reflect.

They could do a lot worse than studying what the Knicks have built: a selfless, resilient team that rallies behind their clear leader, Brunson. The Knicks found a way to win games in any style and in any situation and are a worthy entry in the annals of NBA history.

The Knicks captain did what two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder could not do: solve the Spurs’ defence.

Over seven games against the Spurs, Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 25.9 points per game while shooting just 40.1 per cent from the floor, compared with 31.1 points on 55.3 per cent shooting as he won his second straight MVP award. He could never really crack the Spurs code.

Brunson got the same treatment as a ball-dominant offensive engine and it showed in the first two games of the series as he averaged just 25 points on 33.9 per cent shooting, each well below his regular-season averages.

But Brunson figured it out, scoring 32, 36 and then 45 points in the final three games, while connecting on 48 per cent of his shot attempts.

While OG Anunoby was getting plenty of well-deserved buzz as a potential Finals MVP candidate after his epic showing in Game 4, when he scored 33 points on 15 shots and hit the never-to-be-forgotten game winner on his tip-in, Brunson became an easy choice after his eye-popping showing in Game 5, where he kept the Knicks alive in the first half after they came out flat and and then made them immortal with his showing in the fourth quarter.

It was the kind of performance that any NBA great would be proud to have by his name, and will be the signature moment for what will prove to be a Hall-of-Fame career for the former second-round draft pick.

You can’t spell champion without OG

Well, you do, but let’s just say that having Anunoby in your starting lineup means your team has at least one championship-level player on your roster. The Raptors drafted Anunoby 24th overall in 2018, taking advantage of him falling down the board after missing most of his second season at Indiana with a torn ACL. He showed plenty of promise in his first two seasons in Toronto but was still very much a work in progress when he missed the Raptors’ championship run with appendicitis.

But by his third season, Anunoby was a starter on a Raptors team that was on a 60-win pace during a year shortened by the pandemic. It will forever be a Raptors ‘what-if’ around Anunoby being traded to New York midway through the 2023-24 season.

‘What if’ the Raptors had traded him, Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet during the 2022-23 season when it seemed like the centre wasn’t holding? Would the Raptors rebuild have gotten off to a better start? ‘What if’ the three prodigal Raptors had been more open to start a new chapter alongside rising youngsters Scottie Barnes and less interested in seeking out greener pastures, both financially and competitively, elsewhere? ‘What if’ the Raptors had prioritized keeping Anunoby — who seemed like the best fit alongside Barnes — and paid him accordingly?

We’ll never know, but anyone who has followed Anunoby’s career could see him as a starter for a championship team. But this? Anunoby averaged 21.2 points on 52.5/50.0/86.9 shooting splits and played defence as well as it can be played. He’s not a starter, he’s a star.

Wembanyama so close and yet…

The big Frenchman seemed more energized and more determined in Game 5. He allowed that his poor performance in the second half of Game 4 — he was 3-of-14 and missed two crucial free throws — was attributable to fatigue. In Game 5, he played 44 minutes with just one day’s rest after playing 39 minutes in Game 4. It was a lot for a player who averaged just 29 minutes in the regular season. But with two days off his feet, Wembanyama came out determined to impose himself and force Game 6.

He had five blocks in the first half. Three of his first four field goals were dunks or lay-ups. He had the Spurs on his shoulders. But he faded again late, scoring just three of his 19 points in the fourth quarter. He didn’t block a shot in the second half. He found himself isolated on Brunson late in the fourth quarter and was left bamboozled as the shifty Knicks guard, who is more than a foot shorter than him, wound his way into the paint for a crucial score.

Wembanyama finished the series averaging 26 points, 11.2 rebounds and 3.6 blocks per game. It was by any measure an impressive performance for any player, let alone one in his third season and in the playoffs for the first time. But he was exposed in some ways, too. The conditioning and ability to handle the extreme physicality of playoff basketball will need to improve. His ability to deliver as a go-to scorer needs some work. There’s no question in my mind that the work will be done and Wembanyama will be on a mission next season. Look how far he has come since having to miss the end of last season with a career-threatening blood clot? Most importantly, Wembanyama sounds like he’s already on it.

“I think that compared to anything before, this is the biggest lesson of my life, the biggest learning moment,” he said after the game. “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.”

Not rookie of the year, but best rookie?

The 2025 rookie class was extraordinary, so much so that Toronto Raptors rookie and ninth overall pick Collin Murray-Boyles was good enough to help win playoff games and looks like a rotation player on a high-level team as a 20-year-old, and he barely made second-team all-rookie. The top three vote getters in the rookie of the year race were, in order: Cooper Flagg (taken first overall), Kon Knueppel (taken fourth) and VJ Edgecombe (taken third). Dylan Harper, the second overall pick, finished a distant fourth in the rookie-of-the-year race, with five third-place votes.

Voting for all NBA regular-season awards is completed before the playoffs start. But it’s pretty clear through the playoffs that Harper has an excellent chance of being the best player in the 2025 class, apologies to Flagg. His combination of physicality, poise and elusiveness off the dribble on offence and spectacular on-ball defence, along with his size at point guard, makes it easy to project multiple all-star and all-NBA nods in the 20-year-old’s future.

After Wembanyama, he was the Spurs’ most important player in the first half as his 11 points off the bench had an out-sized importance in such a close game. He was better in the third quarter. Facing elimination in Game 5, he finished with 25 points, five rebounds, four assists, a blocked shot and no turnovers.

But like so many of his teammates, the fourth quarter eluded him. He shot 1-of-6 down the stretch after his lay-up with 8:21 left in the fourth quarter gave the Spurs a 10-point lead. The lay-ups he was able to create for himself so successfully earlier in the game didn’t fall as the crowd in the paint got thicker. He was the Spurs breakout star of the playoffs, and given how poorly De’Aaron Fox played — the veteran guard was 3-of-15 from the floor when the Spurs needed him most, capping off a series where he shot just 34.3 per cent — Harper should be their starting point guard next season and for a decade to come, at least.

When road warriors are too much

One of my fondest memories from covering the Toronto Raptors’ 2019 championship was a healthy collection of Raptors fans gathered at one end of Oracle Arena, well after the win had been secured and the Golden State Warriors fans had left. And as I was doing post-game TV hits, the Raptors fans took a break from chanting ‘We the North’ and began singing O Canada. It was incredible and summed up why the Raptors’ title was different and special.

So it’s a bit rich for me to find fault with whatever circumstances exist that allow for fans of a road team to make themselves felt in the arena of their opponents. But the way Knicks fans have invaded their opponents’ arenas through this playoff run is at another level.

I’ll give credit to Marcus Thompson II, the brilliant columnist for The Athletic, for writing on this more eloquently than I can here, but his point was well made: as big time sports has morphed to a commercial and entertainment product above all else, fans without means — and we’re talking about Spurs season tickets holders not having the means to resist selling a pair of tickets for $40,000 or more to members of the incoming Knicks horde, themselves finding it more affordable to travel to San Antonio to see their team to pay than what it cost to attend games at Madison Square Garden — threaten to be left behind.

One report said 54 per cent of the tickets for Game 4 on the secondary market were from buyers in New York and New Jersey. As is their right. Commerce is commerce. But it does feel like the plot’s been lost somehow — and I don’t know how, to be honest — where fans from one of the NBA’s largest and wealthiest markets can overwhelm the fan base of one of the league’s smallest markets, in part because they can’t afford to support their team in their own market.

The smallish group of Raptors fans at Oracle after Game 6 back in 2019 — a few hundred maybe? — seemed charming. The Knicks invasion seemed less so, but that’s maybe more of a comment on the price of fandom in these bottom-line times.