NBA Season Conclusion

The story of the 2025-26 NBA season was the story of injuries, right up to the Finals.  Finally, two healthy teams faced each other.  Health is one of the usual deciding factors.  Another is momentum.  Both the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks had it in the playoffs, though the Knicks had it much more strongly.  But that to my mind wasn't the only deciding factor.

First let's review the pundits.  Nearly every day I see at least the headlines of the New York Times' outsourced sports bureau, the Athletic.  It has quickly become--at least arguably--a gold standard in sports coverage.  By the end of the regular season the Athletic named the consensus pick for NBA champion, which had been consistent throughout the year: the Oklahoma City Thunder.

When the Spurs beat the Thunder in seven games in the Western Conference Finals, and the Knicks pulverized the Cleveland Cavaliers in the East, the Athletic solemnly announced the consensus view that the NBA champions would now be the Spurs.

Now that the Knicks have won the Finals in five games, at least one writer for the Athletic is embarrassing himself by calling these Knicks the greatest sports team in New York history, and (though it would follow anyway) the greatest Knicks team, and Jalen Brunson as the greatest Knicks player in history.  Also that this victory was the greatest in history, and will be talked about in a hundred years.

Okay, so the Times is still a hometown newspaper, and everything that happens in New York is by definition the biggest and best and most important.  But let's start with the likelihood that the only thing people in a hundred years will remember about our time is that we knew we were destroying the livable climate and did it anyway. 

But as for greatness, there were a number of Yankees teams clearly better than these Knicks. Jalen Brunson is a talented player and he had a great Finals, but he probably isn't even in the top five of players who wore the Knicks uniform.  The 27 point comeback in the fourth game was special but in the age of the three point shot, not really all that remarkable.

Every playoff series, especially every Finals, is different, it's own world.  These Knicks deserve a lot of credit but they didn't create all the conditions that enabled their victory.  And it seems clear to me that the real difference maker in this series was Mike Brown, the Knicks' coach.

The Spurs have a generational star, a phenomenon of the time.  But they are a young team, without playoff experience.  They have a young coach in his first year, Mitch Johnson, who never played in the NBA and has no experience in NBA playoffs.  The Knicks coach Mike Brown had a checkered career as a head coach for the Lakers, Cavaliers and Kings, but was a chief assistant coach to Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors, and with the Warriors he experienced two Finals on the winning team.  

Mike Brown knows what winning the Finals takes, and Mitch Johnson did not.  The Spurs losing large leads in crucial games all but tells that story.  The Knicks did not face strong teams in the Eastern Conference playoffs, but somehow Brown got them ready for the real challenge.  The Knicks were well coached in situations.  And overall they stayed on an even keel, which seems partly due to the personalities of Brunson and Anunoby, for instance, but very likely also to Brown's coaching and demeanor.  

Why isn't it enough to celebrate the Knicks without this silliness?  We are so enamored with the now, except when--as is already happening--we are handicapping next season. 

And so, it's next year--with the draft and the free agents moves ready to tumble out of endless speculation into reality.