🇺🇸⑂ ⑂ J ⑂ ⑂🇺🇸

[KnicksMuse @KnicksMuse]

Jalen Brunson’s toast with the team was “Fuck Wemby” 😭

[NBA @NBA]

JB & KAT: A HISTORIC DUO 🏆

During New York's championship run, Karl-Anthony Towns (+258) posted the HIGHEST single postseason plus/minus since 1971, surpassing Stephen Curry (+245) in 2017... while Jalen Brunson (+234) finished third!

[Steve Popper @StevePopper]

Today’s backpage and front page of a special commemorative section of @NewsdaySports

[Josh Dubow @JoshDubowAP]

Knicks in 22 seasons before Jalen Brunson arrived: league-worst .409 win percentage; league-low 10 playoff wins; 1 playoff series win

Knicks in 4 seasons with Jalen Brunson: .613 win % (5th best); league-high 39 playoff wins; 8 playoff series wins; 1 NBA title

[James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames]

I think this Iran "deal" stuff is all kayfabe. There's no true deal actually in the works, nothing real will be signed, and Trump's playing good cop to Israel's bad cop in an elaborate intelligence game. Something might get signed, but it's bullshit and Trump knows it. Keep calm.

[Dan Bongino @dbongino]

Sad to see dopey street thuggery ruin the experience for a lot of long suffering Knicks fans. I’m a proud Florida resident now for over a decade, and it’s my paradise. But my wife and I met and spent our childhoods and early years as New Yorkers. I was a cop in the NYPD’s 75 precinct and my wife worked in the shadow of the Twin Towers at 120 Broadway.

That all being said, here’s why the Knicks mean more to the working class folks in NY City than probably any other NY team. There’s an unspoken belief prior to last night that the team was jinxed. They had early successes in the seventies with Willis Reed and Clyde but despite years of big contracts and big plans the last 50-plus years have been cursed.

I used to go to the Garden with the guy who lived upstairs in the two-family we grew up in, in Queens. And in the mid-eighties, after Bernard King (Jordan before Jordan) got hurt, it was a dismal ghost town. You would buy a nose-bleed ticket and give the usher five bucks and sit in the front rows after halftime. But we went anyway and watched them get smoked. Bernard King came back after his injury but was a shell of his former incredible self. It’s one of the most tragic “what could’ve been” sports stories in basketball history.

And then lightning struck. The Knicks won the draft lottery and a generational talent named Patrick Ewing was on their draft board. It was a big man’s game back then and having an anchor like Ewing and a few solid supporting stars was a lock for a long awaited return to greatness. But that elusive championship was never to arrive. The Knicks had to deal with the tail end of Larry Bird’s Celtics, the tough as nails Pistons, and the absolute GOAT to-be, a guard out of North Carolina named Michael Jordan.

The Knicks had some great teams as they battled Jordan’s Bulls in the nineties and those Knicks teams meant a lot to working class New Yorkers because many of their stars were bootstrap guys never predicted to amount to much in the NBA. My favorite player at the time was John Starks, and absolutely no one predicted he would become a stud. Anthony Mason was another beast who came out of obscurity. We didn’t have Pippen, or Grant or Jordan, but those teams had heart.

Unfortunately for suffering Knicks fans, they could never get past Jordan’s Bulls to the NBA Finals. The losses were heartbreaking too and if you ask anyone who was a NY sports fan who lived in NY in the nineties, they’ll tell you where they were when they watched each of those games. And then lightning struck AGAIN, Michael Jordan left the Bulls to play baseball. This was their time. Finally.

But it wasn’t meant to be. Despite defeating the Jordan-less Bulls, and the hated Reggie Miller-led Pacers, they lost in the Finals to the Houston Rockets in a devastating series. New Yorkers now knew there was a hex on this team. They made it back with a weaker team in 1999 but injuries to Ewing and a dominant Spurs team destroyed the Knicks in that series.

Then the black cloud came again and over 25 years went by until they
finally returned. With a team not predicted to win it all, and despite the odds, they pulled off a sports miracle coming back from double digit deficits in every one of their wins. So, although I’m not a New Yorker anymore, I vividly remember my past there as a young fan of the Knicks and the Yankees. And hearing my nephew, a New Yorker, and a sports fanatic, ecstatic last night put a smile on my face.

One more thing. Not just the Knicks, but basketball is sports religion in NY City. Baseball can be expensive and logistically challenging in NY. You need permits to play on most fields. Football isn’t played anywhere close to the Friday Night Lights you see around the rest of the country. Basketball is king. A ball was 30 bucks when I grew up and I just took it to Central Park in Queens, and jumped in pick-up games. We all did. It was a NY thing. It’s what we did.

[KnicksNation @KnicksNation]

“My hearts full”

- Mikal Bridges 😢

[Basketball University @UofBasketball]

Playoff Net Rating among the last 40 NBA Champions…

2026 New York Knicks number 1. All time run.

[Real App @realapp]

Karl-Anthony Towns is the first center in NBA history to shoot 50/40/90% in a championship run.

[Tommy Beer @TommyBeer]

Jalen Brunson scored 29 points in the second half of Game 5 last night

That’s the MOST POINTS scored in the second half of any NBA Finals game played in the NBA’s modern era.

Brunson did it in a Finals-clinching win on the road to break a 53-year title drought for the Knicks

[Jordan Clarkson @JordanClarksons]

🗽

[New York Basketball @NBA_NewYork]

Draymond Green: “Wow they didn’t shake their hands… that’s not good"

[Philosophy Of Life @PhilOfLife_]

Fall in love with becoming better.

[Dirk Nowitzki @swish41]

Congrats @nyknicks
Well deserved. What a playoff run!

[ESPN @espn]

"I didn't respond to them then, I'm damn sure not gonna respond to them now."

Jalen Brunson on anyone who said he's not a 1A guy 🔥

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

In America, a warehouse store. A fully roasted chicken costs five dollars, the raw chicken beside it costs seven, and I stood between them like a man between two truths.

Golden. Hot. Seasoned. Spinning in glory under the lights, in a line of its brothers. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents.

I checked the raw birds. Seven dollars. Pale. Cold. You must do everything yourself.

This is not commerce. Commerce does not move backward. Somewhere in this building, mathematics lies defeated.

I asked the man at the counter. "How is the cooked bird cheaper than the raw bird?"

"Been five bucks forever. They keep it that way."

"But the store loses."

"Yep. On purpose."

On purpose. I held my receipt with both hands.

In my land, a lord who lowered the price of rice in a hard winter was remembered for generations. They built him a small shrine. This store does it every day, with chicken, and tells no one.

A woman behind me grew tired of my reverence. "It's just a chicken, sir."

It is not just a chicken. It is a wound the merchant takes on purpose, so that anyone, on any day, with five dollars, eats like a lord. The bird is the message. The price is the vow.

I will confess: I bought two. I did not need two. The second was not hunger. It was gratitude, and it was delicious.

Some prices are not prices. They are promises.

I return every week now. I take one bird. I bow toward the deli, briefly, so as not to alarm the staff. They have begun nodding back.

The vow holds. The bird turns. Five dollars.

Long may it spin.

[Game of Thrones @GameOfThrones]

Jalen Brunson,
First of His Name,
Breaker of Double Teams,
King of New York,
Most Valuable Player.

[The Knicks Wall @TheKnicksWall]

JALEN BRUNSON WALKING OFF THE PLANE WITH LARRY O 🏆

(IG/lazyousuf)

[Cookie Monster @MeCookieMonster]

Elmo teach me not to eat trophy. Me teach Elmo to pick a team. 💙🧡

[Tommy Beer @TommyBeer]

Wow

This is incredible

Shots to @CBSSports