New York Knicks Win 2026 NBA Championship: The Redemption Episode

The New York Knicks are NBA champions.

Episode 74 is the one I never knew if I’d actually get to make. After 53 years, the Knicks finally won it all, and this episode is about more than just a trophy. It’s about redemption.

Jalen Brunson became the King of New York and Finals MVP. Karl-Anthony Towns changed the way his entire career will be talked about. OG Anunoby gave Knicks fans a play that belongs forever in franchise lore. Mikal Bridges made “fuck them picks” age beautifully. Josh Hart, Mitchell Robinson, Landry Shamet, Jose Alvarado, Leon Rose, Mike Brown — everybody gets their moment.

We also get into Game 4’s impossible comeback, Game 5 in Atlantic City, the Wemby poll, why the Knicks were too tough to be rattled, and why this championship feels like the beginning of something, not the end.

The Knicks are champions. Build the statue. Go Knicks.

Transcript

The Knicks Are Champions

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I guess there's only one way to find out. Let's do it to it, right? Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, the New York Knicks are NBA champions. I still don't I still don't know how to say that like a normal person. I still can't believe it. The New York Knickerbockers are NBA champions. I haven't put out an episode since June 8th. That was after games one and two of the NBA Finals. And since then, the Knicks lost their first home finals game since 1999, pulled off the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history, won the championship in San Antonio, and changed the way every single person on this roster will be remembered forever. So yeah, I needed a minute. I've been on a four-day bender. I needed more than a minute. This wasn't just a championship. This was 53 years getting lifted off the floor. This was every bad Knicks season, every miserable draft night, every fake rebuild, every same old Knicks joke, every player we talked ourselves into because we had no other choice, all getting buried at once. The Knicks didn't just win a championship. They redeemed everybody. Jalen Brunson, Carl Anthony Towns, OG Ananobi, Mikhail Bridges, Josh Hart, Mitchell Robinson, Landry Shaman, Jose Alvarado, Deuce McBride, Jordan Clarkson, Mike Brown, and Leon Rose. Everybody's story changed. This is episode 74. This is the redemption episode. The New York Knicks are NBA champions. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Extra, extra. Keep the lights low. New York talking with the late nights go. From the garden glow to the stadium seats. Every win, every loss, every what does it mean? Right on the radio, coming through your speakers, big steaks, box dudes, arch breaks, believe with the match gangs, that's the giants, next on the ride. Pull up a chair and let the whole city decide. No be all after, no sitting on the fence. Making it make sense, running down lights, hit the mic right on the radio. Let's do it to it in the Alright.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Episode

Years Of Pain Finally Lifted

SPEAKER_01 2:25

74. Been too long, way too long. And apparently, while I was gone, the New York Knicks decided to win an NBA championship. I've been trying to process this like an adult, and I really I can't. I've watched a lot of bad sports in my life. Jets, Mets, Rangers, Knicks. That's what I tell people all the time. Those are my fandoms. That's my fandom portfolio. And unfortunately, it's it's my medical condition. I mean, it should be something my doctor asked me before checking my blood pressure. You know, I've watched heartbreak. I've watched collapse. I've watched teams that were terrible in ways that didn't even seem possible until I saw it happen. I've watched the Jets invent new ways to ruin Sundays. I've watched the Mets make me believe in the dumbest possible hope. I've watched the Rangers get so close enough and then hurt me properly. But the Knicks, the Knicks were different. The Knicks were the thing that I wanted to believe in so badly. Even when there was absolutely no reason to believe in them. You know, I watched 20 win Knicks teams. I watched draft nights where the guy we needed got picked right before us. And then we spent the next 48 hours convincing ourselves the other guy was secretly better anyway. I watched us talk ourselves into Langston Galloway, Clee Anthony Early, Shane Larkin, Alexi Chaved, Kevin Sarafin, Ron Baker, Emmanuel Moudie, Kevin Knox, Frank Neilakina. I can go on and on. I'm pretty sure at one point I convinced myself Kyle O'Quinn was a culture piece for this team. I was a sick puppy. Loyal, but sick. You know, I I watched the Mellow years. Mello, Amari, J.R. Smith, Amon Schumper, Kid, Felton, Rasheed Wallace, Kenyon Martin, Defensive Player of the Year, Tyson Chandler. I watched that team become fun, become frustrating, become almost enough, and then slowly get pulled apart piece by piece. Mello was my generation's Knicks superstar. Ewing is the bigger historical figure, obviously, but Mello was my guy. He was the guy that I lived through. He was the guy who made the Knicks feel big again for a minute. But this episode is not about the ghosts taking center stage. This episode is about the team that finally answered them. The Knicks didn't just win a championship. They redeemed everybody. You know, I named them all in the intro, but this team deserves to be mentioned again and again and again. Jalen Brunson, Carl Anthony Towns, OG Ananobi, Mikhail Bridges, Josh Hart, Mitchell Robinson, Landry Chemette, Jose Alvarado, Deuce McBride, Jordan Clarkson, Tyler Kohlik, Mohamed Di Oara, Ariel Huck Party, Pacomi Diade. Diade, Diade, Jeremy Sochan, Mike Brown, Leon Rose. From this point going forward, they are NBA champions. Everybody's story changed. Everybody gets remembered differently now. But before we get into all that, I have to start with game five.

Game 5 Night In Atlantic City

SPEAKER_01 6:10

I watched most of this series with my wife at our local bar, surrounded by friends. That was kind of the routine. Nick's in the finals, same people, same nerves, same hope, same fear, same unwavering faith in this team. And then game five lands during my buddy's bachelor party in Atlantic City. Shout out Scott and Jackie. Gonna be a lovely wedding. Can't wait to attend. But of course the closeout game lands on that. You know, the Knicks have not won a championship in 53 years. And the game that could end it all is happening while I'm at a bachelor party in Atlantic City. Any superstitions I had about wearing the same jersey or sitting in the same seat be damned. But there we are in the sports book, surrounded by Knicks fans, a couple Philly fans, because we're in AC, South Jersey. But real Knicks fans, diehards, people living and dying with every possession. You could feel the whole room breathing with the game. Every miss, every whistle, every Brunson touch, every Wemby possession. The whole room felt like one giant nervous system. And the whole time, me and my buddy just kept saying to each other, just keep it to ten. Just keep it to ten going into the fourth. And the Knicks will be able to pull this out. That was it. That was the number. Ten felt survivable. Ten felt like this team's comfort zone, which is ridiculous to say. But that's what this team became. They made panic feel optional. They made deficits feel temporary. And then they did it. They kept it close enough. They gave themselves the fourth quarter. And then Jalen Brunson happened. I'm going to talk a lot about Brunson, obviously, but that fourth quarter was one of those things where you're watching a player in real time leave normal basketball and enter mythology. Every possession felt like, okay, this is why you came here. This is why the Knicks gave you the keys. This is why the city believed in you before everybody else understood it. And then the buzzer hits. The game ends. The Knicks win the NBA championship. And I froze. I didn't scream right away. I didn't jump right away. I just I froze. It was like my brain didn't know where to put the information. The Knicks are champions. That sentence had nowhere to go. It didn't belong in the same part of my brain that has watched this franchise for my entire life. Then one of my best friends screams right in my ear and it snapped me out of it like a cold shower. And then I lost it. All the yelling, all the emotion, the disbelief, all the years of watching absolute garbage basketball and pretending I was fine. It all hit me at once. It wasn't just happiness. It was relief. It was confusion. It was holy shit, they actually did it. The Knicks actually did it. Now, I tell that story to tell this one.

Game 3 Flat Garden Then Game 4 Miracle

SPEAKER_01 9:41

I know the last episode was after games one and two. So it's kind of only fair we catch up a little bit from here. Game three never really felt like a true garden game. You know, on paper, the first finals game in Madison Square Garden since 1999. It should have been absolute insanity. That building should have been possessed. It should have sounded like every bad Knicks season, every dumb trade, every bad coach, every draft night disaster, every same old Knicks joke all getting screamed out of the building at once. But honestly, it had more of a major event feel than a nasty Knicks playoff feel. You know, tickets were insane, and a lot of real fans got priced out. The lower bowl had too many people who wanted to be seen there instead of people who were ready to scream themselves hoarse. You know, then you added in the president being there in the building, extra security, people getting in late. The whole night just never quite found that real garden edge. And the Spurs got him. Wemby was Wemby. The Knicks lost. The streak ended. And for a second there, the nerves got real real. Then game four. Game four felt like the Knicks fans got back in the building. The crowd was different. The building was different. Look, it still wasn't cheap because, you know, apparently, if you want to go to an NBA Finals game at Madison Square Garden, it requires you to sell one kidney and even consider maybe selling the second, but the energy was real. That was a Knicks crowd again. And game four is the game I I still can't believe happened. Down 29, 2-9 in the NBA finals against Victor Wimbenyama, against a Spurs team that looked like it had found every answer the game before. And somehow I still didn't think this Knicks team was dead. That's what this Knicks team had become. Unkillable. No lead was safe against them this whole playoff series. Not 10, not 15, not 20, and apparently not 29. They had this insane ability to make the other team feel like the game was never actually over. You could be beating the Knicks, but you couldn't relax against the Knicks. You couldn't exhale. You couldn't start thinking about the next game. This team just kept coming. That's what game four was. It was the whole identity of the season thrown into one insane night. The Spurs had it, man. The garden was nervous. The game felt like it was slipping into that miserable category where you start doing the mental math. Okay, you know, fuck. Series is tied 2-2. We lost both at home. Moment's gone. Now we got to go back on the road. It's a best of three. Now this is kind of a problem. And the Knicks just refused to die. Possession by possession, they clawed back. Stops, rebounds, Brunson, OG, the crowd, the chaos, the belief. It didn't all happen at once. But it happened the way this team always did it. Ugly, stubborn, annoying, and relentless. And then the coup de gras, the OG tipping. I still get chills watching it. I mean, even days later, I see the clip and I hear the uh the Mike Breen commentary, and it still hits me the same way. Brunson takes the shot, and for about a half a second, if he makes it, we're talking about one of the greatest shots in Knicks history. Another Brunson miracle, another King of New York moment, another clip that gets replayed forever. And he misses. And you're thinking, shit. And your stomach drops, and you go, here we go. Alright, we got a long road ahead of us. And then the man himself, OG Ananobi, comes flying in like the quietest superhero in New York sports history and tips it in. That play was not luck. That was the most OG Ananobi thing I possible. Maximum effort, no wasted motion, right place, right time, right read. Never stops playing. Never needs the spotlight either. Never needs to make it about himself. Just does winning stuff over and over again until suddenly the quietest guy on the floor gives you one of the loudest plays in franchise history. That tipping belongs in Nick's lore forever. Put it next to Willis Reed walking out of the tunnel. Put it next to Larry Johnson's four-point play. John Stark's dunking on the Bulls, Allen Houston's runner. OG's tipping is in that conversation now. It's on that Mount Rushmore. And I don't care if that sounds aggressive. It is. That play helped win the championship. Hell, we were even having finals MVP conversations about that. It was like, well, you know, hey, look, OG is about to win finals MVP. Unless Brunson goes for 50 or something ridiculous in game five, it's all his to lose. And then game five happened. Brunson didn't get 50, but he got 45 in a closeout game on the road, which is close enough to shut the whole conversation down. Before I move into the Nick's legacy part of this, I do want to hit one poll from the people because I think it actually fits the series.

Wembanyama Plays Physical Or Dirty

SPEAKER_01 15:42

I put a poll up asking if the finals changed how people feel about Wemby. The choices were simple. Dirty player, or he just plays physical. 79% said dirty player. And honestly, non-Knicks fan, non-hater, independent basketball viewer, I agree with the 79%. I think Wemby got exposed a little bit in this series. Not exposed in the, oh, he's a bad player. He blocks shots, nobody else can reach, and he changes the entire geometry of the floor. None of that is argued. But he got also got exposed in terms of how he operates physically. The next stuff on Brunson and Mushingham, the extra contact, the way he uses his length, the way he falls into people, and he throws his body around and then acts like it's just an awkward thing because he's tall. No, man. No. At some point, that stops being awkward and starts being dirty. And look, I don't think this was just Knicks fans being emotional for the poll either. I I got people who follow this show all over the place. People who actually don't like the Knicks. Atlanta fans, uh, Celtics fans, Philly fans, people who were not exactly waving the orange and blue flags during this series. And they still voted Wemby's a dirty player. That tells me that people saw it. That play where he mushed Brunson by the back of the neck, I mean, come on, any other team, any team that wasn't as composed as the Knicks, any team that wasn't locked in on the bigger picture, I promise you, somebody at the end of the bench would have been sent in for one reason and one reason only. Go get one back. That's how this series used to go. But the Knicks didn't fall for it. They didn't lose their minds, they didn't make it about revenge, they didn't let Wemby drag them into something stupid. They stayed focused on the ring. And I think going forward, the league is going to be on high alert with him. You know, once you put that kind of stuff on tape in the NBA finals in front of the entire nation, people notice. Teams notice, refs notice, players notice. The whole league now has the film. You know, it's not just, oh, he's young and physical and trying to figure it out. It's okay, watch where his hands are, watch where his feet land, watch how he uses that body, watch how he acts when things get a little rough. And there's a real conversation to be had about game five, too. On that Brunson shot, Wemby sticks his foot underneath him. If that gets reviewed after the fact and gets upgraded, now you're talking about a flagrant situation for Wemby, which would be his fourth point, and he would be suspended for game six. But you know what? Honestly, I'm glad that the Knicks ended it right there. I'm glad there was no game six with people arguing about whether Wemby should be suspended or not. I'm glad that the Knicks didn't give anybody the cheap escape hatch of saying, well, you know, you only close it out because San Antonio didn't have their best player. Get the fuck out of here. Nope. The Spurs had Wemby, the league had the ratings, everybody had a reason to want this thing to go six or seven, and the Knicks were too good. They would not be kept down, they would not be silenced, they did the damn thing. And that's the part that I love. Look, Wemby is going to be great. He's probably already great, to be honest with you. But I also think there's another conversation that people are afraid to have. Right now, a lot of his dominance is still tied to the fact that nobody's ever seen anything like this before. He's so big, so long, so strange to deal with that teams are still figuring out what the hell they're even looking at. But he doesn't have the full bag yet. He doesn't, plain and simple. He's got size, he's got shooting touch, he's got an absurd reach. He can dribble into a three that nobody can contest because he's basically releasing the ball from the roof. But there's a difference between being impossible to bother and being the guy who can beat great teams four times when they know exactly what you want to do. Well, guess what? Now there's tape. Now there are years of film. Teams are going to start learning how to crowd him, how to hit him first, how to force him into uncomfortable spots, how to make him play through strength. How to make him prove he can be the guy every single night when the whole building knows what's coming. That's the next step for him. But this series, this series showed me something about him. And it showed me something bigger about the Knicks. Dirty, physical, whatever word you want to use. The Knicks took every shot and kept moving forward. That's why this team was destined to win. They get hit, they keep pushing. They get grabbed, they keep attacking. They get knocked down, they get back up. I get knocked down, but I get up again. Nothing rattles them. Nothing breaks them. Nothing you do to them will make them stop believing that the game is theirs. Lemby tried to make it ugly, the Knicks made it history.

Brunson Becomes Finals MVP Legend

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Now, let's get to the man who finished it. Jalen Brunson didn't just win finals MVP. He made every lazy basketball take about him sound stupid forever. Too small, second round pick. Dallas let him walk. Knicks overpaid. Can he be a number one? Can he be the best player on a title team? Is he really a 1A? Is there a ceiling with a guard his size? Is he a dog? Well, you know what? There's your answer. The answer is a parade. The answer is a banner. The answer is a finals MVP. I know how this is going to sound, so don't clip this out of context and start yelling at me like lunatics on the internet. Jalen Brunson is our version. Version of Kobe. I said it. Not career ranking, not legacy ranking, not me saying he's Kobe Bryant. Relax. I'm talking about the mentality. The footwork, the obsession, the calm, the quiet arrogance of I know I'm better than you, and I know I'm going to prove it for 48 minutes. Kobe was his guy. He wears Kobe's. He could probably have his own Nike shoe at this point. And it said he wants to be tied to the Kobe line. That tells you something about how he sees the game. Brunson is not loud about it. He doesn't need to scream that he's a killer. He just shows up, gets to his spots, takes your soul one possession at a time, and then gives the most humble answer imaginable afterwards. That is leadership. That is why the whole thing works. He is humble enough to lead the room and arrogant enough to dominate the league. And you need both. You need the guy who respects the work and still knows deep down that he is better than the man in front of him. Jalen Brunson is the king of New York. Not face of the Knicks, not nice free agent signing, not great story for a small guy, the king of New York. He came here when the Knicks were still trying to prove that they were serious. He took less money to help them build. He wore every doubt. He carried the offense. He closed games. He set the tone. And then in game five of the NBA finals on the road with a chance to win the whole damn thing, he gave you 45. 45 in a closeout game for the Knicks. That is not just a great performance. That is the kind of thing that changes how a city talks about you forever.

Apology Tour For Towns

SPEAKER_01 23:47

And look, Big Kat had a bad game for game five, but he deserves his own apology section from me. I was wrong. And it's not one of those fake sports radio apologies where you spend five minutes explaining why. I was kind of right because of the stats. No, I was wrong. When the Knicks traded for Kat, I questioned it. I text my buddy, Mike Die Hard Knicks source, and I said, I don't know if this is the right move for this team. I don't know if Kat has it in him to win. I had the same concerns a lot of people had. Can you win with him? Was he tough enough? Was he the right fit for a playoff basketball team in New York? The media is tough. I called him soft. I was wrong. My buddy just kept telling me over and over, he does. He just has to figure it out. And then the playoffs came around. And he said something that stuck with me. No matter what you think about him, I just need him to be the player that he can be for 16 wins, and we'll figure out the rest from there. Well, guess what? They figured it out, alright. 16 wins later, Carl Anthony Towns is an NBA champion. This changes his whole story. With everything Kat has gone through in his life, his mom, the personal tragedy, the criticism, getting called out by other NBA players. Jimmy Butler, I'm looking at you, questioning his defense, questioning whether his numbers could lead to winning basketball. Well, guess what? This is the answer. Not a tweet, not a debate show segment, a championship ring. And look, that doesn't erase every flaw. It doesn't mean that every concern was made up. There were nights where he frustrated the hell out of me. There were moments in his playoff room where you wanted more from him. He did his disappearing act. Game five was not some monster cat box score. He had two points and fouled out. But he didn't have to be the hero every night. He had to become part of the championship identity. And he did. He defended, he rebounded, he gave them skill, he gave them size, he gave them a different offensive hub when they needed it, and he gave this team another star who could bend a game. And he also accepted that Brunson was the guy, and that can't be overlooked either. This puts a different shine on his entire resume. This changes how people talk about him. Maybe it changes his Hall of Fame case, but it absolutely changes his Knicks legacy. Carl Anthony Towns came here with people wondering if he could win in New York, and now he never has to answer that question ever again.

OG, Bridges, Hart, Mitch Earn It

SPEAKER_01 26:17

OG Ananobi might be one of the greatest trades in Knicks history. And that sounds kind of silly until you really sit with it. The Knicks gave up real players for him. When this team was down and they thought they were just starting to come back. RJ Barrett and Emmanuel Quickly, guys, fans loved. I loved IQ. We thought they were part of the climb. It was a risky trade. OG had the injury stuff. He wasn't this flashy superstar. He was quiet. And he wasn't coming here to average 28 and sell sneakers. I mean, he was coming here to win possessions. That's it. And that's exactly what he did. OG is the kind of player casual fans don't fully appreciate until he's ruining their favorite players' night. They go, oh, that guy's a good player. But Knicks fans, Knicks fans appreciated him because we watch the details. We watch the deflections, the rotations, the strong hands, the impossible closeouts, the random cuts, the offensive rebounds, all of it. The way that he just never looks tired or rushed or anything. He's never overly emotional. Never gets lets the game beat him up. Game four was the culmination of everything OG has been since he got here. He never gives up on the play. He's always where he's supposed to be, and he always knows what to do when he gets there. I'm not kidding. That tip in will live forever because it looked dramatic, but it came from discipline. It came from habits, it came from the exact kind of player that OG is. And that's why that feels so perfect. For Mikhail Bridges, I got three words for you. Fuck them picks. I don't know what else to tell you, man. Where were the were the nights where Mikel disappeared offensively terrible? Yeah. Were there nights where you looked at the box score and went five firsts for this? Yeah. Also that. Was the criticism completely made up? No. He he earned some of it. But here's the thing. The Knicks were not trading for a regular season approval rating. They were trading for playoff answers. They were trading for a wing defense. They were trading for durability. They were trading for a guy who could guard, cut, hit shots, survive high-level possessions, and fit into a team without needing the whole offense built around him. And in this playoff run, Mikhail showed why teams value players like that. Sometimes it was offense, sometimes it was a huge third quarter, sometimes it was a corner three. Most of the time it was defense. Making a star work, blowing up an action, taking the hard matchup so someone else could breathe for a little bit. And you know what? The Nets can enjoy whatever asset managed victory, management victory they thought that they won there. Doesn't matter. The Knicks got a championship. This is like the Rams logic. You know, at some point, the goal is not winning the cleanest spreadsheet argument. The goal is winning the whole damn thing. If the banner goes up, nobody cares what those picks become. Nobody is standing at the parade yelling about draft equity. Once again, fuck them picks. The Knicks got the ring. Josh Hart, Josh Hart is miles and miles and miles of heart. Pun intended. And I'm stealing that from the replacements because it fits perfectly. You know, the scene, Jimmy McGlinty, what does this team need? Needs heart, miles and miles of heart. Well, that's what Josh Hart has. Other teams saw him as a nice guy, big energy, a good role player, maybe a useful piece. The Knicks found the exact ecosystem where his basketball superpowers made sense. He rebounds like he is personally offended by miss shots. He pushes pace when nobody else is thinking about it. He guards bigger players, he annoys people, he makes winning plays that don't always look clean. He is chaos, but useful chaos. I think a lot of people did. I think they were happy to see it, but really a lot of fans thought, all right, it's a college team. What are we doing here? Is this a smart team building or are we just collecting Villanova memories here? Well, it turns out it was both. It was nostalgia with a banner attached. Brunson, Hart, Dante before the trade, Mikhail, those relationships were real. That trust was real. Hart landing here was not just cute, it was perfect. He found his basketball home in New York. Some players are built for clean, quiet situations. Josh Hart was built for this mess. And last but not least, Mitchell Robinson deserves a different kind of love. Mitch is the bridge. He is the long-tenured Nick. He survived the bad years. He survived the fake rebuilds, the injuries, the trade rumors, the free throw stuff, the hack of Mitch nonsense. The constant question of whether he could stay on the floor when it got serious. He stayed. He changed his body, he put on weight, he got stronger, and he became the kind of center this team needed him to be. Mitch is not going to give you the most polished post-game quote. He's not going to be the face of the documentary. He's not going to be the guy casual fans remember first. The real Knicks fans know. That rebound in game five, that offensive rebound to close it out. Oh my lord. What a giant offensive rebound. Against Wemby, by the way. He just outmuscles him. That rebound might not be the first highlight everybody shows. It won't get the Brunson treatment. It won't get the OG tip in treatment, but that's a championship rebound right there. That was years of Mitch becoming this version of himself. Mitchell Robinson is an NBA championship as a New York Knicks, and that feels right. Now I gotta talk about Landrew Shaman here because championship seasons are insane. Everything has to go just right. Everything has to kind of break your way. And Landrew Shaman was a player on this team that almost wasn't even here. Before the season, if you guys remember, the Knicks signed Malcolm Brogdon. And everybody looks at it like, okay, you know, veteran guard depth, steady hand, makes sense, you know. Throughout camp, it's basically Brogdon or Shaman for that final roster spot. And then Brogdon retires about a week before the season. And Shaman's still standing there. That's the championship butterfly effect. One little thing breaks differently in October. Is Shaman even on this team? Now you fast forward to the playoffs, and he's not just a roster feller. He's hitting real big boy shots. He's defending. He's giving Mike Brown real minutes. That's the kind of thing old Knicks teams never seem to have. The random role player who actually helps, the guy the coach trusts at the right moment, the bench piece who doesn't need to be famous, just useful. Landry Shaman went from fighting for a roster spot to being part of the Knicks championship. One more player, we gotta talk about Jose Alvarado. God bless him, living his best life. Brooklyn-born kid, grew up rooting for the Knicks, born in the trenches, and now he is a Knicks NBA champion. He he gave you real minutes as a gritty, pain in the ass defensive pest. That was his role, and he knew it. Not just secondary ball handler, yes, he he helped take pressure off Brunson from time to time. Yes, he let the Knicks run offense without Jalen having to carry every second. But Jose's real gift is making the game annoying. He picks guys up, he gets into their handle, he bothers guards, he makes clean possessions dirty. He turns six minutes into a fight. You can feel the other team getting irritated when he checks in. It's not always pretty, it's not always clean, and very rarely peaceful. Annoying as hell, but exactly what you need.

Leon Rose Builds A Real Team

SPEAKER_01 34:45

Now, before we get to Mike Brown, we gotta talk about Leon Rose. Leon didn't just win one move. He won the whole board. Brunson, OG, Hart, Mikhail, Kat, Jose, Clarkson even. The restraint, the relationships, the patience, the willingness to get uncomfortable, and also the willingness to make moves that people could destroy him for if they went wrong. You know, this wasn't fantasy basketball. This was someone who knew the people behind the players. That's the former agent part of Leon that gets overlooked sometimes. You know, he didn't just collect talent, he built a room. He didn't go out and just grab one superstar to carry us to a championship and they would get all the shine. He built a team full of people who could handle each other, trust each other, challenge each other, and accept the roles that they needed to take. The Brunson signing was mocked as an overpay. Now it might be now it might be one of the greatest free agent signings in franchise history. The OG trade was risky as hell. Now it gave you one of the greatest plays in Knicks history. The bridges trade got crushed. Well, now the Knicks have a banner because of it. The Cat trade made people question toughness, defense, money, fit, everything. Well, now Cat is a champion. Leon Rose built this team that finally ended the joke, that finally ended the drought. We've come a long way from Phil Jackson making us pretend the triangle was about to save basketball again. Quick respect to Julius Randle and Dante DiVincenzo, too. They're not on this championship roster, but they are part of the road here. Julius helped to make the Knicks become relevant again when this franchise badly needed credibility. And Dante gave this team real playoff toughness. Another piece of that Villanova identity before becoming part of the cat trade. They don't get the ring in New York, but they're

Tibbs Respect And Mike Brown Redemption

SPEAKER_01 36:49

part of the story. Same thing for Tibbs, and I want to be fair here. Tibbs deserves respect. He helped drag this franchise out of the mud. He made the Knicks serious again. He gave them standards, toughness, structure, all of it. The Knicks were a joke before Tibbs helped change the temperature. But he also probably took them as far as he could. At some point, the stubbornness that helped build the foundation started putting a ceiling on it. The minutes, the rotations, the trust issues with the bench, the inability to adjust enough on the fly. That doesn't erase what he did. It just means that the final step needed to be a different voice. And that voice was Mike Brown. Mike Brown is now going to go down as one of the great coaches in Knicks history. And that sentence is wild. But it's true. He came in after Tibbs, which was not easy. He came in with a team that had already won, already had habits, already had stars, already had expectations. He had to keep the toughness but loosen the grip. He had to trust the bench more. He had to do all the things that Tibbs wouldn't. And he found a way to do it. He found a way for these guys to buy in and believe and respect him. That's coaching. This is also Mike Brown's redemption. You know, he's been fired, he's been overlooked, he's been treated as at times like a good assistant, a good basketball mind, but not the guy who gets the job done, who gets the final credit. Well, you know what? Now he's got his own ring. Not as an assistant, not standing next to someone else's dynasty, as head coach of the New York Knicks. That is a legacy changer. He didn't erase with Tibbs belt, but he finished what Tibbs couldn't. And yeah, I think uh I think that's all I got, man.

Thank You And How To Support

SPEAKER_01 38:44

This Knicks team, I can't believe it. Anyway, before we get out of here, I just want to say thank you. Seriously, you know, if you if you listen to the show through the bad Knicks rants, the fake optimism, the off-season therapy sessions that I needed and you needed, the draft night coping, the maybe this team is different conversations. This is the kind of episode I always wanted to do and genuinely did not know if I ever would get the chance to. I'll say it again. The Knicks are NBA champions. If you're listening on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get the show, do me a favor, follow the show, subscribe, leave a rating, leave a review, share the episode with one of the Knicks fans who needs to sit in this feeling a little bit longer. Tell a friend, tell a miserable Knicks fan, tell someone who watched Ron Baker minutes and live to tell the tale. We earned this one, boys and girls. Episode 74, the redemption episode, the championship episode, the one I still can't believe is a real episode. Go Knicks. The New York Knicks are NBA champions. And as always, tell someone you love them and spread good energy in this world. I'll catch you next time. Same time, same place.