GARDEN
GLORY The New York Knicks and the NBA Championship Five Decades in the Making
The 2025-26 New York Knicks, plus a few of their offspring and a pair of all-time
greats, basked in the glory of the NBA championship after a 94-90 victory over the Spurs on June 13 at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio. Upper right: Hall of Famers Walt Frazier, a team broadcaster, and Patrick Ewing, a team ambassador, joined in the celebration. S COTT WACHTER / IMAGN IMAGES
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INTRODUCTION • 5
FOREWORD
After all the suffering, Knicks fans have lived to see the mountaintop STEPHEN BORELLI
We are New York … and we love basketball, we’re gonna take it all, ’cause we’re the New York Knicks! …. IF YOU REMEMBER THOSE WORDS, and that song, with its Rockettes-like f lash filling Madison Square Garden, count yourself as a diehard Knicks fan. It harkens back to an era when Bernard King, wearing those small shorts with the “NY” insignia, would play big, taking over games at the Garden before sometimes sparse crowds. But first, he warmed up, swishing ball after ball to that intro song. If you can believe it, the Knicks didn’t sell out much during this era, even after they drafted Patrick Ewing, the consensus top collegiate player out of Georgetown in 1985. As a boy growing up just north of New York City, I remember the team advertising tickets — and the fact that
they had won the NBA title more than a decade earlier in 1973 — in The New York Times’ sports pages. I asked my dad if we could go. A few quick train rides later, there we were, sitting at Madison Square Garden, watching a young Patrick Ewing racing up and down the court on fast breaks. And hearing that corny song. The Knicks lost to the Milwaukee Bucks 104-88, before 16,547 fans, 3,000 or so short of a sellout, on that Saturday night. Ewing missed more than 50 games over his first two seasons, as the team stumbled to records of 23-59 and 24-58. I temporarily lost interest during his second season, as my family was about to move to Washington. I had bigger problems of fitting into a new school and group of peers. Then, during Christmas break of my first year away from New York, I returned to the Garden, and I heard that song. This is New York … we’re here to play some ball, and we are standing tall, we
are the New York Knicks! Ewing strode out with his teammates
STEPHEN BORELLI HAS BEEN a n ed itor a nd w r iter at USA TODAY since 1999. He grew up in suburban New York City and moved to the Washington area for h ig h school a nd col lege. He has worked on USA TODAY Sports Weekly since 2005 and has been the magazine’s editor, as well as editor of USA TODAY’s sports specia l editions, since 2016. He wrote the def initive bio g r aphy of l ate New York Yankees broadcaster Mel Allen (“How about That! The Life of Mel Allen”) and recently published “Coach Steve’s Yout h Spor ts Survival Guide,” which is based on the weekly sports parenting column he writes for USA TODAY.
OPPOSITE: A who’s who from Game 4 of the NBA Finals: Jalen Brunson, an NBA and two-time NCAA champion; Ben Stiller, comedic actor
and director whose films had grossed billions; Alana and Este Haim, two of the three-sister rock band HAIM; Taylor Swift, reigning queen of pop music; and Mariska Hargitay, star of “Law & Order: SVU,” TV’s longest-running prime-time drama. G EOFF BURKE / IMAGN IMAGES
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RIGHT: USA TODAY Sports
crafted commemorative page prints as the New York Knicks steamrolled their way through the NBA playoffs. REMEMBER THE ALAMO arrived June 13 after the Knicks’ 94-90 victory over the Spurs in Game 5 clinched the team’s first championship in 53 years and the third for a franchise founded in 1946. To earn their crown, the Knicks won three times on San Antonio’s home court, located three miles from The Alamo. KINGS OF NEW YORK celebrated the championship parade up Lower Manhattan’s Canyon of Heroes and the ensuing rally at City Hall Plaza. Police estimated that more than 2 million fans attended the June 18 celebration.
New York Knicks commemorative prints are available for purchase. Scan the code to shop.
IAN YOUNG / USA TODAY NETWORK 8 • GARDEN GLORY
ANTHONY MILLER / USA TODAY NETWORK
wearing those impossibly long warmup pants. The Knicks won that night over the vaunted Portland Trail Blazers of Clyde Drexler and Kevin Duckworth. Duckworth, who would average 15.8 points that season and later help lead the team to two NBA Finals, signed my program, “Big Duck.” But that night, it was the Knicks and I who began what would be a longtime friendship. They were there with me 82 times a year, not including the playoffs, which they made 14 seasons in a row starting with that one. They played an important role in my life as I adjusted to meeting new kids and a new life situation. Being a New York team, they were always on national TV, and I felt like I was right there with them. They had a spunky coach out of Providence (Rick Pitino) and an electrifying guard from St. John’s (Mark Jackson) to get Ewing the ball. As names and coaches changed (primarily from Stu Jackson to Pat Riley to Jeff Van Gundy), they kept winning. Even if they never quite got over the top, or beat a Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls team in a playoff series, their most spectacular moments seemed to connect to formative ones in my life. As a 10-year-old, when I was old enough to ride my bike with friends to our main drag in the Westchester County, New
LEFT: With the Larry O’Brien and Bob Cousy trophies in tow and sporting a colorful jacket acknowledging the Knicks’ championships in 1970, 1973 and 2026, Karl-Anthony Towns drew plenty of attention during the rally at City Hall after the championship parade. BRAD PENNER / IMAGN IMAGES
INTRODUCTION • 9
York, hamlet of Pelham, I found myself in Artie’s Deli when Artie, the owner, started yelling. The Knicks got Ewing! It was May 12, 1985, the day New York landed the No. 1 pick (and the right to draft the Georgetown center) during the first NBA draft lottery. Five years later, I watched a winner-take-all playoff Game 5 in my new family room in Maryland. Ewing hit a 3-pointer while falling out of bounds to help put away Larry Bird’s Celtics at the old Boston Garden. I was in the same room as I pored over my parents’ New York Times for stories about Knicks games I had missed in these pre-internet days. I was seated there when John Starks dunked left-handed over Jordan in Game 2 of the 1993 Eastern Conference finals, and for countless other games when Ewing seemed to always deliver with a big basket. Then I wou ld hea r t he voice of MSG’s public address announcer, Mike Walczewski, through our boxy TV set. Pat-trick Ewing! I was hooked. But to be a true fan of a team, you stick with it through the dark moments. Those times make the winning so much more satisfying, as today’s Knicks fans now know so well after enduring a seven-season playoff drought that ended less than a decade ago. To me, such depths were those 23- or 24-win years or the excruciating losses to the Bulls. They were watching Charles Smith go up — and up and up and up — with potentially game-winning putbacks with everlasting hope the next one wouldn’t be swatted away. 10 • GARDEN GLORY
They all were denied during the final moments of that Game 5 of the 1993 Eastern Conference finals. It ended with a Bulls victory that drastically turned a series the Knicks seemed to own after the first two games. “It felt like the sudden death of a family member who was perfectly healthy,” Doc Rivers, the Knicks’ point guard that season, told author Chris Herring for the book, “Blood In The Garden,” a history of the 1990s Knicks. “I’m not saying that losing a game is as bad as somebody dropping dead, but I’m accurately describing the feeling.” I had just completed my freshman year at Georgetown, and I would go to campus to work out over the summer. One day, outside the school’s basketball arena, I
locked up my bike, turned around and there was Ewing. It was days after that brutal Bulls series had ended. He smiled as I walked up and introduced myself as a big fan (and addressed him as “Mr. Ewing”). He shook my hand and asked me whether I was from New York. I mustered a “yes” and told him I was sorry about the loss to the Bulls. “Oh, we’ll get ‘em next year,” he said. When the Knicks climbed past Chicago (albeit without Jordan, who was playing baseball) the following year, and then past an upstart Indiana Pacers in the next season’s playoffs, I watched every moment. I was a few blocks away, at a classmate’s summer rental house in Georgetown,
when our party, and the broadcast of Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the Knicks and Houston Rockets, was interrupted by the O.J. Simpson chase in Los Angeles. I remember, like many Knicks fans, being annoyed they were interrupting the game as NBC intermittently showed footage of the white Ford Bronco carrying O.J. This was our moment. The Knicks won the game behind more Ewing heroics and were on the cusp of an NBA title, needing one more victory in two tries in Houston. They came within a Hakeem Olajuwon fingertip block of Starks on a potential game-winning 3-pointer in Game 6. Starks otherwise couldn’t seem to miss that day. “I took two dribbles to my left, fired, and
OPPOSITE LEFT: Years after highscoring guard John Starks retired from the Knicks, Stephen Borelli’s career as a USA TODAY Sports journalist led to their paths crossing. Starks was among the former Knicks in the ticker-tape parade. He told MSG Network: “I’m drained. … It was incredible to see the millions of fans come out. Just the joy that you felt on that bus and the love that they was giving to everybody was just incredible.” PROVIDED BY STEPHEN BORELLI
when it left my hand, it was money,” Starks said in “Blood In The Garden.” But Starks was so streaky, we lived and died with him, as did Riley. Riley kept going to him in Game 7, even when Starks could barely sink a shot. Still, the Knicks hung in there, and I remember catching myself in the second half thinking about what it would feel like for them to win it all. The moment never came. I followed them closely for another several years as they came close again, but never that close. Then I got busier with life. I became a sportswriter, which distances you from your rooting interests over time as you work objectively and see the figures on the other side of the TV screen. They are much more human beings than demigods.
But the Knicks always held a close place in my heart for the thrills they gave me, especially during periods of my life when I really needed them. When I met Starks at a work-related function several years ago, the rush I got from shaking his hand surprised me. I felt the need to tell him how much of a fan of his I had been when I was younger. I have a feeling this generation of Knicks, from Jalen Brunson to KarlAnthony Towns, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby (and his epic tip-in) gives their fans the same feeling. They played for each other and seemed to get tougher when they were down. Fans stuck behind them until the game, and the season, was over.
This time, for the first time since the Willis Reed/Walt Frazier days of 1973, the Knicks were the last team standing. I went to bed before Game 5 of the NBA Finals ended the other night, as I had to drive my son to an early baseball game the next morning. I recorded the game but didn’t have time to watch it before we left. I checked the score after I dropped him off at the field, and I felt a flutter inside of me when I saw the Knicks had won. I felt it again as I watched the recording of them celebrating and thanking their loyal fans. This book is for all of us, Knicks fans past and present, who have lived and died with this team and have finally lived to see the mountaintop.
OPPOSITE RIGHT: Temporary orangeand-blue Champions Way signs were added to street poles along Broadway’s Canyon of Heroes. A week later, when the New York City Department of Transportation put 200 signs up for sale on its website at $100 apiece (one per customer), they sold out in minutes. BRENDEN WILLSCH / IMAGN IMAGES LEFT: The Brunson family enjoyed their ride on a float during the parade. From the left: Rick Brunson, a Knicks assistant coach who played parts of nine seasons in the NBA; Erica Brunson, daughter of Rick and little sister of Jalen; and Jalen Brunson, who turned 30 in August 2026. Like her five-year-older brother, Erica attended Villanova. Their father attended Temple, a rival in Philadelphia’s Big 5. Since 2024, Erica worked at Creative Artists Agency, which represented her brother and his teammates Josh Hart and Karl-Anthony Towns. SETH HARRISON / THE JOURNAL NEWS
INTRODUCTION • 11
PREFACE
Knicks’ title reflects the enduring grit of New York and New Jersey CHARLES STILE
WE ARE ALL NEW YORK. That might make New Jersey partisans wince for a moment, but the New York Knickerbockers’ NBA championship unified long-suffering fans across the region who are defined by their never-say-die ferocity. No other sports franchise in greater New York has the ability to bring the kind of unity that spilled onto Broadway and across the river to New Jersey, where the victory pulsed through the sports bars of East Rutherford and Hoboken and Clifton and far into the suburbs, stretching into Morris County and beyond — even as far as Mercer County, where Philadelphia fans have a foothold. Our football fans are divided between the Giants and the Jets; our baseball fans between the Yankees and the Mets; our hockey fans among the Rangers, the Devils and the Islanders. The only rival for the
Knicks is the Brooklyn Nets, and they have proved to be no match since they moved from the Meadowlands and sputtered into a yearly cycle of mediocrity. Only the Knicks can get strangers fist-bumping each other in line at Costco or honking their horns on Broad Street in Newark at pedestrians in full Knicks swag. Only the Knicks could prompt an encounter like the one I had with an elderly couple in my local ShopRite during the Knicks’ marvelous romping over the Cleveland Cavaliers during the Eastern Conference finals. The husband began by sharing his admiration for Jalen Brunson, the superstar guard, and soon was recounting memories of watching Cazzie Russell and Bill Bradley and, of course, Willis Reed, the heroes of the great 1970 and 1973 championships. Soon he was sharing his life story as a salesman who settled on Long Island. I listened despite the melting tub of ice cream in my cart. I didn’t mind. He was teeming with hope and excitement and a measure
CHARLES STILE HAS COVERED New Jersey politics from the Statehouse in Trenton since 1993, first with The Times of Trenton and now with The Record and northjersey.com, which he joined in 2000. He served stints as a genera l a ssig n ment repor ter a nd Statehouse bureau ch ief b efore b e c om i n g a p ol it ic a l columnist in 2007. The dean of the Trenton press corps, Stile h a s b een recog n i z ed by t he Silurians Press Club, the New Jersey Press Association and many other organizations for his work, including with a lifetime ach ievement awa rd for loc a l journalism in 2023. To read his insights into New Jersey’s political power structure and his powerful watchdog repor t i ng, go to subscribe.northjersey.com/offers.
OPPOSITE: Fans began arriving at 3 a.m. from New York and New Jersey and points farther away for the Knicks’ first ticker-tape parade.
Eventually, more than 2 million fans were estimated to be on the streets of Lower Manhattan. The most recent sports parades up the Canyon of Heroes celebrated the New York Liberty of the WNBA and Gotham FC of the NWSL. M ICHAEL KARAS / NORTHJERSEY.COM
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INTRODUCTION • 13
RIGHT: When the Knicks
polished off the Cleveland Cavaliers in four straight games — by an average of 19.3 points — USA TODAY Sports crafted the TOO EASY commemorative page print. The CITY OF CHAMPIONS page celebrated iconic New York championships over the decades. Represented in the classic illustration were the 2026 Knicks, 2024 Liberty, 1969 Jets, 1996 Yankees, 1969 Mets, 1994 Rangers and 2021 New York City Football Club. The Knicks’ first championship in 53 years passed the baton of longest Big Apple title drought to the Jets, who hadn’t won it all since Joe Namath guaranteed an upset of the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.
New York Knicks commemorative prints are available for purchase. Scan the code to shop.
TRENT JOHNSON / USA TODAY NETWORK 14 • GARDEN GLORY
NEIL BALADAD / USA TODAY NETWORK
of disbelief. Was this really happening? The Knicks revived and unified a long dormant nation of fans that spanned two generations of disappointment — the heartbreak of Bernard King’s devastating knee injury in 1985; the NBA Finals losses in 1994 and 1999; the dreary teams of the 2000s and 2010s. But their championship run in the spring of 2026 also showed how far and wide the nation expanded into the metropolitan area, especially in New Jersey. Those cities are loyal hubs for the champions of Madison Square Garden. But millions over the years also migrated out of New York and our fading urban centers of Newark and Jersey City and into suburbs along roads like Bloomfield Avenue
in Newark or Morris Avenue in Elizabeth or Paterson Plank Road in Bergen County — roads that served as paths during the colonial times. They brought their Knicks loyalties with them. And those loyalties became faded memories over time. For years, diehard fans could relive the glory by watching clips of those hallowed seasons on YouTube. Reed’s hobbled entry into the Garden for Game 7 of 1970’s Finals against the feared Wilt Chamberlain and the Los Angeles Lakers. It was an inspirational symbol of resilience that inspired the Knicks to their first NBA championship. And that’s what the Brunson-led Knicks accomplished by beating the San Antonio Spurs in five games. There was a grit and determination that has come to define life
in New York and New Jersey. We don’t give up despite the overcrowding and the astronomical cost of living and the spasms of crime or the gnawing feeling that the city is a target for terrorism. It’s a city and region that dug out of the rubble and heartache of 9/11. The new champion Knicks reflected the dogged spirit that is very much part of New Jersey’s identity. And that’s why we cheered for the Knicks at the ticker-tape parade. Thousands of New Jersey fans poured into Manhattan and thousands cheered them on, many with deep roots in the region. We are all New York now. We have suffered long enough.
ABOVE LEFT: Knicks fans whooped it
up at Wooga, a Midtown Manhattan bar, during Game 5 of the NBA Finals. The city’s watering holes were jammed packed on June 13, a Saturday, in hopes that a 53-year title drought would end that night. S ETH HARRISON / THE JOURNAL NEWS ABOVE: Before the Knicks rallied in
the fourth quarter to beat the Spurs in Game 5, fans endured plenty of anxious moments at a ticketed watch party outside Madison Square Garden. New York prevailed 94-90. S ETH HARRISON / THE JOURNAL NEWS
INTRODUCTION • 15
INTRODUCTION
The players embraced their roles and their city did exactly the same LORENZO REYES
T H I S WA S S O M E T H I N G T H AT spanned generations. This was 53 years of parents telling their children that, perhaps, this was the year. This was Ewing and Starks and Houston getting ever-so-close in 1999. This was icons such as Carmelo and Camby who were players on good teams that could never be great teams. It was even Marbury and Stoudemire, fan favorites who captured the hearts of the city but who often had the misfortune of playing on bad teams. The New York Knicks, with a magical run through the 2026 playoffs — one of the all-time greatest postseason performances — became basketball royalty with their relentless resilience that won the NBA Finals in five games over the San Antonio Spurs. These Knicks embodied the grit of the city. No deficit was too much to overcome. Players such
as Karl-Anthony Towns endured rough stretches and trade rumors. Even their star, Jalen Brunson, was constantly criticized for being inadequate. This city loved a winner, but Knicks fans remained loyal through even the leanest of years. The celebrations that erupted throughout the city were earned over those 53 years. This was why, even though the 1973 team featured eight Hall of Famers, these Knicks would go down as the greatest team in franchise history. In Radio City Music Hall, confetti tumbled from the ceiling of a sold-out watch party, as the team’s official anthem, “Go New York Go,” thundered over the sound system. A block party broke out in the West Village, on West Fourth near Christopher Park, where people gathered on their fire escapes to belt out the chorus of “Empire State of Mind,” joining the thousands who flooded the streets below. In Harlem, residents poured out of walk-ups and bars to shut down 116th
and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. They drank and sang, and one man set
LORENZO REYES COVERS THE NBA for USA TODAY Sports as its lead national reporter. As a Harlem resident, he experienced firsthand the Knicks frenzy that eng u l fed New York a nd New Jersey. Before assuming his NBA role before the 2025-26 season, Reyes covered the NFL for USA TODAY for 13 yea rs. He was on the 50-person panel for the Associated Press NFL awards for seven seasons. He also assisted with coverage of the FIFA World C up, gol f, col lege basketba l l and the Olympics. In 2020, he ser ved a stint with the News desk, covering health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic and issues of social inequality.
OPPOSITE: In the NBA’s play of the season, New York’s OG Anunoby outmaneuvered the entire Spurs defense to tip in Jalen Brunson’s
failed 3-point shot with 1.2 seconds left in Game 4. Anunoby’s heady play, spectacular athleticism and stunning game-winning basket completed the Knicks’ rally from a 29-point deficit for a three-games-to-one lead in the NBA Finals. G EOFF BURKE / IMAGN IMAGES
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INTRODUCTION • 17