NEW YORK (AP) — By the time Jalen Brunson and his Knicks teammates made it back to New York, the city had turned almost entirely orange. For close to two months, New Yorkers were swept up in the team’s championship push, and the celebration shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
A victory parade down Broadway is set for Thursday — the franchise’s very first, despite winning titles in 1970 and 1973 without ever holding one.
Long after the streets are cleaned up, this team will be remembered. Not just in New York, but across the entire NBA.
The 2025-26 Knicks have secured a place in the 80-year history of the league.
Their postseason performance ranks among the finest ever seen, a stretch filled with dominant victories and stunning comebacks that ultimately delivered the franchise its first championship in more than 50 years.
Former President Barack Obama took to social media to celebrate the achievement, writing: “What a run!” in a post congratulating coach Mike Brown, Brunson, and the rest of the roster — a run some are calling comparable to even Obama’s beloved Chicago Bulls teams.
The Knicks closed out the postseason at 16-3, an .842 winning percentage that ties the 2024 Boston Celtics for the second-best mark since the NBA moved to best-of-seven series in all rounds starting in 2003. Only the 2017 Golden State Warriors, who went 16-1, finished with a better percentage. The 2001 Los Angeles Lakers went 15-1, and the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers finished 12-1, with five other teams finishing a postseason with just two losses.
At one point, New York rattled off 13 wins in a row — second only to Golden State’s 15 consecutive victories in 2017. The Knicks also set records by winning nine straight games away from home and outscoring all postseason opponents by a combined 283 points.
Even before the NBA Finals were finished, rapper Fat Joe — one of many celebrity fans showing up in orange and blue — attended coach Brown’s press conference and offered his assessment of what he was watching.
“Let’s just wait until it’s over, but right now you analyze the numbers, we might be looking at the greatest team ever, like if you analyze the numbers,” Fat Joe said.
When the wins stopped coming easily, the Knicks found another way to make history. Their comeback from 29 points down in Game 4 of the Finals was the largest rally in a Finals game since detailed play-by-play tracking began in 1997. They then capped the championship with a comeback from 16 points down in the clinching game.
Veteran broadcaster Mike Breen, who calls Knicks games on MSG Network during the regular season and has served as ABC’s lead NBA Finals announcer since 2006, weighed in on where this run stands historically.
“It’s absolutely one of the greatest ever,” Breen said. “It’s impossible for me to rank it, but when you take into account the point differential, the nine straight road wins, clinching all four series on the road, the two losses by one point, the two record-setting comebacks, it’s in the conversation as the best ever.”
Two of New York’s three losses came by a single point against Atlanta in the opening round. The third was a four-point defeat in Game 3 against San Antonio, meaning the Knicks finished just six combined points away from a flawless postseason.
On the flip side, they won three clinching games in the Eastern Conference by margins of 51, 30, and 37 points.
Before the playoffs even tipped off, All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns acknowledged the weight of expectations, saying: “At the end of the day we’ll be judged by what we do in this run.”
That judgment has come in, and it’s historic.
“We went through a lot this season, a lot of ups and downs, but we just stayed with it,” forward OG Anunoby reflected. “We’re resilient, mentally tough and we won.”
