Jalen Brunson scores 45 points as the Knicks clinch Game 5 on the road, beating the Spurs to win their first title since 1973.
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While most of the New York Knicks and generations of the team’s fans were getting first thirsty, then parched waiting out the franchise’s 53-year drought between NBA championships, a core of essential players were drinking.
Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges were teammates at Villanova University, learning to do in the NCAA what their eventual NBA destination had such trouble doing since way back in the days of leisure suit and 8-track tapes: Win.
In 2016, the three of them helped an underdog Villanova squad beat North Carolina 77-74 in the Final Four held in Houston. Two years later, Brunson and Bridges led the favored Wildcats to a more thorough 79-62 victory over Michigan in, what d’ya know, San Antonio.
Thus, learning the game under coach Jay Wright and forging a bond that would serve them so well all these years later as professionals, the ‘Nova Knicks’ laid the groundwork for their astounding 2026 playoff run to the NBA’s Larry O’Brien Trophy.
They become the first trio of teammates to win both an NCAA title and an NBA championship.
It would have been two titles together with the Wildcats except that Hart was two years ahead of Brunson and Bridges and left for the NBA as the No. 30 pick in the 2017 Draft.
There was a fourth ‘Nova Boy’ who was one of the close-knit group for a while again as pros. But Donte DiVincenzo’s stay with the Knicks was brief, a single season in 2023-24 when New York’s front office went all in on Wildcat acquisitions.
Brunson had been the first to arrive, a free-agent snubbed by the Dallas Mavericks who – inch-for-inch and in terms of bang-for-the-bucks – has to be considered one of the more inspired signings in league annals. The pepper-pot point guard went to New York in July 2023 when he might otherwise have stayed in Texas, if only Dallas had ponied up what now seems a bargain $55 million or so in a multi-year deal.
Hart came next in February 2023, part of a four-team trade featuring eight players and five draft picks, none of them more valuable than the 6-foot-5 wing ABC announcer Mike Breen called a “loose-ball lunatic” in his championship wrap-up late Saturday. He had bounced through three teams before the Knicks reunited him with Brunson.
“I’m not perfect by any means. I make a lot of mistakes,” Hart told reporters afterward, “but I try to put my heart out there. I try to do whatever I can do to help the team win. I don’t care about points. … To win it, glory be to God. They can’t doubt me about anything else.”
Jalen Brunson scores a Knicks Finals record 45 points in the closeout victory over the Spurs.
Bridges came last, costing the Knicks five first-round draft picks in a July 2024 swap with Brooklyn. The price the team paid for the slender, low-key, two-way forward at times has hung like an albatross around his and the Knicks front office’s necks. Until Bridges’ best performances this postseason, the team’s overall run and finally the giddiness Saturday at San Antonio’s Frost Bank Center.
Hart laid that nasty bird to rest presumably for good during the postgame celebration on the court after New York’s clinching 94-90 victory in Game 5.
“Hey man, forget them picks, forget them picks, dawg,” Hart said. “We here. We here.”
Said Bridges: “It’s great. Y’know, I call these two my brothers ever since I’ve been with them at Villanova. It’s great to call these other guys my brothers, too.”
Later, Bridges added: “The times I’ve been struggling, the fans were on me. The thing is about me, I want to always be better. So whatever, how they feel, I always want to be better.
“I appreciate the tough love. I know some fans might be a little bit crazier than others, but the ones that truly care and want me to be better, don’t stop now. Just keep pushing me.”
The only thing that might have made Game 5 better would have been DiVincenzo tossing aside his crutches and walking boot – now with Minnesota, he ruptured his right Achilles tendon vs. Denver in the first round – to hit a 3-pointer or at least jump around in the winning visitors locker room. DiVincenzo should be credited at least a little for what played out in these Finals because he was part of the trade that, with forward Julius Randle, delivered Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns to New York.
Things were pretty great as it was, a validation of some key contributors’ winning ways in nailing down a championship that had Knicks fans flinching till the end.
They were the team’s three top scorers Saturday. Hart had 13 points and 11 rebounds and posted a Knicks-best plus/minus at plus-15. Bridges scored 14 points on 5-for-10 shooting, matching Hart’s three 3s.
Brunson earned his Finals MVP award by scoring 45 points with three rebounds, three assists and two steals. The relentless 6-foot-2 guard, renowned for his clutch gene, scored 15 of those in the fourth quarter (when the Spurs scored just 18 as a team).
Brunson’s reputation as “The Little Engine That Could” was cemented down the stretch in Game 5. It has been his greatest skill, winning, as evidenced as a high school champ at Stevenson High in suburban Chicago, twice at Villanova and now with New York. That early resume didn’t stop him from falling all the way to No. 33 in the 2018 Draft, but now he has joined that exclusive club with Nikola Jokić, Dennis Johnson and Willis Reed of second-rounders to walk off with the Bill Russell trophy.
While Brunson, Bridges, DiVincenzo and, for that 2015-16 ’Nova season were celebrating college championships, the Knicks were laboring to 32-50 and 29-53 finishes. Brunson’s arrival sparked a jump from 37-45 to 47-35 and, as the 0thers came aboard, the victories rose, to 50, 51, 53 and now this.
“Being able to win with Mikal and Josh, it’s a great feeling,” Brunson said. “Knowing that I got to meet them at a young age and we were able to grow as friends, as teammates in college and be able to achieve something in college, and then to be able to do this at this level is just as special, maybe a little more special.”
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
