The 2026 NBA Finals are officially in the books. For the first time in 53 years, the New York Knicks are NBA champions. The losers of these Finals, despite a dominant 62-win season and historic run through the Western Conference playoffs, are the San Antonio Spurs.
Pretty straightforward, right? Well, not quite. Below we're going to dive into the ramifications of New York's drought-ending title. Who are the winners and losers of the 2026 Finals moving forward?
Winner: Jalen Brunson
Think about how many NBA luminaries didn't do what Jalen Brunson just did. LeBron James and Kevin Durant both had chances to join the Knicks and end the drought. Both passed. Durant even came to New York and played for the other team. Phil Jackson and Isiah Thomas were both supposed to be saviors. Both left the Knicks, essentially having disqualified themselves from future roles leading basketball operations for other teams. Even the near-misses have taken on legendary status. It's well known that Stephen Curry wanted to fall to No. 8 in the 2009 NBA Draft so he could play for the Knicks. He was taken by Golden State at No. 7, and the rest is history.
There was no more singular legacy-defining task available to someone in the NBA than being the person who led the Knicks back to the mountaintop. The role was occupied, ironically enough, by a second-round pick who claims that his former team, the Dallas Mavericks, twice declined to extend him for $55 million over four years. The Knicks paid him nearly twice as much as a free agent and even that turned out to be one of the biggest bargains in NBA history. Speaking of bargains, Brunson famously took a significant discount on his 2025 extension to help make this Knicks run possible.
There really isn't a comparison in all of sports for the space Brunson now occupies in New York lore. Derek Jeter and Eli Manning, the leaders of New York's most recent champions in baseball and football and similarly regarded for their clutch exploits, don't fully capture what Brunson means to the city. The Yankees and Giants are used to winning, and even if they weren't, the city is divided in their sports. There are Mets and Jets fans who loathe both of them. Sure, the Nets... exist... but the Knicks hold a greater market share than any other team in New York. Brunson isn't half of the city's favorite player. He's a hero to the entirety of New York. He probably is going to have a statue outside of the world's most famous arena. He just achieved a degree of immortality available to very, very few professional athletes.
And he got to do it playing alongside two of his college teammates with whom he also won national titles at Villanova. His father is an assistant coach for the Knicks and his godfather, Leon Rose, runs the team. This isn't just a storybook run for Brunson, it's a storybook career. It's hard to imagine he'd trade places with any player in NBA history right now. This is about as good as it gets.
Loser: Victor Wembanyama
There's something exceedingly cruel about coming up short as the best player on a Finals loser. Victor Wembanyama was indisputably the biggest reason the Spurs made it this far. This loss will also stick with him for potentially the rest of his career. This was an entirely winnable series. He threw Game 2 away with one of the worst turnovers you'll ever see. He shot 3-of-14 in the second half of San Antonio's Game 4 collapse. He'll forever be associated with the biggest blown lead in Finals history, at least until someone chokes away a 30-point advantage. He was dominant defensively for a half in Saturday's Game 5 and then couldn't help his team from coughing up another double-digit lead in the fourth quarter.
That's how it goes. He's not exactly in bad company. LeBron James will never quite shake the 2011 Finals. Magic Johnson briefly became "Tragic" Johnson in 1984. The list goes on and on. You can overcome these moments, even if Michael Jordan's most devoted supporters view even the slightest blemish as completely disqualifying in "greatest of all time" conversations. Wembanyama should be fine. He's young. His team is asset-rich and flexible. He's only scratching the surface of what he's capable of and he probably already is the best player in the NBA.
But Dan Marino was probably certain he'd make it back to another Super Bowl after losing one in his second NFL season. It didn't happen for him. The NBA is random and cruel. We've had eight champions and 13 finalists in the past eight seasons. Sustaining success has never been harder than it is today. Wembanyama could taste the championship. We think he'll make it back. He'll probably make it back. If he doesn't, this one will sting forever. And even if he does, well, one day, when we're measuring him against James and Jordan, he'll probably wish he had one more ring to his name to help him stack up. This one was gettable. He just wasn't quite ready yet.
Winner: All four other Knicks starters
Yeah, shocker, all of the core Knicks are winners after winning a championship. Let's go through each of them:
- Karl-Anthony Towns was traded after the best season in Minnesota Timberwolves franchise history. Two years later, he's a champion. He spent his entire career hearing about how vulnerable he was defensively. He just played the best defensive season of his career, and one of the biggest plays of the Finals came when he tipped Dylan Harper's inbound pass to win Game 4. Just think about his league-wide reputation only a few months ago. In February, The Athletic reported that if the Knicks traded Towns, "the return is expected to be salary-matching players and, maybe, small draft compensation." During the Finals, Marc Stein reported that the Bucks wanted to wait until after the series just in case the Knicks, who would need to offer Towns, wanted to get into the mix for Giannis Antetokounmpo (they won't). He went from arguably a bad contract to the big man in the modern NBA best-equipped to face Wembanyama.
- Mikal Bridges never has to hear about the five first-round picks traded for him ever again. The Knicks aren't champions without him. The trade, and the contract that followed it, are now automatically justified, and Bridges even managed to avenge the 2-0 blown Finals lead he had in Phoenix in 2021 by finishing the job this time around. He can now play the rest of his career without those monkeys on his back.
- Josh Hart entered the Finals one championship away from becoming one of the most beloved role players in all of New York sports. He embodies everything New York fans want from their athletes in terms of both effort and personality. He was saved from a career-altering catastrophe after his Game 4 missed layup by OG Anunoby's game-winning tip (we'll get to him!). With that tragedy avoided and a ring now safely on his finger, Hart seems primed to remain a New York icon even after he retires. He already hosts the successful Roommates Show podcast with Brunson, and he worked as a guest analyst for ESPN during the 2024 NBA Finals. The "champion to broadcaster" pipeline is strong in New York, dating all the way back to Frank Gifford with the Giants. It seems like half of the 90s Yankees have called games for the YES Network by now. If Hart wants it, he'd seem the obvious choice to eventually succeed Walt Frazier as the analyst on Knicks broadcasts. There's a real chance he winds up becoming the public face of the 2026 Knicks after everyone retires.
- OG Anunoby may have created an entire generation of offensive rebounders in New York. There will be murals of his Game 4 comeback-clinching play throughout the city that survive decades. He'll never pay for another drink in New York for the rest of his life. More than that, Anunoby got to exorcise two pretty significant demons in the process. In college, he tore his ACL going for a fairly similar rebound. This time, the decision actually paid off for him. He missed his first trip to the Finals because of appendicitis and had to watch his teammates win it all without him. This time, his team emphatically could not have won it without him.
Loser: De'Aaron Fox
De'Aaron Fox made one of the smartest career decisions a star has made in recent NBA history when he forced his way to San Antonio. Some point guard was going to have a chance to win several titles playing with Wembanyama, so why not him?
He's just gotten really, really unlucky ever since he actually joined the Spurs. He couldn't have known they would land Dylan Harper in the draft. Fox suffered a high-ankle sprain at the worst possible time and struggled through the last two rounds of the playoffs. He deserves a measure of sympathy here. He's better than he looked against the Thunder and Knicks. He'd be the no-questions-asked starter at point guard for most teams.
But he's about to start a max contract extension, and if Harper isn't already better than him, he soon will be. While he's not to blame for his physical condition in the Finals, some of the decisions he made on the court, most notably the layup that led to San Antonio's Game 4 loss, were inexcusable from such an accomplished veteran. Fair or not, that series is going to stick to him forever.
One way or another, this probably ends badly for Fox. His best-case outcome is probably remaining in San Antonio as a reserve. It would be naive to assume the Spurs don't at least consider trades if they get good offers. There's just no way to justify keeping Harper on the bench any longer. The role Fox angled to fill has been usurped a year and a half later. At least he signed the extension already, because if he hadn't, there's no telling what his market value would actually be this offseason.
Winner: New York's bench
Oh, you're surprised we're naming more Knicks winners? That's right. Literally the entire roster wins. The title holds more symbolic meaning for the starters, but for the bench, the benefit is practical.
Mitchell Robinson and Landry Shamet are impending free agents. They are going to get paid off of this title run, whether it's by the Knicks or someone else. Jose Alvarado has a player option, and even if he picks it up, he's extension eligible. So is Deuce McBride. Both of them played meaningful roles in this championship. They're both in line for paydays as well.
That is even going to trickle down to the rest of the roster. If the Knicks splurge to keep their reserves, they might be put in a position in which they can't afford to match an offer sheet for Mo Diawara, a restricted free agent who impressed in the regular season. That could compel someone to offer him more than the minimum because they know he's gettable. If they do let players go because this run made them too expensive, there are young players here who stand to benefit. Tyler Kolek could step in for one of the guards. Ariel Hukporti would be in line to step in for Robinson. Older players like Jordan Clarkson at least played his way into another job next season.
A rising tide lifts all boats. One way or another, every single notable member of the Knicks is going to wind up benefitting from this run. They might get paid. They might get a bigger role. They're all getting something.
Loser: Nico Harrison
We all assumed Nico Harrison handed another team a championship last February when he sent Luka Dončić to the Lakers. We were half right. He did build another team's champion. He just did it far sooner than that.
His exact role in getting Brunson to New York isn't fully clear. We've heard disputed accounts of when and if the Mavericks offered Brunson that four-year, $55 million extension. Even if the Mavericks did pass on the chance to keep Brunson, Mark Cuban shares a reasonable amount of blame as well. Maybe Brunson just wanted to be a Knick all along. We'll probably never know. On the Brunson front, we'll call Harrison partially culpable, but can't go much further than that.
But there's another critical moment in Knicks history that falls far more clearly at Harrison's feet. In the 2023 offseason, the Mavericks fired director of health and performance Casey Smith while he was at the bedside of his dying mother in Ohio. Smith had been with the team for 21 years and was a trusted confidant of Dirk Nowitzki. "He was 100% threatened by him," a team source told ESPN's Tim MacMahon later. "He's going to show that I'm in charge and nobody else can question that." Dallas would go on to completely revamp its health and performance staff under Harrison in ways that have thus far gone poorly.
Fast forward through the 2023-24 season. The Knicks lose Julius Randle to injury in the regular season, and then lose half of their remaining rotation to injuries during their second-round loss to the Indiana Pacers. Had they been healthy, they likely would have at least advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals, if not further. After that defeat, they hired Smith. In his first season on the job, the Knicks were named the NBATA Athletic Training Staff of the Year. In his second, they won the championship. All five of their starters played at least 66 games this season and 65 games last season. The Knicks made it through both postseasons largely unscathed.
Injuries have become a defining feature of the modern NBA. The Knicks happened to have two long postseason runs with barely any notable injuries immediately after hiring Smith, who almost certainly wouldn't have left the Mavericks without getting fired. So Harrison did ultimately hand a big-market team a championship... just not the one we thought.
Winner: Leon Rose and Mike Brown
Leon Rose is the latest player agent to successfully transition into front office work. Both Rob Pelinka and Bob Myers were the general managers of championship teams, but neither did so with the degree of difficulty that Rose did. Myers inherited Stephen Curry. Pelinka technically inherited LeBron James from Magic Johnson, though in reality, the Lakers were always his choice rather than the result of smart roster-building. Rose actually had to build his team from scratch. He didn't inherit a single one of his starters, and he didn't trade for any of them either. Other executives may have built better teams, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a more impressive overall roster-building performance.
The final significant piece came last offseason, when the Knicks moved on from Tom Thibodeau and hired Mike Brown. In hindsight, Brown is extremely lucky to have been fired by the dysfunctional Kings. Had they made the rational decision not to blame their coach for their poor roster management, he might still be in Sacramento overseeing one of the league's worst teams. Instead, he landed in the perfect situation in New York, tweaked the things that weren't working under Thibodeau and finally cemented himself as a championship coach almost two decades after his first trip to the Finals.
Losers: The Timberwolves, Raptors, Kings and Nets
The teams that traded with the Knicks recently generally have not fared well
The Knicks didn't develop much of their core internally. Their champion was built almost entirely by plucking fully formed key figures away from other teams. A lot of those teams probably have regrets.
The Timberwolves weren't all that competitive with Wembanyama when they faced him in the second round. They might have had the antidote in their building in Towns, and they traded him for Julius Randle, who has disappeared completely from the last two series Minnesota lost, and Donte DiVincenzo, who just tore an Achilles. Even as a Joan Beringer optimist (he came from the first-round pick Minnesota got in that deal), the Timberwolves would probably like that trade back.
Several teams offered buckets of first-round picks for OG Anunoby over the years. The Raptors insisted on trading him for players. Immanuel Quickley is now on a contract widely treated as one of the worst in the NBA. RJ Barrett had a great moment with his game-winning 3-pointer against Cleveland in these playoffs... but that was more than a month ago. First-round moments don't hold much weight compared to Finals moments, and Anunoby obviously had a doozy of one in Game 4. It's the second straight year a former Raptor has been essential to a Finals team. Give the Raptors truth serum and they, too, would probably love to take back the Anunoby and Pascal Siakam trades.
Look, firing Brown as quickly and irrationally as they did was bad enough for the Kings. I don't need to salt this wound. But I can't help myself. The contract Brown initially signed to coach the Kings was for four years. It was signed in the summer of 2022, meaning if it had not been touched, it would have lasted through the 2025-26 season. So an NBA head coach won a championship during the term of a contract he signed with the Sacramento Kings... but not while coaching the Sacramento Kings. This team never ceases to amaze, does it?
And that leaves us with the Nets. You know what? They'd absolutely make the Mikal Bridges trade again. It was, for their purposes, an absolute no-brainer. They got five first-round picks and a swap for a non-All-Star. Rejecting that trade on the basis of who it came with would have been irresponsible. The Knicks won their end of the trade, but that doesn't mean the Nets won't do well with theirs. That's not the issue here.
Think of the head start the Nets had on the Knicks. After a year of speculation that Durant and Kyrie Irving would join the Knicks, they signed with the Nets instead. A bit less than a year after New York hired Rose, the Nets traded for James Harden. And the Knicks still won a championship before they did, with a player they acquired from Brooklyn no less. More than that, when the Nets were playing for their title with Durant, Irving and Harden, it elicited a pretty minimal response from the wider New York audience. The Knicks, meanwhile, have united the city like no team ever has.
All of this is a sobering reminder of how far the Nets of just how far behind the Knicks they are in terms of New York relevance. They've only been there for a decade or so. Maybe it takes time. Realistically, it probably takes a homegrown star. But they're barely even a blip on the radar of their home market right now, and now they'll have to watch a parade that's only a bridge away from their arena, knowing they helped make it possible.
