Usually, my brain and soul of sport would have been wanting the Spurs to win Game 5 and turn these Finals into either a six or seven game affair.
But that wasn’t the case last night in Game 5. I wanted the Knicks to end it on the road and validate their claim as the rightful 2025-26 NBA champions.
Mission accomplished as the hard working Knicks prevailed yet again in another close win by a score of 94-90 to claim their first NBA championship since 1973. Plus, these Knicks become the first team ever to win the NBA Emirates Cup in December and then go on to win the NBA Finals in June.
I tell you this as well…there’s some giddy motherf–kers over their at AT&T’s advertsing department as for the second straight NBA spring they correctly plugged in the correct threesome to carry their team to NBA immortality.
However… I don’t see AT&T coming back to feature Chet in the coming years as the telecommincations giant wants to project strength, market share, courage, and fatedom in their clever ads. Clearly…AT&T with their NBA ads has overtaken Budweiser and their horses as the best ads in American pro sports.
I mean, wow…these Knicks behind their MVP workhorse Jalen Brunson, who litereally carried his team to its rightful destiny with 45 points, were an afterthought with many bettors heading into these Finals.
Jalen Brunson was so good on this night the Knicks clinched even with Karl Anthony-Townes scoring but two p0ints in 23 minutes of play.
This was Jalen Brunson’s rightful coronation as the blue collar-lunchpail champion of the NBA versus the pampered superstar from France who quite honestly became a bore to observe in this series with each passing game.
Greg Pop and Tim Duncan are going to have pull Wembyanama aside and in the privacy of three person conversation explain to Wemby what it takes to become a team leader with class and dignity like Jalen Brunson and Shai posess.
These Knicks ended up winning nine road games in a row in these NBA Playoffs, and unlike the Thunder of last season, they were not the benefactors of crippling injuries to the likes of Michael Porter Jr, Aaron Gordon, and of course…Tyrese Haliburton in the Game 7 of the Finals.
This Knick team won a real championship without an asterist attached. These Knicks went 16-3 overall in these playoffs, wheras the Thunder went 16-8 in their championship run last season.
I only have only two stars in this game…1 Jalen Brunson, and 2 Dylan Harper of the Spurs. Dylan’s father is the great Ron Harper who personified toughness during his NBA career. I loved Ron Harper. As Dylan beccomes a superstar in this league the Spurs will need that type of charcter to balance the brattish, entitled behavior of Wemby.
De’Aaron Fox was my circled player in red in this series and unfortunately for this young man he was horrific in these last two games. In Game 5… Mitch Johnson allowed him 37 minutes and De’Aaron responded with 7 points on a woeful 3-15 shooting night.
The image of De’Aaron’s horrible decision at the end of Game 4 will unforunately highlight his career as a player who was a star in Sacramento, but withered under the pressure of the bright lights when it mattered most.
I will seriously be surprised if De’Aaron is a member of the Spurs roster next season. He failed miserably in what he didn’t give the young Spurs what they needed most, clutch game ending veteran leadership. Like…Chet, De’Aaron and his soft, feeble, flaccid, overcompensated game…. are probably better suited for the soft plethora of games played in the Eastern Confernce.
So a great Finals for the NBA as this series had enormous viewership and was won by a deserving team with some hard-knocks, blue-collar likeability.
Congrats to the World Champion… New York Knicks.
And of course…Kendrick Perkins had them picked all the way…sigh.
MJ is goin’ fishing in Alex, Oklahoma on this rain-soaked wonderfully cool June Sunday morning.
Erternal love, grace, and mercy.
Mike J