SAN ANTONIO – The NBA’s defending champions required five regular season games and seven Western Conference Finals bashfests to suss out San Antonio’s Spurs, failed.

The Knicks needed but three quarters. Another dynamite fourth quarter from Knick hero Jalen Brunson gave New York its first Finals lead in a over a half-century on Wednesday night, toppling San Antonio 105-95 in Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Finals.

That previous Finals advantage, a 4-1 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1973 NBA Finals, was celebrated by Knick reserve center Phil Jackson on a beach at Malibu with an unnamed actress, according to Phil’s book ‘Maverick,’ Jackson “gobbling LSD for breakfast.”

Brunson (and Knicks coach Mike Brown, for that matter) appeared to show little instinct toward toward Phil’s breakfast of champions after Game 1, giving every indication these current Knicks keep these sainted Spurs in sensible range.

And within the same level as previous combatants. We worried over the Knicks faltering against stiff Western competition after facing Atlanta, Philadelphia and Cleveland in the previous three rounds (Eh, Woof, and Whatever). We shoulda concerned ourselves with whether or not San Antonio was ready for the team that only needed 14 outings to escape the East.

The visiting Knicks delicately primed past the restrictions of rust in the team’s first contest since May 25. New York was down 10 points in the second quarter and 14 in the third before colluding to surprise San Antonio in what the NBA calls “clutch minutes,” the final five minutes of a close game. Timing issues aside, it felt as if every second of Game 1 was crucially clutch, the utter and pristine picture of all-out NBA playoff basketball.

Brunson finished with 30 but was no angel on his way toward the mark, flinging lefty hopers over the arms of Victor Wembanyama, spinning out repeatedly on floaters and only using arms on in-and-out three-pointers. Those were practice legs, scrimmage flings, and Brunson (7-22 entering the third period, 5-9 from the floor in the final 12 minutes) needed every second surrounding him to re-locate his crouch.

Once the legs returned, though, over. Brunson’s corner three off a Mikal Bridges offensive rebound with 1:50 remaining gave New York a 97-95 lead, all the grasp it needed. Rust was absolutely an issue, for these visiting Knicks, now they’ll band together to earn a full endorsement deal with an anti-rust spray, we won’t name any brands because we’re not sponsored ourselves, but watch for “polyurethane resins” to be uttered by Jose Alvarado on an advertisement sometime this summer.

Alvarado helped keep the visitor’s wits throughout, his presence was badly needed in the second quarter when Brunson turned his ankle and left the game. Alvarado, perhaps buoyed by Brunson bounding over with both legs to complain to Scott Foster during the injury timeout, hit 3-of-3 from the field in his run, seven points, three defensive boards and an assist and a steal, because he’s Jose Alvarado.

Bothered by foul trouble, Josh Hart barely worked that second quarter. Josh made up for it.

In one of the finest three-point performances in NBA Finals history, Hart’s derring-do stole the home court advantage right out from Texas’ ten-gallon hat. Four steals and six assists from Hart, who covered all angles defensively while still sustaining his sniff for the passing lanes. His shot was off (1-5 from the field, 0-3 from deep) but he was in the right place in every other instance, a superior all-around performance, even if his jumper doesn’t go all the way around.

The home team failed to clasp past 100 points per 100 possessions, the Spurs missed three-quarters of their threes and wasted a four-turnover game, and 15-point first half from Julian Champagnie. Wembanyama was a force defensively but missed 16-21 field goal attempts on his way toward 26 points, a dozen boards and six turnovers, three blocks.

De’Aaron Fox clunked 3-13 from the field on one leg. The veteran developed good looks in the fourth quarter, missed, while Dylan Harper (16 points and seven rebounds through three quarters) watched from the bench. Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson, cherished Spurs veterans but a little hype in Game 1, somewhat charged, possibly caffeinated, 5-15 from the floor combined.

It was a learning experience. Fans talked themselves into shouting “Spurs in five” on the way out of the building in Game 1 and, yeah, it ain’t hard to see what’s under that hat. San Antonio does have a seven-and-a-half-foot center with skills, after all.

Yet New York proved none of this counts if the center in question is centimeters removed from what matters, the best attempt available, a Knick splash. New York missed 25-36 three-pointers in Game 1, but its concentration and approach was apparent from the rafters. If Wemby is slightly out of focus, dive to the rim as if the season depends on it. The Knicks are to be commended for maintaining a straight line to the rim anytime Wembanyama was bothered elsewhere, held or held up, New York launching the millisecond his fingertips were no obstacle.

These moments usually require hours to develop, entire games. The Thunder ran out of time, the Timberwolves rarely earned the pause, the Trail Blazers never even caught up to Central time. Yet New York kept its principles in place throughout Game 1 until these fundamentals found paydirt. Until the legs returned, finally out of Connecticut’s practice sweats for the first time in over a week.

The Spurs understand what they have to do now, yet that knowledge was in place well ahead of Game 1. It’s the connection which counts the most, and San Antonio must find out who its conductor is.

New York knows. This is Brunson’s team, the Villanova cats with two battling bigs. Karl-Anthony Towns put himself on the floor throughout Game 1, 18 points and 18 chestbumps with Wemby while defending Victor. Front-to-front stuff, too, the awkward kind.

KAT and Mitchell Robinson’s mystery finger were, in spite of Victor’ 12-13 mark from the free throw line, a bruise-in-waiting for Wembanyama to push through. The Knicks are thick up top and soulful down below and full of brains and wit throughout the middle.

The Spurs are running out of time to define their own personalities, as the showcase in Manhattan draws nearer. The younger team is capable, but can they hold in the face of a crew which doesn’t crack?

Kelly Dwyer covers the NBA at KDonhoops.com

For as unpredictable as the NBA can be, it doesn’t get many sea changes. That is, big, overhauling alterations to its topography or behavioral patterns – those things take more time. The 2025-2026 Playoffs have been mercurial, surprising, even enlightening, but it’s still not the basketball that’s brought about the most marked development.

It was clear something was different when the tenor of the NBA aggregator infographics changed. Early in the playoffs the images looked familiar, the usual contextless photos of athletes looking gassed or frustrated churned out with blunt, all-caps missives (OUT, ELIMINATED, CHOKED, BUILT DIFFERENT) from NBA media properties’ social platforms and aggregator sites alike. But then, following the first round, there was a blip.

After the Spurs beat the Blazers in a five-game series, Victor Wembanyama answered a postgame question from L’Equipe’s Maxime Aubin about the cliché that showing emotions signals weakness. As that game ended, Wembanyama visibly choked up on the Spurs bench.

“I think it’s first and foremost a fear of judgment,” Wembanyama told Aubin. “Like, this feeling that you have to act a certain way, social codes, I guess. Personally, I refuse to carry the burden of having to hide my emotions.”

In rapid succession, the quote was aggregated, but it wasn’t blunted. At most, the “personally” was lopped off, but infographics of all shapes and sizes (or just two, whatever the optimised dimensions are for Instagram and Twitter) stated, like an awkwardly short affirmation, “I refuse to carry the burden of having to hide my emotions.” There were photos of Wembanyama looking thoughtfully into the middle distance, photos of him screaming in triumph, lots of photos of him crying, face scrunched or buried into the shoulder of a teammate.

That was early May, when the stakes for the Spurs felt light and low. The team has since advanced through two more rounds, besting the Timberwolves in six and dumbfounding the Thunder in seven games of high-flying, arduous, gorgeous basketball. Throughout those 13 contests, Wembanyama’s emotional peaks and valleys have continued to be on prominent display: there have been more tears, more tension, more frustrations and more joy. In the month backdropping those games, the appreciation, even obsession, with Wembanyama’s expressiveness has also grown. Creators outside the traditional NBA media and fan ecosystem have latched on, touting Wembanyama for normalising vulnerability and bringing back demonstratively caring about things. Even within the typically contradictory and oftentimes dour NBA media space of which I am a part, he’s been similarly lauded.

But Wembanyama isn’t the first athlete to articulate how badly he wants to win and to ugly cry when he does. Nor is he the first to grapple with the juxtaposition of that desirousness against the appearance of cold control we still require of our stars. So, what is it about this moment that’s made Wembanyama resonate so deeply, well beyond the NBA? Why do we care so much about Wembanyama caring so much?

Loathe as we are to admit it, we’re creatures of the contemporary world; frogs boiling in whatever noxious soup du jour each new news cycle dumps more ingredients into. Against the backdrop of accumulating global conflicts and the warped language used by our leaders to justify them — “deescalate” into violent escalation, “winding down” that only serves to ramp up — the plain-spoken rejection of a convoluted and long-held status quo hits like a gulp of cold water. Wembanyama handed us the proverbial glass when he rejected the need to be responsible for other people’s discomfort with his emotions, and he’s topped the glass up each time he’s doubled down on being expressive.

There’s a two-fold distinction in Wembanyama’s direct and considered articulation. The first is that he has the perspective of an outsider, because he is one. Basketball is the common ground, a shared language as much as shorthand between him and a majority American NBA fanbase, but his clarity comes from a lifetime prior to now of looking in. The requisite distance needed to hold a place up like a prism and have it catch different streams of light. It was apparent this past winter, when he was one of just a few NBA players to speak up about ICE violently clamping down on people in Minneapolis.

“Every day I wake up and see the news and I’m horrified. It’s crazy that some people might make it sound like it’s acceptable, the murder of civilians. Every day I read the news and I’m asking very deep questions about my own life. But I’m conscious also that saying everything that’s on my mind that would have a cost that’s too great for me right now,” he told media. “I’m a foreigner, I live in this country, I am concerned.”

Asked to clarify if his hesitation to speak came from being a foreigner, Wembanyama said yes.

It was a glimpse into his thought process as a person navigating the delicate intersection he stood at as a French national and non U.S. citizen, as a high-profile athlete, arguably no longer an abstract “future face of the NBA” but the very one actively eclipsing the last generation, and as, foremost, a person who saw injustice and harm and was compelled to speak up. All athletes exist in something of a suspended state of personhood, expected to perform as their outward persona even when they’re off the court. International athletes — especially those in the U.S. in its current sociopolitical climate — exist in a much more temporal state of belonging and tend to keep below the radar.

His articulation has also been bodily. At his stature, his face is a little like a lighthouse. Whatever expression flashes there is impossible to miss. The difference between Wembanyama’s competitive expressiveness and, say, an athlete blowing up on court with vitriol, is that we’re almost more accustomed to the latter. To expressions of frustration and aggression: fights breaking out, equipment being smashed. We’re conditioned to think of these eruptions as part and parcel with the high-stakes and effort of pro sports, proof of concept. But it’s a little bit of crying that, traditionally, had the potential to send the whole system spiraling. At least it was, until a highly visible — 7’4, towering tears — athlete started doing it.

It’s this visibility of emotion, specifically the emotions we equate with sensitivity and vulnerability, that’s so unique when paired with Wembanyama’s expression of them. It reads as oversimplified, even rude (giant man has giant feelings), but when seemingly softer emotions are expressed at billboard-size scale, it’s almost like exposure therapy.

And it’s high-stakes exposure. Prime-time and now, entering the Finals, under the brightest lights and biggest production the NBA has to offer. There’s been a sense that, as the playoffs wore on and the Spurs gained experience, they’d mature, harden. Wembanyama as their leader perhaps most of all. There is, in some corners of fandom and analysis, even a thirst for this. For a young team like San Antonio to get the hope and all these softer expressions — aspiration, jitters, overwhelming joy — roughly knocked out of them.

But this is it. In a world where we’re told not to care, a mindset reinforced daily by the blithe destruction and ravaging of people, their humanity, far and close to home; where a social veer to aggressive, self-serving apathy is threatening to become — if not already — the norm, a demonstrative example of a person extolling the opposite is jarring. That initial jolt can be taken as a threat, or as an opportunity to recalibrate. To be a little more willing to put your own vulnerabilities on display in return.

My interpretation of Wembanyama being put up as face, or saviour, of the league is not that the NBA was lacking the hyper-unique, once-in-an-era skillset he has prior to this; it’s that he offers an alternative to the majority viewing experience of the world writ large right now. You can certainly watch to be entertained, but you can also watch to be infused with a wallop of emotion. The scale of those feelings is difficult to simply switch off with the game, chances are that they will flash over you in the days, months, and more to come. Against disorienting, intolerant darkness, Wembanyama is a roving light to borrow from or burn with.

The NBA will have a unique champion for the eighth straight year. The San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks are squaring off in a 2026 NBA Finals matchup no one could have seen coming. Before this stretch, the league had never had more than six consecutive unique champions, which happened from 1975-1980. No team has won multiple titles over the last eight years, and no team has even repeated as a conference champion since the 2019 Golden State Warriors.

Why is there so much parity in the NBA right now? It’s mostly a combination of salary cap changes and injuries. The Oklahoma City Thunder seemed primed for a dynasty when they won the championship a year ago, but the Spurs beat them in a fantastic Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals with their second and third best creators out in Jalen Williams and Ajay Mitchell.

The NBA is left with a rematch of the 1999 Finals, which the Spurs won in five games over New York. It’s going to be incredible watching Victor Wembanyama chase his first championship in Madison Square Garden against a Knicks fanbase desperate for their first championship since 1973. Let’s preview the series from both sides and make a championship pick.

The Knicks just played the best 11-game stretch in league history — and somehow that’s not an exaggeration. This team is red hot right now, and they’re playing with full belief that they can deliver New York its first NBA championship since 1973.

The Spurs haven’t faced a true stretch five who can pull Wembanyama away from the basket on this playoff run. Enter Karl-Anthony Towns, the best three-point shooting center of all-time, who has suddenly been unlocked as the best version of himself over the last six weeks. Towns feels like the most important player in the series for New York. He’s a threat to score 25+ feet away from the basket, and that could potentially take Wemby away from defending the paint. The Spurs can try to stick Wembanyama on Josh Hart or another Knick, but that will create some problems for San Antonio, too.

It’s easy to discount Jalen Brunson, but he’s led his team to championships in high school and in college, and consistently rises to the occasion in the biggest moments. While the Spurs defended another mid-range shooter in Gilgeous-Alexander well in the West Finals, it’s worth noting that Brunson has a much higher three-point volume, taking 35.8 percent of his field goals from deep, compared to 22.6 for SGA. Brunson’s pull-up three ball will have to be a weapon in this series. The fact that he’s not much of a rim attacker means Wembanyama needs to come out higher on the floor when he’s not getting spaced out of the play by Towns. For as good as the Spurs’ defense is, Brunson has shown that he has so many counters to effectively get off his offense.

I’m fascinated to see how often and how effectively Anunoby defends Wembanyama. It feels like the best Wemby defenders are long and strong wings who are quick enough to neutralize him off the bounce, and Anunoby might be the best example of such a defender. Turning Wemby into a shooter is in the Knicks’ best interest, so if Anunoby and Mitchell Robinson can keep him out of deep post position, that’s a good start for a winning recipe.

The Knicks are also the much fresher team. While San Antonio just played a physically and emotionally draining 7-game series in the West, the Knicks have been chilling at home after consecutive sweeps. Sure the Knicks might be a little rusty at the start of Game 1, but that rest advantage will carry over through the remainder of the series.

It certainly feels like the Knicks have more offensive firepower than San Antonio. Brunson and Towns is an elite scoring duo, and Mikal Bridges and Anunoby can each carry the offense for a game or two themselves. De’Aaron Fox hasn’t been at his best for the Spurs basically the whole season, and asking Dylan Harper to immediately ascend to a true No. 2 option as a 20-year-old is a lot. The Knicks just have so much scoring punch in their eight-man rotation, and it’s conceivable that not even Wembanyama can slow them down.

Madison Square Garden is about to turn into one of the greatest environments in NBA Finals history. Knicks fans are craving a championship, and the team will be ready.

It feels like Victor Wembanyama ascended to best player in the world status during the Western Conference Finals, which is a terrifying thought considering he’s only 22 years old and still has plenty of room to grow as a player. When he’s really locked in, Wemby looks like a 7’5 Kevin Durant capable of self-creating step-back threes while also being a dominant a rim runner and arguably the most impactful defender in NBA history.

How will the Knicks guard Wembanyama? It’s a question that could define the series. New York only has two 7-footers on the roster with Karl-Anthony Towns and Mitchell Robinson, but Robinson recently suffered a broken pinky that should linger into the Finals. New York can also use OG Anunoby to guard Wembanyama, and that might be their best matchup. For as long and strong as Anunoby is, Wemby is still going to be able to shoot over the top of him whenever he wants to. If the French superstar gets hot as a jump shooter or from floater range, the Spurs will immediately have an advantage New York can’t neuter. Even if Anunoby is effective for stretches, the Knicks will still need other defenders to soak up minutes against him, and their options are pretty limited.

Wemby’s impact is even bigger on defense, especially with so many good perimeter defenders in front of him. Stephon Castle did an outstanding job on Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with Wemby lurking behind him, and that same duo will cause plenty of problems for Jalen Brunson. Like SGA, Brunson takes a lot of his shots from mid-range, which Wemby’s length can help evaporate. Brunson took 51% percent of his field goal attempts from mid-range this season, per Cleaning the Glass. The Spurs feel uniquely equipped to defend that kind of superstar shot profile.

The Spurs’ role players are also fully locked in right now. Julian Champagnie had a breakout conference finals series with multiple 20-point games and consistently good rebounding. Devin Vassell is playing the best ball of his career. Dylan Harper is already taking over playoff games at times at 20 years old. Luke Kornet is one of the league’s better backup centers, and could rebound from a tough matchup vs. the Thunder.

San Antonio’s defense will really be in the spotlight for this matchup. The Knicks’ offensive rating has jumped from 118.7 in the regular season to 123.3 in the playoffs, by far the best mark in the postseason. Meanwhile, San Antonio’s defensive rating has gone from 110.4 in the regular season (No. 3 overall) to 104.4 in the playoffs (second-best behind the Knicks). The Spurs’ defense feels built for the playoffs with more contact allowed on the perimeter and Wembanyama being almost adjustment-proof. If the Spurs can limit New York’s three-point attempts, Wemby can take care of the rest inside.

In what feels like a pretty even matchup, the tiebreaker should go to the team with the best player. That’s Wembanyama.

This truly feels like a toss up to me, but I’m going with San Antonio in seven for a few reasons.

The Knicks’ romp through the East has been incredibly impressive, but they haven’t seen anything like the Spurs. The Atlanta Hawks, Philadelphia 76ers, and Cleveland Cavaliers are all two steps below San Antonio at least. I’m not sure if the Knicks’ hot three-point shooting is sustainable. Landry Shamet just shot 91.7 percent from three in the Eastern Conference Finals (not a typo). Is that really going to happen again? The Knicks have plenty of shooters on the floor at all times, but the windows disappear a lot quicker when someone like Wembanyama is closing out on you.

I was tempted to go Knicks in six here. New York clearly has a path to victory, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if they routed the Spurs the same way they’ve routed everyone else in their way on this playoff run.

If the Spurs can extend the series to seven, they will get the final game on their home floor. Weird things can happen in a Game 7, and I typically prefer the team with the best overall player. Wembanyama already slayed the biggest challenger in the league in his first playoff run. I think he’s ready to win a championship.