The Knicks are trying to win their first NBA title since 1973, while the Spurs last ruled the NBA in 2014.
The NBA Finals are finally here with the San Antonio Spurs hosting the New York Knicks in Game 1.
San Antonio is led by superstar Victor Wembanyama, who has averaged 23.2 points, 10.8 rebounds and 3.5 blocks this postseason. The Spurs are coming off a dramatic ousting of the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals in seven games.
The Knicks, meanwhile, have dominated the playoffs by winning 11 games in a row. Will it continue against San Antonio? Stay with NBC News all night to find out.
Hart is the type of player every team should want — without complaint, he has accepted a non-flashy role that asks him to do the dirty work on defense and on the glass. Yet in a league where teams try to stack their lineups full of shooters in order to spread the floor, Hart can be polarizing because of his streaky shooting. He’s a career .350 3-point shooter, including 41% this season, but has shot just 30% in these playoffs. He’s followed poor shooting games with great ones. The Spurs will leave him open to shoot, putting an emphasis on him to knock his shots down.
Dylan Harper has come in and scored 8 points off the bench, not only giving the Spurs an early lead, but helping San Antonio win minutes with Wemby on the bench. That’s massive.
Popovich led San Antonio to five NBA titles, before he had to step down from coaching last year after suffering a stroke.
The teams combined to make only 10 of their first 32 field goal attempts, a 31.3 field goal percentage.
Behold the alien, the Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama:
Before the NBA Finals began, Jeremy Sochan, the former San Antonio Spur who joined the Knicks midway through the season, said that the way to beat Victor Wembanyama was to make him run, to tire him out.
New York seems to be heeding that advice early on. The Knicks have been hustling up-and-down the court, and it’s led to some early buckets. We’ll see if New York can keep up this pace, and how it’ll affect Wembanyama throughout the game.
San Antonio is 1 of 6 from 3-point range to start, while the Knicks have hit 2 of 3 from outside.
New York leads, 12-7, after a pair of early 3-pointers and by playing fast to try to get ahead of the defense of Victor Wembanyama. But Wembanyama’s block of Josh Hart at the rim swung some momentum, leading to a 3-pointer by the French star on the other end. We’re four minutes into the game and the pace has been frenetic.
In the halfcourt, Victor Wembanyama is guarding Karl-Anthony Towns so far. There was some speculation Wemby could open on Josh Hart to sag into the paint, but so far the Spurs have kept things traditional.
Karl-Anthony Towns wins the tip for the Knicks, and the Finals are underway!
Despite undergoing surgery last week to address a broken pinky finger, New York center Mitchell Robinson will play in Game 1 tonight, the team told reporters.
Robinson might not draw the primary defensive assignment guarding Spurs star big man Victor Wembanyama, a job that could fall to the Knicks’ fleet of wings, but Robinson’s offensive rebounding will be critical in not allowing second-chance opportunities.
Three years ago, Julian Champagnie thought his NBA career might already be over at age 21.
On Feb. 14, 2023, the Philadelphia 76ers waived Champagnie from his two-way NBA contract. Why? The 76ers never told him. However, his exit created a two-way contract spot that was filled by Mac McClung, who not-so-coincidentally was about to represent the 76ers in the All-Star Saturday Night Dunk Contest.
Three years later, as a starter for the San Antonio Spurs, Champagnie is headed home to play in the NBA Finals in New York City — and it’s hard for him to get his head around it.
Mike Tirico, Jamal Crawford, and Reggie Miller discusses why San Antonio could be a contender for years to come, highlighting Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs’ chemistry and its long-term outlook.
After making the NBA Finals in his first postseason in the league, Spurs big man Victor Wembanyama has “pretty unbelievable,” Knicks guard Jalen Brunson told reporters Tuesday in San Antonio. “Things he’s able to do on both sides of the ball, people have never really seen before, for a person of his size. It’s incredible to watch from a player’s perspective.”
“As an opposing player, it’s something you constantly have to be on watch for. You just never know the things that he’s capable of doing. That’s why game planning and our game-planning discipline, our attention to details are so important when it comes to playing because he’s pretty incredible.”
Said Knicks wing Josh Hart: “I don’t know if you can really prepare for that because there’s not a situation that’s similar in that situation.”
The task of guarding the 7-foot-4 Wembanyama has often fallen to New York forward OG Anunoby, who has done as solid of a job as any defender in the league, according to some advanced analytics. Anunoby said there were “little things” he has taken from guarding other 7-footers from Nikola Jokic, Kristaps Porzingis and Joel Embiid and applied to guarding Wembanyama.
But the French superstar requires a different plan because he is “different,” Anunoby said. “He’s taller. Just being aware of where he’s at all over the floor. He can do everything. Super talented.”
Jalen Brunson was 2 the last time the Knicks played in the NBA Finals, when his father, Rick, was a New York backup.
San Antonio’s roster, meanwhile, features another son of a longtime pro in Dylan Harper, whose father, Ron, won five NBA championships in the span of six seasons with Chicago and the Lakers. Dylan Harper, 20, wasn’t even alive the last time his father played in the Finals in 2001.
“I’ve picked his brain,” Dylan Harper told reporters Tuesday. “We talked a little yesterday.
“He just tells me, like everyone else tells me, but I think coming from him it’s more of, ‘Be you, you don’t have to switch who you are in this situation. Just do whatever you’ve got to do, do whatever you did to get here. Just keep doing it.’ That’s been the biggest thing.”
Ron Harper can offer Finals experience, but Dylan has also learned plenty from his mother, Maria, who coached Dylan from elementary school through high school. Now that she’s no longer his coach, his talks with his mom involve “regular mom stuff with a little mix of basketball here and there,” Dylan said.
Here’s a quick statistical breakdown of the Knicks and Spurs as head to tipoff of Game 1 of the NBA Finals…
Everyone knows the “Splash Bros”: Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, who rained down lots of 3-pointers during the Golden State Warriors dynasty.
Well, the San Antonio Spurs have a young backcourt called the “Slash Bros,” Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper, who earned the nickname for their ability to drive to the hoop. Both are tall, physical guards, who both also had scouts question their shooting ability. But both are shooting much better from distance this postseason, and it’s helped the Spurs reach the finals.
During these playoffs, Castle is averaging 19.2 points, 6.7 assists, and 4.9 rebounds per game, while shooting 36.3% from 3-point range. And Harper is averaging 13.1 points and 5.3 rebounds per game, mostly coming off the bench, and shooting 36.4% from deep.
Keldon Johnson is often described as the heart and soul of the San Antonio Spurs. He’s also the team DJ, who brings the energy off the bench. He’s also the longest-tenured member of the team and has set down roots in the area: He owns a farm with many farm animals just outside San Antonio. He made such an impact this year, he won the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year award.
Johnson has been up-and-down during the postseason, but he could be key to the Spurs beating the Knicks in the finals. For more on Johnson, read our profile on him from this season:
The Knicks star is averaging 26.9 points on 48% shooting this postseason.
ESPN’s Mike Breen will be the play-by-play man for his record-extending 21st straight NBA Finals this year. And for the first time, the New York native will be calling the team he grew up rooting for in the championship round.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say there are emotions,” Breen acknowledged to NBC News this week.
In addition to his work for ESPN, Breen has called Knicks games locally for over 30 years. He began as the team’s radio announcer in 1991, and after a brief stint as the lead play-by-play man later that decade, he took over the position for good in 2004.
“It’s not just that I was a Knick fan since I was a kid, but I’ve been broadcasting Knick games for over half my life,” Breen said. “So, you know, when you see a team have a chance to do something they haven’t done forever, there’s certainly emotions there.”
De’Aaron Fox joins NBA Showtime to discuss his career journey to the NBA Finals and his resilience fighting through adversity in the postseason.
Jim Jackson joins the Dan Patrick show to discuss the NBA Finals with Jalen Brunson leading the New York Knicks as they face the San Antonio Spurs.
Harrison Barnes joins NBA Showtime to unpack the emotions reaching the NBA Finals and his pride around the team’s youth that never shied away from the moment.
New York constructed its roster by seemingly asking a question that a college kid might pose: What if we took teammates from a highly successful college program and teamed them up again in the pros? Knicks executive Leon Rose did just that, pairing former Villanova stars Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart with the Knicks (and, briefly, Donte DiVincenzo, a fourth college teammate).
Brunson and Bridges were on two NCAA title-winning teams in college and Hart was on one of those championship squads and their close-knit friendship and knowledge of how one another plays has been integral to getting the Knicks to their first Finals since 1999. But it didn’t always seem like they’d get along seamlessly. The first time Hart met Brunson,
“I thought he was one of them annoying five-star recruits that come in entitled,” Hart told reporters Tuesday. “Unfortunately he was the opposite, and we sparked a friendship. We’re still friends to this day. Yeah, we still keep in touch. But that’s what my thought process was. I hated him to start, hated him during his visit. Probably the beginning of his freshman year, hated him.
“Mikal was the same way. I hated him, too. He came in, we obviously played a similar position, especially in college, and he was weaker, more frail than I was, so he would grab me and I hated it.
Hart and Brunson lived together in college one year, which sparked the name for the podcast they now co-host, “Roommates.”
“He was still extremely annoying, but I got to be able to tolerate the annoyingness a little bit more because I had to deal with it every single day,” Hart said. “Kal, I kind of tormented Kal a little bit as an older guy. I think there was one time I threw him to the ground at one practice, I texted him after like, yo, you good? And we hashed it out then, and we’ve been cool since.”
Spurs TV analyst Sean Elliott joins Dan Patrick to discuss Victor Wembanyama’s intentional mindset at 22 years old and the “tough matchup” with the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals.
Kenny Beecham shares his best bets for Game 1 of the NBA Finals with Mikal Bridges, Dylan Harper, Karl-Anthony Towns and Victor Wembanyama.
Jay Croucher and Drew Dinsick preview game one of the NBA Finals with the San Antonio Spurs 4.5-point favorites against the New York Knicks.
Kenny Beecham previews the NBA Finals with the New York Knicks waiting for their Western Conference opponent with the San Antonio Spurs coming out to fight for the Larry O’Brien trophy.
Though New York won the NBA Cup — beating San Antonio, as it were — and started this season strong, its path to the Finals was not easy, with stretches during midseason in which Boston, Cleveland and Detroit seemed to have usurped New York as a Finals contender. First-year coach Mike Brown said he “actually hoped there would be some big, rocky times or adverse times because you have to try to fight through them as an organization, not just as a team, but as an organization, to see if everybody can stay connected during those times,” he told reporters Tuesday.
“Getting to the Finals is not easy. If you can navigate through some of those adverse or tough times throughout the season, you’ll give yourself a chance when it really matters, which is the postseason,” he said.
One challenge was how to use the Knicks’ depth by tinkering with his rotation. He called it a lesson he learned in part from his time working with the Spurs under former coach Gregg Popovich.
“One of the many things I learned from Pop and Steve [Kerr]; Steve was really good at trying to play a lot of different guys,” Brown said. “Not only that, a guy that hadn’t been in the rotation for a while, one game he might throw him out there as a starter. That kept guys engaged or on their toes, however you want to call it.
“Then at the end of the day, I’m not a medical person, but just from what medical people say, if you can kind of control the minutes during the regular season, it helps them during the postseason.”
Kenny Beecham reflects on the run the San Antonio Spurs are on as a young team with loads of talent led by Victor Wembanyama.
Andrew Greif is a sports reporter for NBC News Digital.
Rohan Nadkarni is a sports reporter for NBC News.
Greg Rosenstein is the sports editor for NBC News Digital.