Knicks' Jalen Brunson takes the last shot at the doubters
The parade floats wound their way through the Canyon of Heroes, a place now adorned with signs depicting it as Champions Way. It's a path the Knicks had never navigated, not even the last teams in franchise history to capture an NBA championship 53 and 56 years ago.
So it wasn’t surprising that the Knicks and their fans were going to make the most of the one-mile journey from Battery Park to City Hall. The fans lined up, not just in the stands built along the route but five and six deep on every piece of sidewalk they could find behind the barricades. And the players did their best to take down all the barricades, jumping off their floats to join in the celebration.
Jalen Brunson took turns holding his daughter and the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Josh Hart mingled with the crowd with a cigar in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. And it was clear along the route that the champagne — and the tequila that players were still waving bottles of in the early-morning hours Thursday — hasn’t stopped flowing since Saturday night’s series-clinching win in San Antonio started the celebrations.
They finally got to City Hall and took their place on the stage, before a crowd that included not only fans and the celebrity supporters who have had front-row seats to the victories on the court but even former Knicks, some who still work for the organization such as Patrick Ewing, Larry Johnson, John Starks and Walt Frazier and also faces from the past who wanted to be there for this such as Herb Williams and Charles Smith.
Only one player spoke, as Brunson served as the voice for the team and took the shot that he had resisted of answering back at those who doubted him or the team. He had noted that his last words of thanks were for his family and then reconsidered and added an addendum to his speech.
“There's a lot of people that have a lot of negative stuff to say,” Brunson said. “There's a lot of people who have a lot of opinions, but when you prove them wrong, you really ought to, you don't have to say [expletive] to them. Nah, they don't deserve it. They don't deserve it. Appreciate y'all. Thank you.”
He deserved the last word on the critics who said he was too small to lead a team, not a big enough star to lift a franchise from the morass it had been mired in for decades. With millions of fans crowding the streets throughout Lower Manhattan, it was clear that he and this team had captured the hearts of the city as well as the other boroughs, the adjoining states and really, the entire basketball world.
Without a first-team All-NBA player on the roster, the Knicks ran through the postseason with one-sided wins in a 13-game winning streak and some of the greatest comebacks in NBA history, never giving up on games that seemed long gone.
It was New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani who voiced the New York fans' appreciation for what this team had brought to New York. He ran through a litany of the players he’d seen from his seat or on television, the lesser-known players, the stars who couldn’t get this championship, and then focused on what made this team special.
“Let's not pretend that this was inevitable,” he said. “If you will allow me, I want to travel back in time. Eight days, Game 4, nine minutes and 33 seconds left in the fourth quarter. The Knicks are down 20.
"The analytics guys, the sports betting companies, the pundits who watch from far away, they do what they do. They run the numbers, they calculate the odds, they write the Knicks off, they give the Spurs a 99.6% chance of winning the game, a 99.6% chance of tying up the series 2-2, of reclaiming the momentum with the next game in San Antonio, a 99.6% chance of silencing the Garden of another year of watching and waiting, but there is one thing that the pundits just don't get about this team, they just don't get about this city. It is in that .4% that we go to work.
“ . . . Most of all, it's in that .4% that the Knicks do what New Yorkers have always done. When we are told something is impossible, we find a way, we win. Standing here before what feels like the entire city, there is a Jalen Brunson quote I can't stop thinking about. ‘You are allowed to think about the worst possible scenario, but you got to go out there and do something about it.'
“ . . . The Knicks did not just win for New York City, they won like New York City,” he added. “What is New York if not your back up against the wall, a dream that feels just out of reach, a rent payment you don't know how you'll ever make? What is New York if not 99.6% of the world stacked against you, and who are New Yorkers if not people who hear those odds and smile, who look at a .4% chance of success and ask, why are you giving me a head start? This is our city. This is our team.”
Brunson, without a speechwriting team and maybe exhausted from the celebration that has had him jumping from one television appearance to another, summed it up.
“Somehow, some way,” he said. “I knew we were going to find a way to get this done. Most importantly, thank you to the fans. Not gonna lie, though, y'all. Y'all are some pretty hard critics, but we appreciate it.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
