Off the Court: How the New York Knicks Ended a 53-Year Championship Drought

“New York Knicks” by Keith Allison, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/; image from Wikimedia Commons.

On June 13, the New York Knicks won their first NBA Championship since 1973, and the celebrations made sure of the Big Apple’s reputation as the city that never sleeps.

Beating the San Antonio Spurs, the phrase ‘Knicks in 5’ will be repeated for weeks and months to come, but what are the decisions that got the iconic franchise to this point? 

This article provides an overview of how the Knicks’ Championship-winning team was built, and the decisions that got them there.

A Change of Approach: How the Knicks Built a Championship Squad

Despite being one of the NBA’s most recognisable franchises, the New York Knicks had been a team in rebuild for years. Having not reached the NBA Finals since the 1998-99 season, where they lost 4-1 to the San Antonio Spurs, fans have desperately waited to be as excited about their team as they were in their 1970’s golden days or the Patrick Ewing era.

In the decades preceding this year’s Championship win, the franchise was marred by a lack of direction, featuring 16 different coaches since the turn of the century. The Knicks’ fortunes changed, however, when former superagent Leon Rose was appointed as the franchise’s General Manager in 2020. 

Credited for overseeing the Knicks’ progress in recent years, Rose brought with him a new approach to player acquisition that included a willingness to trade earlier draft picks to find undervalued players and increase the Knicks’ draft capital.

Also recruited in 2020 was head coach Tom Thibodeau, whose defence-first style made his teams well-known for being well-drilled and disciplined. Under Thibodeau, who was assistant coach the last time the Knicks reached the Finals in 1999, the team made their first playoff appearance since 2013.

The Brunson Effect

During Thibodeau’s tenure, the franchise started to improve their player acquisition, highlighted by a busy 2022 off-season for the recruitment team. After trading players to create space in their salary cap, Jalen Brunson made headlines with a $104 million, four-year contract as part of a deal that drew initial criticism.

This was partly because Rick Brunson, Jalen’s father, had recently been brought in as Knicks’ assistant coach, while others hadn’t expected him to reach the heights he has after he struggled to escape the impressive shadow of Luka Doncic at the Dallas Mavericks.

However, Brunson proved himself an effective point guard and signed a contract extension in 2024 that laid the foundation for their recent Championship win. This is because Brunson opted not to wait until his previous contract expired in 2025 to negotiate a new deal that reportedly could have seen him earn up to $113 million more—a sacrifice that allowed the Knicks space in their salary cap to recruit more talent as a result. 

This included Mikal Bridges, who played with Josh Hart and Brunson at college-level, and Karl-Anthony Towns, who eventually broke Steph Curry’s record for the highest plus-minus in an NBA playoff run with +258.

With these players, Thibodeau led the franchise to their first Eastern Conference finals since 2000, however in 2025, Leon Rose made the brave call to replace him. Giving the job to Mike Brown, the appointment was underlined by Brown’s open-mindedness and willingness to adapt to his players. Ultimately, it turned out to be the right decision, and Brown coached the Knicks to a title in his first season in the role.

With talents such as OG Anunoby, Brown helped regain the Knicks’ status as a strong defensive side as the year progressed, highlighted by a robust display in Game 2 that kept the Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama at bay.

The resulting Finals win gave many Knicks fans the first Championship of their lifetimes, and the work another has now begun. This includes the Knicks sticking to their patient recruitment strategy in the 2026 Draft, where they began by trading back one place with the Los Angeles Lakers, receiving the 25th pick and cash considerations as part of the deal. They then selected 20-year old Sergio De Larrea, but immediately traded his draft rights to the Mavericks in exchange for future draft assets.

For the fans, expectations on the Knicks have naturally risen ahead of the new season. For Mike Brown, the same can be said, and his new task lies in making the franchise the 8th to ever go back-to-back.

Article by Zakaria Anani