The New York Knicks are NBA champions for the first time in 53 years, and Stephen A. Smith believes the entire league should be thanking them.
On Saturday night, Jalen Brunson dropped 45 points in a close-out Game 5, leading the Knicks past Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs. The championship ended a drought that stretched back to 1973 — and according to ESPN’s loudest voice, it did something even bigger for the sport.
“Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks saved the NBA with this championship,” Smith said on ESPN Base’s X account. “If the Spurs win the championship, the entire NBA is evolving its scheme around how do you knock off the alien, the 7-foot-5 alien from France. How do you do it?”
Smith didn’t stop there. He pointed out that Brunson — generously listed at 6-1 — isn’t known for freakish athleticism or poster dunks. What he does is pick apart defenses with footwork, basketball IQ, and a relentless mid-range game.
“Now that a 6-1 guard, who’s not the most athletic above the rim dude — that ain’t his game, just savvy, brilliant as a basketball savant, footwork extraordinaire — that guy led this team,” Smith argued. “In a close-out Game 5, drops 45 on a Spurs defense that was pretty elite. That’s what they did.”
For most of the postseason, the Western Conference was seen as the real battleground. The Spurs looked unstoppable after dispatching the Oklahoma City Thunder in the conference finals. Wembanyama had already redefined what a 7-foot-5 player could do on the floor. His combination of rim protection, ball-handling, and range made a Spurs title feel inevitable.
But the Knicks had other plans. New York grinded through a tough Eastern Conference field that few expected them to clear. Brunson — who earned Finals MVP — turned every doubt into fuel.
In his postgame interview with ESPN’s Lisa Salters, Brunson was almost speechless.
“I got no words,” he said. “It’s everything I’ve dreamt of. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I’m just like… I’m in awe. Whenever someone counts us out, we find a way to come back and do something about it.”
The Knicks’ title run flips the script on an NBA that had started to feel like a arms race for giants. If Wembanyama had won, league executives might have spent the summer copying San Antonio’s blueprint — chasing length, switching, and rim protection above all else. Instead, Brunson proved that old-school craft can still outshine generational size.
Now the Knicks enter next season as defending champions in a conference that still has to reckon with Boston and Milwaukee. But for one night, Smith wasn’t thinking about next year. He was watching his hometown team end half a century of waiting, and he was absolutely sure of one thing: the NBA just got saved — by a 6-foot-1 point guard from New York.
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