The first thing Shaquille O’Neal did after the buzzer sounded in Game 5? Eat crow. And he did it with a smile.
For two full seasons, Charles Barkley had been shouting into the wind — calling Jalen Brunson’s free-agent move to the New York Knicks the single best signing in NBA history. On the TNT set, inside arenas, between segments, Barkley kept hammering home that point while Shaq rolled his eyes or laughed it off. But after Brunson dropped 45 points, grabbed three rebounds, dished three assists and snatched two steals in 41 minutes to clinch the Knicks’ first title in over 50 years, O’Neal had no choice but to wave the white flag.
“Charles, I owe you an apology,” O’Neal said during the postgame broadcast. “You’ve been saying for the past two years that Brunson has been the best free agency signing ever. Now it is. Now it becomes that.”
Shaq didn’t stop there. He went deeper on what made Brunson’s performance historic — not just the scoring output, but the cold-blooded intent behind it.
“What he has done — listen, we knew he was good. We never knew he was this good,” O’Neal added. “We’re sitting up here just watching him. He woke up this morning saying, ‘Hey, I’m going to get this. Whatever I got to do, I’m gonna get this MVP and I’m gonna get this championship.’”
The numbers back up the hype. In Game 5, Brunson shot 14-of-27 from the field (51.9 percent), 4-of-7 from three (57.1 percent) and 13-of-15 at the free-throw line (86.7 percent). Across the entire Finals run, the newly-crowned MVP averaged 28.4 points, 3.2 boards, 6.1 assists and 1.2 steals while shooting 46.5 percent from the floor, 36.3 percent from deep and 84.6 percent from the stripe.
How did the Knicks land a Finals MVP in free agency? It wasn’t simple — and it wasn’t clean. Brunson was originally selected 33rd overall by the Dallas Mavericks in 2018. After his father Rick joined the Knicks as an assistant coach, Brunson signed in New York during the 2022 offseason. The league later fined the Knicks and stripped them of a second-round pick for tampering — finding they had improper contact with Brunson before the free agency period officially opened.
At the time, the tampering penalty was the bigger headline. Now it’s just a footnote to one of the greatest free-agent acquisitions in league history. Barkley called it from Day One. It just took a championship night — and a vintage 45-piece from Brunson — for Shaq to finally admit it.
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