LAS VEGAS — Karl-Anthony Towns carried his trademark, wide smile with him as he walked to the podium. Black hat. Black shirt. Black shorts. There was a slight hobble to his step. A medal bounced off his chest. He carefully took a seat, glanced around the room and had something to say before taking questions.
“Damn, don’t it look good to see ‘Champions’ on a shirt?” Towns asked as he moved his medal out of the way.
Say what you want about the NBA Cup. Maybe it’s your favorite thing going in pro sports. Maybe you actually do believe players compete harder when the court is colored. Maybe you hate it and think it’s just propaganda to make the rich richer.
No matter your thoughts, though, 30 NBA teams have a chance to win it. Only one did: the New York Knicks.
“It’s a goal of ours that we get to check off,” Cup Finals MVP Jalen Brunson said after his team beat the San Antonio Spurs 124-113 to hoist the in-season tournament trophy. “It’s an important stepping stone for us. We can still learn from this game and get better, as well. I’m very thankful for the opportunity we got and how we presented ourselves.”
It’s been 52 years since the Knicks have been able to hoist a championship banner. Enjoy it. It wasn’t long ago that the draft lottery was the biggest victory for New Yorkers. For one period within the NBA’s drawn-out regular season, New York was the best team in basketball. It won at every step in the process. It might not be an NBA championship, but it’s the closest thing to it that the NBA can provide before the playoffs.
Hang the banner. Who cares if others say it looks goofy? “2025 NBA Cup Champions.” Twenty-nine other teams had a chance to call themselves that but failed.
That’s worth honoring.
“Why not?” Josh Hart said earlier this week when asked if a team should hang a banner for winning the Cup. “It’s a cup. It’s a title. It’s something that you want to win. Hang a banner. Obviously, there are different standards to the Cup and Finals, but whenever you go out there, you want to compete and win. That’s what you want to do, and then you want to celebrate that.”
The victory over San Antonio was bigger than just hoisting a newly created trophy, though. It was the Knicks’ coming-out party to the basketball world that it’s not just capable of winning the East, but it can slay some of the best in the West, as well. Tuesday’s game was the Knicks’ first against a top-five opponent in the West. It’s one win, and it doesn’t even count toward the standings, but it’s a good feather in the cap.
How it happened should make New York fans feel even more enthused about its prospects of hoisting the real thing, the Larry O’Brien. The Knicks didn’t win this game because their top-heavy roster dominated. Brunson wasn’t the best scorer on the court, like he so often is. New York didn’t win because Towns was the greatest shooting big man of all time, like he has proved to be over a 10-year career. It wasn’t because Mikal Bridges was lights out on both ends. Josh Hart has had better games.
The Knicks won because OG Anunoby dominated in the first half with his shooting and slowed De’Aaron Fox with his defense late in the game. New York closed it out because veteran backup guard Jordan Clarkson hit timely 3 after timely 3. Mitchell Robinson soared over Victor Wembanyama and anyone else San Antonio tried to put out there to slow him on the offensive glass. Tyler Kolek, a barely-6-feet guard who was a second-round pick last year, had the game of his life, scoring 14, dishing out five assists and grabbing five rebounds in 20 minutes.
y’all asked for tyler kolek highlights??? 😤⬇️
📊 14 PTS | 5 AST | 5 REB pic.twitter.com/ZdjovOwoOW
— NEW YORK KNICKS (@nyknicks) December 17, 2025
It was a total team effort from top to bottom. New York needed every bit of everyone’s contributions to erase a deficit in a game the Spurs controlled for most of the night.
Oh, and we can’t forget Mike Brown. The Knicks won because their coach was willing to experiment. There was a long stretch in the second half when Brunson, Clarkson and Kolek shared the floor. New York won the game in those minutes. That trio shouldn’t work, especially defensively. It hadn’t worked in its spare minutes together before. It worked Tuesday night. Brown was searching for a way to give the offense some juice, and he got it. He got some good defense, too. Brown did things he wouldn’t normally do, on the biggest stage to date.
All of those things combined — depth, belief and a willingness to try something different — is the recipe that creates champions. “Real” champions.
“For one, it shows the confidence and trust that Mike has in us to figure it out,” Brunson said. “Also, it means he’s not afraid to fail, either. I think having that mindset, not being afraid to fail, is good for us because it allows us to continue to fight. It allows us to go out there and not worry about the result. We may play great defense on a possession and they hit a tough shot. We might play a great game all game and lose on the final buzzer. But we’re not afraid of failure, and I think that’s a big-time thing about us. We have to continue to have that mindset and thought process in whatever we do and continue to build off this.”
The Knicks don’t need to make an in-season trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo or any other franchise-altering starter. New York needs to see if what it has here is as real as it appeared Tuesday night and how it has appeared all season.
Maybe the decision-makers eventually conclude this group isn’t enough. That won’t be determined until April, May and June, though. New York appears to have what it takes to compete with anyone in basketball. Winning the NBA Cup showed that, even if the challenge is different when the playoffs roll around.
The Knicks were the last team standing. Remember that, because they surely will as they continue their chase for the real thing.
“Throughout the course of the year, you try to find situations to put pressure on your group,” Brown said. “We divvy the season up into five-game segments. We tell the guys we’d like to go 5-0. 4-1 is pretty good. We’ll take 3-2. I do that, again, to try and put pressure on them, to let them know where we went during those five games. To manufacture it during the regular season is tough because there’s so many games, but you have to give Adam (Silver) and the league office a lot of credit for creating an environment like this because it helps us coaches add pressure to the group early in the season. This is a single-elimination tournament at a certain point. Every game counts. There’s pressure on every game if you expect to be who you think you are.”
