After an 82-game marathon, followed by three grueling rounds of postseason competition, we now approach the finish line of the 2025-26 NBA season. The Western Conference champion San Antonio Spurs will take on the Eastern Conference champion New York Knicks in the 2026 NBA Finals.
It’s the first postseason meeting between the Spurs and Knicks since the 1999 NBA Finals, which the heavily favored Spurs took in five games behind a dominant MVP performance from Tim Duncan — an unmistakable announcement from an unbelievably gifted young big man in San Antonio. Might history repeat itself?
Since that series, the Spurs have been back to the Finals five times, winning four of them. The Knicks, however, haven’t been back in 27 years, and head into the Finals looking to break the NBA’s fifth-longest championship drought: New York hasn’t raised a title banner since the great Red Holzman, Willis Reed, Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Bill Bradley, Dave DeBusschere and Co. took down the Los Angeles Lakers to win the 1973 title.
Schedule| Odds|Spurs breakdown| Knicks breakdown | Head-to-head| Matchup to watch|Key question| Prediction
Series schedule (all times Eastern)
Game 1: Wednesday at San Antonio (8:30 p.m., ABC)
Game 2: Friday at San Antonio (8:30 p.m., ABC)
Game 3: Monday, June 8, at New York (8:30 p.m., ABC)
Game 4: Wednesday, June 10, at New York (8:30 p.m., ABC)
*Game 5: Saturday, June 13, at San Antonio (8:30 p.m., ABC)
*Game 6: Tuesday, June 16, at New York (8:30 p.m., ABC)
*Game 7: Friday, June 19, at San Antonio (8:30 p.m., ABC)
*if necessary
Series odds
San Antonio Spurs (-205)
New York Knicks (+170)
What we know about the Spurs
That the conventional wisdom about how young teams must first struggle and fail in the postseason before eventually breaking through to greater success doesn’t necessarily hold up in the face of an extremely unconventional, dimension-distorting superstar.
After dispensing with the similarly inexperienced, seventh-seeded Portland Trail Blazers in Round 1, the Spurs faced the battle-tested (though short-handed) Minnesota Timberwolves in the conference semifinals, and dropped Game 1 at home — the sort of situation in which a younger team might blink and begin to buckle. San Antonio, on the other hand, won four of the next five games, with the only loss coming in a game from which Victor Wembanyama was ejected early in the second quarter and with the final two victories coming by a combined 59 points.
That earned the Spurs the right to take on the Thunder for a spot in the NBA Finals. Sure, San Antonio famously had Oklahoma City’s number throughout the regular season. But would this group of greenhorns — led by a head coach, Mitch Johnson, running the postseason gantlet for the first time himself — really be ready to outlast the defending champs?
Well …
Wembanyama authored an opening statement for the ages in Game 1 and proved to be the most dominant two-way force in a series against the NBA’s reigning two-time Most Valuable Player. Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper looked ready far beyond their years, repeatedly orchestrating good offensive possessions while holding their own defensively against a Thunder offense that — while without All-NBA swingman Jalen Williams and top-shelf secondary creator Ajay Mitchell for most of the series — has overwhelmed its fair share of opponents over the past three postseasons.
Devin Vassell never stopped moving, knocking down big shot after big shot (including more than 40% of his triples) while also spending most of the series helping make Chet Holmgren’s life miserable (including multiple swats at the rim). De’Aaron Fox battled through a high ankle sprain, and while he struggled with his shot for most of the series, he played a critical role in limiting San Antonio’s turnovers, the life-blood of Oklahoma City’s transition offense. That forced the Thunder to have to grind and grind to generate looks against the Spurs’ suffocating set defense, with Wembanyama forever menacing along the back line; with Williams and Mitchell sidelined, Oklahoma City scored like a bottom-of-the-league half-court offense, as the Spurs came back from being down 2-1 and 3-2 to push the champs to the limit.
And then, the Spurs went beyond that limit.
Wembanyama (22 points, seven rebounds in 42 minutes) led seven San Antonio players in double figures in Game 7. Forward Julian Champagnie — whose elevation into the starting lineup helped unlock the best, toughest, most offensively potent version of the Spurs — drilled six huge 3-pointers, including a massive stepback to push the lead to 11 with 5:33 to go. The three-headed backcourt monster of Castle, Fox and Dylan Harper combined for 43 points on 35 shots with 14 assists. Despite a heroic performance from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, it was the Spurs who controlled Game 7, who made the clutch plays they needed to, and who punctuated their season-long dominance of the defending NBA champions with a 111-103 win. The future, it appears, is now.
What we know about the Knicks
They were a very good team. Over the past five weeks, though, they just might have become a great team.
Since goingdown 2-1 against the Atlanta Hawks in the first round, the Knicks have ripped off a run for the ages: 11 consecutive wins, two consecutive playoff series sweeps, the No. 1 offense and defense of any playoff team in that span, and a total point differential of +262 — the most dominant 11-game stretch, regular-season or postseason, by any team in NBA history.
The Knicks and their fans took over the arenas of their Eastern Conference opponents, and then they took their hearts. A 51-point annihilation of the Hawks in Game 6. A 3-point barrage in Game 4 in Philadelphia where they led by as many as 44. A 37-point shellacking in Game 4 in Cleveland, securing New York’s first trip to the NBA Finals in 27 years.
Mike Brown has aced the high-pressure assignment he accepted after taking the reins from Tom Thibodeau, developing New York’s depth and adding more variety and versatility to its plan of attack. Jalen Brunson remains the tip of the spear — an elite offensive creator from whom these Knicks take their lead. Karl-Anthony Towns has been a revelation as a playmaking hub, delivering nearly twice as many assists in these playoffs as he had in any previous postseason, while also playing the best defense of his career.
OG Anunoby might have been the Knicks’ best player before straining his left hamstring against the 76ers but looked to be back at full strength by the end of the Cleveland series. Josh Hart fills in every gap on both ends, and has the mental toughness to punish coverages designed to exploit his weaknesses. Mikal Bridges exploded out of the depths of despair by pretty much not missing a shot for like three weeks. A defense that’s been better than most people think for a lot longer than they realize — fourth in points allowed per possession since Christmas, firstsince mid-January — has been snare-drum tight and on a string.
Yes, the Spurs represent a significant step up in competition from what the Knicks faced in a stomp through the East that has, once again, granted them a significant rest advantage over their opponent. But caveat, nitpick and pooh-pooh New York’s résumé at your own peril: This team absolutely has the goods to beat any opponent four times in seven games.
Head-to-head
Their first meeting of the season came in mid-December, the championship game of the 2025 Emirates NBA Cup, which the Knicks won, 124-113, outscoring San Antonio 35-19 in the deciding fourth quarter behind big performances by Brunson, Anunoby and reserves Mitchell Robinson, Jordan Clarkson and Tyler Kolek:
The Spurs returned serve two weeks later in a 134-132 win on New Year’s Eve, fueled by Champagnie becoming the 20th player in NBA history to make 11 3-pointers in a non-overtime contest:
New York took the regular-season rubber match, snapping what had been an 11-game San Antonio winning streak with a 114-89 victory that saw Bridges turn in one of his best games of the season (25 points on 10-for-17 shooting, five rebounds, five steals) and the Knicks defense hold the Spurs to just 92.7 points per 100 possessions before garbage time — their worst offensive performance of the season:
Injuries did impact the regular-season matchups, but largely on the Knicks’ side. Key reserves Miles McBride and Landry Shamet each missed two of the three contests; both Hart and Robinson missed the Spurs’ late-December win.
Wembanyama came off the bench in the NBA Cup final, playing just 25 minutes. The Knicks won those minutes by 18 points en route to the title.
Matchup to watch
The Knicks’ attempts to generate good looks vs. Wembanyama in the half-court
The Spurs won the Western Conference finals in large part by smothering Oklahoma City. During the regular season, The Thunder scored 102.5 points per 100 half-court plays — the third-best attack in the NBA. Through the first two rounds, they scored a scorching 110.1 points-per-100 in the half-court. Against San Antonio? A dismal 92.6 points-per-100.
And in the final four games, after the Spurs dialed back their pressure, scrapping the hard doubles and aggressive traps on Gilgeous-Alexander that led to a ton of wide-open 3-pointers for his teammates in favor of allowing Castle to play him straight up, having their help defenders stick closer to Thunder shooters and playing SGA to drive straight into Wembanyama and then swarm him? Just 83.7 points-per-100 in the half-court.
If you want to draw the Spurs out of that kind of coverage, you need to be able to punish Wemby when he plays a deep drop. That starts with getting a good screen on the point-of-attack defender, and it continues with your ball-handler being willing to step into a pull-up jumper and knock it down. Like this:
Brunson struggled shooting the 3 against Cleveland, going just 4-for-22 from deep in the four-game sweep. For the most part, though, he’s a willing, higher-volume, accurate pull-up shooter, whether from distance or working his way into the midrange. If he’s able to create some space off the bounce and find both his range and some shot-making rhythm early, it could make Wemby step up closer to the level of the screen; that, in turn, could open up pocket passes, cutting lanes and opportunities to hit cutters underneath in the space that the Defensive Player of the Year vacated. (It’ll also be important for Brunson’s release-valve options in the middle of the floor — often Bridges and Anunoby — to knock down the midrange jumpers that Wemby and Co. concede with their preferred coverage.)
It’s a good bet that Wembanyama will open the series matched up on Hart in the kind of cross-match the Knicks have seen against virtually every good defensive team they’ve played for the past two seasons. Hart certainly seems to be expecting it:
There’s a reason smart opponents with the personnel to pull it off go with the cross-match on Towns and Hart. It allows them to sag off the Knicks’ least threatening perimeter shooter — albeit one who shot 41.3% from 3-point range during the regular season — to keep a shot-blocker at home to patrol the paint and take away driving lanes. It also puts a smaller wing on Towns, enabling the defense to more comfortably switch the Brunson-Towns pick-and-roll; this, at times, has led the Knicks to go away from the two-man game featuring both of their All-Stars. (Brown’s willingness to shift the offense more in the direction of KAT facilitating from the elbows and pinch post with Brunson both setting and coming off off-ball screens has allowed the Knicks to continue to find ways for their two best players to work in tandem outside the context of a straight pick-and-roll.)
If Wemby’s roaming, Hart will have to make him pay, both by knocking down the open 3s he gets — as he did in Game 2 against Cleveland — and by making himself a nuisance in all that open space, running around to set screens, attacking the offensive glass and becoming a secondary playmaker:
After struggling with the cross-match coverage in Game 1, the Knicks consistently punished Cleveland for it for the rest of the series, whether through Hart making shots or leveraging his screening and the offensive talent around him to generate good looks. Replicating that success promises to be more difficult against a significantly tougher defensive team in San Antonio; it’s also all the more important. (And if they’re not producing the same sort of results in Hart’s minutes, then Brown has to be willing to do what he did in the fourth quarter of Game 1 against Cleveland: pull him from the game, insert Shamet or McBride, and force the Spurs to guard a full five-out lineup where Wemby can’t sag off anybody.)
It’ll also be interesting to see which wing Johnson stations on Towns in the cross-match. Castle got a steady diet of the assignment in the Knicks’ March 1 win; sliding him there, though, takes the Spurs’ best perimeter defender off Brunson, which might not be a trade San Antonio wants to make. That could mean the job goes to Vassell, fresh off yeoman’s work in limiting Holmgren in the Western finals. It’ll be incumbent on Towns to be significantly more aggressive — as a driver, as a facilitator and stepping back to take catch-and-shoot 3s — than Holmgren was to take advantage of the size mismatch.
Facing a defender as devastating as Wembanyama — especially one flanked by size, quickness and physicality all across the perimeter — requires a deep bag of tricks to consistently generate quality scoring chances. The Knicks have spent the last month showing they’ve got a lot of ways to skin the proverbial cat, though; they’re going to need all of them, and then some.
Key question
Who controls the possession game?
Throughout the regular season, the Knicks were one of the best teams in the NBA at making sure they get more bites at the apple than their opponents. That trait has persisted in the playoffs, with New York pulling in two more offensive rebounds per game than it concedes and turning the ball over nearly two fewer times per night than its opposition.
That combination of second-chance generation — led by Towns and especially reserve center Mitchell Robinson, who has recovered nearly 23% of New York’s missed shots during his postseason floor time — and Brunson-led ball security has the Knicks generating 4.2 more possessions per game than their opponents during the postseason, according to analysis by Jared Dubin of Last Night in Basketball. The Spurs, conversely, have just barely broken even in the possession game through three rounds.
Those are the terms of engagement the Knicks want to set. Avoid live-ball turnovers that give the other team the opportunity to get out and run; New York committed the second-fewest live-ball turnovers per game in the NBA during the regular season and has actually cut that rate slightly in the playoffs, allowing just 9.5 fast-break points per game through three rounds. Generate some of your own, too: The Knicks are fifth in the postseason in opponent turnover rate and third in points off turnovers per 100 possessions. Make sure you take more shots on goal than the opposition … and when you’ve got dudes who can make them — the Knicks led the NBA this season in overall shooting talent, according to The BBall Index’s tracking, and are head and shoulders above the postseason pack in team effective field-goal percentage — you’ve got a great shot at coming out on top.
That trend showed up in the three pre-playoff meetings between these two teams, where the Knicks averaged 6.8 more possessions per game than San Antonio. New York has grabbed 18 or more offensive rebounds in 13 games this season. Two of those came against the Spurs — two that the Knicks won.
They are also, coincidentally enough, the two that Robinson played.
Robinson’s presence on the offensive glass, as a vertical spacer and lob threat in the pick-and-roll, as a space-eater in the paint on the defensive end, as a potential mismatch-creator in double-big frontcourts alongside Towns and as a high-end option to share the defensive assignment on Wemby with KAT and Anunoby looms as an interesting wrinkle in this series. Provided, of course, he’s healthy enough to participate in it after having surgery to repair a fractured fifth metacarpal in his right hand.
It’s an injury recovery that is reportedly “often measured in weeks,” but Robinson is reportedly pushing to play through it and be available in time for Wednesday’s Game 1. If he really can play — and if his ability to go up and get the ball, grab it and control it isn’t significantly hampered — he could prove to be a major problem for the Spurs, whether it’s Wembanyama or Luke Kornet in the middle. If he can’t, though, the Knicks might have a more difficult time tilting the math in their favor.
Prediction: Knicks in 6
To win a series without home-court advantage, you’ve got to get a game on the road. The Knicks have done that in eight of the 10 playoff series they’ve played in the Brunson era, including the last six. They enter this matchup with a significant rest advantage, with all five Spurs starters having played more minutes in these playoffs than any member of the Knicks. They won’t have the best player in the series; they’re also deeper in offensive talent than the Thunder team that just took the Spurs the distance without two of its three best creators.
Wembanyama is a wholly different challenge than anything the Knicks have yet to face. But the Knicks have spent the last month proving themselves capable of handling lots of different kinds of challenges, showcasing the kind of dynamism and versatility on both ends of the floor that makes them built to solve even the most complex problems.
I think they get one in San Antonio. I think they find just enough answers. And I think the result is … well, something that’s seemed unthinkable for most of the last 53 years.