The 2026 NBA Finals are set to get underway in San Antonio, where the hosting Spurs seek to knock the New York Knicks.
Will these Spurs of the moment get caught in the Knicks of time? Find out in the 2026 NBA Finals.
The beginning of 2025-26's end gets underway on Tuesday, which sees the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs open up their championship finale set at Frost Bank Center. It's a rematch of the 1999 pleasantries between New York and San Antonio, which saw the former emerge victorious in a five-game output that produced the first of five titles over 15 years.
New York has had to patient, as its one-sided postseason results have created long idle stretches. That's of no matter to the Knicks and their long-suffering fanbase, which can taste the end of a five-decade-plus championship drought after Manhattan rolled through Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. The current pinnacle of the era led by Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns came on May 25, when the Knicks posted a 130-93 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers in the finale of a very uneven Eastern Conference Finals.
Should the New York Knicks be underdogs? 👀
— Ballislife Bets (@BallislifeBets) June 3, 2026
They are a 4.5-point underdog against the San Antonio Spurs in Game 1.
Should the Spurs be considered the favorite despite the Knicks 11-game WIN STREAK?#alwaysnewyork #porvida pic.twitter.com/2XeJNJdAUa
Led by the homegrown talents of Victor Wembanyama, Stephon Castle, and Dylan Harper, San Antonio has been a bit busier: it needed six games to dispose of the Minnesota Timberwolves following a five-game victory over Portland in round one and recently wrapped a seven-game ousting of the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference Finals. San Antonio sealed the deal on Saturday with a 111-103 victory in the winner-take-all finale, one punctuated by Wembanyama putting in a team-best 22 points.
This marks the first time that the finalists of the NBA Cup in-season tournament will meet in the regularly-scheduled playoff finale. New York earned December glory with a 124-113 comeback win, which allowed them to win what became a three-game regular season series. Both teams successfully defended their respective home floors: the Spurs won a 134-132 decision on New Year's Eve before the Knicks took revenge with a 114-89 triumph at the top of March at Madison Square Garden.
Where and When to Watch
- Game 1 (@ San Antonio): Wednesday, June 3, 8:30 p.m. ET, ABC
- Game 2 (@ San Antonio): Friday, June 5, 8:30 p.m. ET, ABC
- Game 3 (@ New York): Monday, June 8, 8:30 p.m. ET, ABC
- Game 4 (@ New York): Wednesday, June 10, 8:30 p.m. ET, ABC
- *Game 5 (@ San Antonio): Saturday, June 13, 8:30 p.m. ET, ABC
- *Game 6 (@ New York): Tuesday, June 16, 8:30 p.m. ET, ABC
- *Game 7 (@ San Antonio): Friday, June 19, 8:30 p.m. ET, ABC
Knick to Watch: OG Anunoby
Leon Rose's garden at the Garden has had several sprouts planted with the seeds of the transactional ledger. By far one of the most vital and fruitful has been acquiring Anunoby on the penultimate day of 2023.
Anunoby has been the engine behind the Knicks' recent playoff success: when he went down in 2024, so did New York's upset bid of Boston. His defensive tenacity always spoke for itself (fifth best among playoff participants with a minimum of five appearances and 15 minutes a game) but lately he has let his offensive do some loud talking.
While deferring to the captain Brunson in crunch time, Anunoby is shooting over 57 percent from the floor this postseason, averaging just under 20 a game. He has also shown no fear switching and helping on the mighty Wembanyama, notably teaming up with the Knicks' interior threats to hold him in check during the team's last get-together, a 25-point shellacking in the Knicks' favor at Madison Square Garden.
To top it off, Anunoby has every reason to take this one personally: he's one of the few participants in this series that has a previous championship ring waiting for him in his wardrobe. In the eyes of some, however, he was unable to properly earn the hardware as an appendectomy kept him out of the Toronto Raptors' famed Finals fracas against Golden State. Healthy and playing his best, Anunoby is poised to be one of the most fearsome parts of this series.
Spur to Watch: Julian Champagnie
If there's one New Yorker that's not pulling for the Knicks (beyond probably those among the small sects in Brooklyn), it's quite likely Champagnie, a Staten Island native and St. John's alum who has been all too willing to engage in metropolitan civil war.
Like plenty of their contemporaries, the Knicks start to peel a little bit once they let their opponent get hot from deep. Champagnie's statsheets are peppered with sterling showings against New York, the most recent being an 11-triple outing on New Year's Eve, one that helped the Spurs escape from a Wembanyama-less finale. That set a single-game Spurs record and was part of his franchise-best single-season output at 195.
New York is 2-6 when it allows its opponent to hit at least 45 percent of its 3-point tries, which is pretty much all the room Champagnie needs to flip a game's script. San Antonio can afford to get into shootouts (it's just four points behind the scorching Knicks in points per game during this postseason) but what it cant afford is to start going toe-to-toe on the turnover board, as they ranked 23rd in the department this season.
Already facing a hefty challenge ... literally and figuratively ... in the form of Wembanyama, the Knicks will need to quell the Red Storm at the top of the key to ensure this historic streak keeps rolling.
They Said It
“We got to this point because we worked together. We’ve been a team. We're unified. The collective group has shown up in spots when we need to. Landry Shamet, of course. You bring up Deuce McBride, Mitchell Robinson. You could go down the list of players on our team that had special moments in the playoff run, have showed up and been huge contributors for our success.”—Karl-Anthony Towns on the secret to the Knicks' success (h/t CJ Holmes, New York Daily News)
“Coming back down from this is a challenge. It’s not done yet. We still need to really come back down to Earth and realize we haven’t done the hardest (thing) yet. The job isn’t done at all. So we still got about, I don’t know, what time is it, like 30-plus hours to recenter.”—Victor Wembanyama on the quick turnaround from the WCF to the Finals (h/t Joe Vardon, The Athletic)
Prediction
The Knicks' success or failures will no doubt be at least somewhat influenced by the literal handy work of Mitchell Robinson. New York is undeniably a better team when he's on the floor and any threat to his health will obviously put a dent in their chances against the "Alien" with the eight-foot wingspan.
But it's hard to look at the Knicks' body of work in these playoffs, undeniably one of the strongest runs any team in the history of professional sports' postseasons, and reasonably call them an underdog, no matter who they play. The league's future is firmly in Wembanyama's corner. But he has waited 22 years for that ... four-to-seven games should be no problem and that dearth is exceptional pale compared to the Knicks' championship wait stationed at five decades.
Knicks in 6
Geoff Magliocchetti is on X @GeoffJMags
Editor's Pick
Winning Contagious at 2026 Pangos All-American Camp