The 2026 NBA Finals was the championship series of the National Basketball Association's (NBA) 2025–26 season and conclusion to the season's playoffs. The best-of-seven series ended when the Eastern Conference champion New York Knicks defeated the Western Conference champion San Antonio Spurs, four games to one. It was the Knicks' third NBA championship, and their first since 1973. The series ran from June 3 to June 13, 2026. New York’s Jalen Brunson was named NBA Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP) for his performance, where in Game 5 he recorded 45 points, tying an NBA Finals record with Michael Jordan for the most points scored on the road in a series-clinching game.
The series was a rematch of the 1999 NBA Finals, which the Spurs won in five games, and of the 2025 NBA Cup championship game, which the Knicks won 124–113. It was the first NBA Finals to feature the finalist teams of the three-year-old NBA Cup. It was the NBA's eighth consecutive year with a unique champion, the longest such stretch in league history.
New York won the first two games, a first in the Finals for the team. San Antonio won Game 3 after the Knicks missed their final three-point attempt. In Game 4, the Knicks rallied from 29 points down in the third quarter, and OG Anunoby won the game with a tip-in with 1.2 seconds remaining. The Knicks won Game 5 by four points to clinch their first title since 1973.
This was the first NBA Finals since in which a team won two straight road games to open the series; it was the first since in which the road team won the first three games. Game 4 saw the Spurs obtain the largest halftime lead of any visiting team in Finals history, then saw the Knicks overcome the largest deficit in Finals history to win. It was the first Finals series since in which multiple games were won by a single point. It was the first Finals ever in which the teams were within five points of each other in the final five minutes of each game. The average margin of victory was just four points. The Spurs built double-digit leads in all of these games, but lost four of them. Several media outlets called the series the best of the decade and the best five-game series of all time. It was the most-watched NBA Finals since , with an average of 20.6 million viewers per game.
This was also the first championship won by a New York City-based team in one of the four major sports leagues since the New York Giants won Super Bowl XLVI in February 2012.
Background
General This was the second Finals meeting between the San Antonio Spurs and the New York Knicks. In their previous Finals meeting, during the lockout-shortened season of , the Spurs defeated the eighth-seeded Knicks in five games to win their first NBA championship. The teams had met in the championship of the 2025 NBA Cup, which New York won, 124–113. It was the first time both NBA Cup finalists had appeared in the Finals, and the first time the winner had made the NBA Finals. The two teams split their two regular-season games.
For the first time since the 2009 NBA Finals, a logo version of the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy was prominently featured on center court; it was painted on instead of being a decal to prevent players from slipping. The NBA Finals wordmarks returned to the court for the first time since . The NBA had been criticized for omitting the logos during the previous season's Finals while including those during that season's NBA Cup. The jerseys of the teams had a USA 250 patch in recognition of the United States Semiquincentennial.
President Donald Trump attended game 3 at the invitation of Knicks owner James Dolan, becoming the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals game. Fans who attended the games waited in long lines to pass through Transportation Security Administration-style security, and 5 blocks in all directions outside of Madison Square Garden were closed off hours before tip-off. His appearance was widely discussed by the media and panned by Knicks fans, especially after watch parties for game 3 were canceled, reportedly due to his attendance.
New York Knicks
Since their last Finals appearance in 1999, the Knicks experienced 27 years of dysfunction and frustration, making the playoffs only five times from 2001 to 2022. Their fortunes started to turn when the team hired former Creative Artists Agency (CAA) agents Leon Rose and William Wesley as executives to run their basketball operation in 2020. Their first major transaction was bringing in their former client and longtime coach Tom Thibodeau as head coach, who was an assistant on the 1999 team, a few weeks later. They signed point guard Jalen Brunson in free agency in 2022, who broke out in New York as an elite player. Brunson led the Knicks to the second round in 2023 and 2024, and to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2025, where they lost to the Indiana Pacers. Despite the team's renewed success, the defense-minded Thibodeau was fired after the loss to the Pacers and replaced by Mike Brown, although Brown was not the team's first choice.
Under the first season with head coach Brown, the New York Knicks finished with a record, their highest win total since 2012–13. Their regular season was highlighted by a 124–113 win over the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Cup Final in Las Vegas on December 16. They were led by All-Star and Second Team All-NBA point guard Jalen Brunson, All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns in his second season after a blockbuster trade from the Minnesota Timberwolves, Second Team All-NBA Defensive forward OG Anunoby, 3-and-D wing Mikal Bridges and the versatile Josh Hart, the latter two who were Brunson's teammates in college at Villanova. Under Brown, the Knicks utilized their bench more than under former coach Tom Thibodeau, which featured big man Mitchell Robinson (the longest tenured Knick, at that point), guards Miles McBride and Landry Shamet, microwave scorer Jordan Clarkson, and midseason trade acquisition Jose Alvarado.
Although the Knicks finished with an impressive record and a third-seed, they did not peak as a team until the playoffs. In the first round, the Knicks defeated the Atlanta Hawks in six games, winning the final three games after being down 2–1. They then swept the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference semifinals and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals to reach the NBA Finals. The Knicks' playoff run has been labeled one of the most dominant in NBA history due to their 11-game postseason winning streak and a record playoff victory margin of 19.4 points per game. Noted for their playoff surge was the team's effort to play through Towns midway through the Hawks series, as the team had been previously too reliant on Brunson for offense.
Overall, this was New York's ninth Finals appearance. The only Knicks players with prior Finals experience are Mikal Bridges, who lost with the Phoenix Suns in 2021, and Jordan Clarkson, who lost with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2018; OG Anunoby won a championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019 but did not play in the playoffs due to an appendectomy. Mike Brown lost his first Finals appearance in 2007, coincidentally against the San Antonio Spurs, as head coach for the Cavaliers, but has won multiple championships as an assistant with the Spurs and Golden State Warriors. The Knicks' 53-year championship drought was the fifth longest in the NBA.
San Antonio Spurs
During the 2023 draft lottery, the San Antonio Spurs were awarded the top pick and took French phenom Victor Wembanyama, who was touted as the best draft prospect since LeBron James. They were then awarded the #4 and #2 picks in the 2024 and 2025 lotteries and took Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper, respectively. Hall of Fame coach Gregg Popovich stepped down early in the season in 2024–25 due to health concerns and his assistant Mitch Johnson took over. With Johnson at the helm in his first full-season as coach, the Spurs ended their six-year playoff drought with a record. In his third season, Wembanyama averaged 25 points per game, 11.5 rebounds per game, and 3.1 blocks per game. In terms of accolades received, he was an All-Star, was named the Defensive Player of the Year (the award's first unanimous and youngest winner), earned First Team nods in All-NBA and All-NBA Defensive, and finished third in the Most Valuable Player voting. Veteran point guard De'Aaron Fox, who came over at last season's trade deadline from the Sacramento Kings, joined Wembanyama as an All-Star. Second overall pick Dylan Harper made the NBA's All-Rookie First Team, while Keldon Johnson won the Sixth Man of the Year. The Spurs had a 40-game turnaround from their record in 2023–24.
As the two-seed in the Western Conference playoffs, they defeated the Portland Trail Blazers in five games in the first round and the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference semifinals in six games. The Western Conference finals saw them take on the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder in a highly anticipated match-up between the two best teams record-wise in the NBA. The Spurs prevailed in the hard-fought series, defeating the Thunder on their own homecourt in the decisive seventh game. The Spurs were the second-youngest team to ever reach the NBA Finals (25.06 years old), trailing only the 1976–77 Trail Blazers (25.03).
This was San Antonio's seventh NBA Finals appearance. The Spurs were 5–1 in their previous Finals appearances, with their only loss in 2013 to the Miami Heat (a year later, they defeated the Heat, which was their last appearance). Harrison Barnes, Luke Kornet, and Kelly Olynyk are the only Spurs players with Finals experience. Barnes won a championship with the Golden State Warriors in 2015 and made another appearance in 2016, Kornet won a championship with the Boston Celtics in 2024, and Olynyk reached the 2020 Finals with the Miami Heat.Multiple sources:
Road to the Finals
Notes z – Clinched home court advantage for the entire playoffs c – Clinched home court advantage for the conference playoffs y – Clinched division title pi – Clinched play-in tournament spot (locked into a play-in spot but not able to clinch a playoff spot directly) ps – Clinched postseason (at least a play-in spot but can still clinch a playoff spot directly) x – Clinched playoff spot * – Division leader
+Playoff resultsNew York Knicks (Eastern Conference champion) San Antonio Spurs (Western Conference champion)Defeated the 6th-seeded Atlanta Hawks, 4–2First roundDefeated the 7th-seeded Portland Trail Blazers, 4–1Defeated the 7th-seeded Philadelphia 76ers, 4–0Conference semifinalsDefeated the 6th-seeded Minnesota Timberwolves, 4–2Defeated the 4th-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers, 4–0Conference finalsDefeated the 1st-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder, 4–3
Regular season series The Spurs and Knicks tied the regular season series 1–1, with the home team winning each game.
While the Knicks also defeated the Spurs 124–113 in the 2025 NBA Cup championship game on December 16, 2025, that game did not count toward the official regular season standings or head-to-head tiebreakers.
Series summary The NBA announced the Finals schedule on January 20, 2026. The league rearranged the series so that it avoided conflicting with the 2026 FIFA World Cup night game between the United States and Paraguay on June 12. No Sunday game was scheduled for the first time since the Knicks' first championship season of , meaning that all games began at 8:30 pm ET instead of 8 pm ET as they would on Sundays. Game 5 was played on a Saturday night for the second time since 1981 (with the COVID-altered edition of the Finals in 2021 being the only time since then).