Sports

Victor Wembanyama and Jalen Brunson Face Off in the NBA Finals Starting Wednesday

By Curtis Jones · June 2, 2026

The last time the New York Knicks played in the NBA Finals, Patrick Ewing was their center, the Spurs won in five games, and Tim Duncan — 22 years old — was named Finals MVP. That was 1999. Twenty-seven years later, the Knicks and Spurs are doing it again.

Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Finals tips off Wednesday night at 8:30 PM ET at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, broadcast on ABC. The Spurs have home court after finishing the regular season 62-20 — the best record in the Western Conference. The Knicks, at 53-29, swept the Cleveland Cavaliers in four games to reach the Finals for the first time in 27 years. Tuesday is NBA Finals Media Day. The basketball starts Wednesday.

Today, the sport belongs to a 22-year-old Frenchman who is 7 feet 2 inches tall and a point guard from the Bronx who was working at a grocery store four years before becoming the best player in New York.

Victor Wembanyama is the reason the San Antonio Spurs are here. The second-year center averaged 29.7 points, 13.1 rebounds, and 3.9 blocks per game this season — numbers that don’t have a modern historical precedent — and then spent the playoffs conducting what basketball analysts have described as a master class in coordinating offensive and defensive play simultaneously. He is the same age Tim Duncan was when the Spurs last won a title against the Knicks. In San Antonio, the symmetry is not lost on anyone.

Jalen Brunson is the reason the Knicks are here. A first-round pick who was not supposed to be this good, a point guard who does not look like an NBA superstar and plays like one anyway, Brunson has led the Knicks through eleven consecutive playoff wins — sweeping the 76ers in four, sweeping the Cavaliers in four — to reach Madison Square Garden’s first Finals appearance since a generation of fans was in elementary school.

The supporting cast matters. Karl-Anthony Towns at center against Wembanyama is the matchup that will define the series — two very different kinds of big man, one more polished, one more physically unique. Mikal Bridges at forward gives the Knicks a stopper. Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper, and Harrison Barnes give the Spurs a core whose collective playoff experience runs to approximately this spring.

The Spurs are favored at minus 4.5 at home in Game 1, with ESPN’s analytics giving San Antonio a 58% chance to win the series. The Knicks, 11 wins into a streak that has not required them to play a Game 5 against anyone, would argue the percentages have been wrong before.

Timothée Chalamet was photographed in a Knicks hat at Game 4 of the Cavaliers series. He will presumably be in New York for Games 3 and 4 on June 8 and June 10.

The last team to beat the Knicks in the NBA Finals is serving as the host Wednesday night. Game 1, 8:30 ET, ABC.