Best of the Knicks on WFAN: The New York Knicks are NBA champions

**Gene** (0:00)
I really didn't know what it was gonna be like if I was just gonna be like, all right, this is fine, and I'm an adult now, and I'm gonna go home and go to sleep. But I actually had emotions and felt like a 12-year-old kid again, thinking that this was the coolest thing in the world. Obviously, it dissipates after a while, go back to your responsibilities. But in that moment, with those people celebrating, I felt like a little kid again. There's only few teams in the history of sports or in your lifetime that could make you feel like that. And the 2026 New York Knicks did it. Congratulations to that team, Mike Brown and everybody. You're going to be living in New York sports history as legends forever. Good morning, Boomer, how are you?

**Boomer Esiason** (0:42)
I'm doing great, Gene, as they should. I mean, this is championship week for the Knicks, man. This is going to be quite the week for those players, for that coach, for the owner, you know, who spent billions of dollars trying to get the right mix of players and coaches and front office people. And it took a decision in 2020 to bring Leon Rose here. And that's when the building began. And some of the moves, you know, were met with great joy. Some other moves were like, all right, we'll add that guy, meaning Josh Hart. And it was just a building process that took six years to get to where we are on Saturday night. And I have to say that as a long time, Nick Van is somebody who has experienced two championships at a lot of crappy basketball. There is nothing more satisfying than watching a player do what Jalen Brunson did in game five here. This was one of the most monumental performances by a guy who is six foot two, who doesn't meet all the analytics standards, who Becky Hammond called not a 1A, he's too small. And let me tell you something, one thing you can't measure, and I was talking to my son-in-law, Matt, about this yesterday. And as a hockey fan, he understands exactly what I was talking about. And that is you can't measure the heart of a man. You can't measure the determination of a man, especially a man who is the leader of other men who have all kind of sacrificed for each other, whether it be Jim Dolan or Mike Brown or Leon Rose, whatever was said to this group of guys going into the playoffs really resonated with each and every one of them. You know, they all sacrificed a little bit. And when the game was on the line and they need something big to be done, they turned to this six foot two analytically challenged player who showed that desire, determination, perseverance, and just overcoming whatever lack of athleticism he supposedly has and lead his team to a championship was so satisfying for me to watch. I mean, I was just so mesmerized by how just easy he made it look. And it wasn't easy. You know, when he went around Wembe and just went up to the basket and Wendy almost tripped over himself as he's trying to keep up with the much smaller guy and he was the defensive player of the year, it was so sweet and so like just, wow, I can't believe he has the guts to go in there and do that. Now, why would I even say that in that moment? I don't know because we've been watching it since the day he got here. He's been doing exactly that against bigger players. Since every game he's played as a Knick, I mean, it's just, it's a remarkable performance by a humble young man who's obviously been brought up the right way, who understands exactly what his role is. And he does it by performance, not by talking.
And that's the beauty of Jalen Brunson and just the absolute pure joy that I was experiencing as this guy was going through what he went through on Saturday night.

**Gene** (3:54)
It takes very, very special people and athletes to get it done here. Not everybody could do it. We've seen so many guys have success in other places and come here and they can't get it done for whatever reason, then leave here and they have more success elsewhere. But Jalen Brunson was built for this. And there's a bunch of guys too, if you go through the history of championships that started in other organization and then came here and thrived. And obviously the Messier Comparison, number 11, everything else is the biggest one. But you also think about Gary Carter, Keith Hernandez, two championship players that came from other organizations and were able to thrive and win in New York. Well, Mike Yatza never won a championship. But, and then there's the homegrown guys as well. And this team didn't have a lot of them. You know, Mitchell Robinson was the guy, Deuce McBride another, but, I mean, it's, you had, you know, Eli Manning obviously, Tom Seaver, these guys that are homegrown guys. But the ones to me, and that's almost as impressive because the pressure is on you at that moment from the second that you're drafted by the team. But to come from another organization, not know what it's like to come up and get drafted by that team and then go here, come here and succeed. I mean, there's just a handful of guys in the history of New York towards all the teams that we have that can accomplish something like this. And he is the latest and just as impressive as any of the others.