Knicks’ Jalen Brunson joins Michael Jordan, Kareem among few to achieve remarkable feat

Jalen Brunson has spent the last few years proving his myriad doubters wrong, but there was no greater exclamation point the New York Knicks star could have added to his statement of greatness than what he achieved Saturday night in closing out the 2026 NBA Finals in five games over the San Antonio Spurs. While Brunson has been the straw that stirs the drink for the Knicks since 2022, when he became one of the most important free-agent signings in NBA history, his performance in a 94-90 win over the Spurs truly cemented his legacy in more ways than one.

Brunson dominated San Antonio when it mattered the most, monopolizing the fourth quarter to become the first player since Michael Jordan in 1998 to post 45 points or more in a close-out game on the road and the first to record 15 points in the final stanza of a Finals-clinching win. Brunson did so by frequently attacking an “alien” in 7-foot-4 Victor Wembanyama, who stands 14 inches taller than him and got away with an uncalled flagrant foul, resulting in Brunson playing the final quarter and a half on a rolled ankle.

Unsurprisingly, after that performance, Brunson clinched the Finals Most Valuable Player award with a unanimous vote. It’s that honor that has sent Brunson into another echelon as a basketball player.

Forget conversations around his height, size and whether he is a “1A” player capable of leading a team to a championship; the 6-foot-2 point guard suddenly finds himself on lists that only include some of the greatest to have ever played the game.

By securing NBA Finals MVP honors, Brunson has become just the eighth player in history to do so after winning an NBA championship and leading his college team to a national title. He’s the first to achieve the feat since Jordan in 1998 and only the third player to do so while winning multiple championships in college (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton).

The NBA Finals MVP was not awarded until 1969. Russell won two NCAA and 11 NBA championships; the NBA Finals MVP award was named after him.

One of basketball’s greatest modern winners — among just four on that list who also led his team to a state title in high school (Abdul-Jabbar, Walton, Johnson) — Brunson now holds Knicks franchise records for most 30-point games in the NBA Finals (four) and most points in an NBA Finals game (45), surpassing legends Walt Frazier and Willis Reed. His 32.6 scoring average in the Finals is the highest by a point guard in NBA history.

As New York becomes the first franchise to win the NBA treble — NBA Finals, conference championship and NBA Cup — Brunson is the first in league history to claim MVP honors in each of those scenarios. 

In leading the Knicks to their first NBA title in 53 years, Brunson authored a 15-1 record in the team’s final 16 postseason games, including the second-longest winning streak in the history of the NBA playoffs (14 games). New York won nine straight games away from home, closing out all four series on the road by an average of 30.5 points. 

“He is ‘Him,'” Knicks coach Mike Brown said of Brunson during a postgame interview on ESPN. “I’ve been saying it all along. He is an MVP candidate. Not the fifth, sixth, seventh guy. He is a top one, two, at worst three, and he displayed it tonight. His toughness, not just physically but mentally, is unbelievable. And people take that for granted because they think he’s too slow, too small, too this, too that. But he’s one of the toughest (motherf—ers) I’ve been around.”

Not too shabby. A guy once considered incapable of being the “1A” player on a championship team may have cemented himself as the greatest ever to wear a Knicks uniform, particularly considering the financial sacrifices he made to surround himself with enough talented teammates to lead one of the greatest runs in NBA postseason history.