When the book is written on this N.B.A. season—imagine a Dostoyevsky novel—there will surely be a long disquisition on Game One of the Finals, in which the New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs on the road and demonstrated the value of experience, and a chapter on Game Two, a game that seemed to contain a dozen different games, each one more desperate and improbable. And when the story is told of the Knicks’ second-straight win over the Spurs, by a score of 105–104, it will probably feature the usual protagonists: Victor Wembanyama and his sesquipedalian limbs, Jalen Brunson and his unparalleled sense for the moment, Karl-Anthony Towns (Karl-Anthony Towns!) and his powerful versatility. It was Wembanyama’s heroics in the second half that dragged the Spurs back into the game, and Wembanyama’s gaffe in the closing seconds that lost it. Brunson, smothered by the Spurs’ tenacious defense, missed shot after shot, but—clutch as ever—tied the game at 104 with an off-kilter jumper, then was in the right place to make the game-winning play when Wembanyama threw the ball away, and scored the game-winning point. And Towns, whose movements were mesmerizing, was the fulcrum.

But, please, let there be a section on Mikal Bridges.

It is Bridges, after all, whose stint with the Knicks sometimes seems like a microcosm of the franchise. In 2023, the team traded four unprotected first-round picks to the Brooklyn Nets—along with a top-four protected first-round pick from the Milwaukee Bucks, an unprotected pick swap, a second-round pick, and the veteran Bojan Bogdanović—to get him. His appeal was obvious: he was a relentless defender, an excellent shot creator, and had a certain gravity on the court. He had the kind of endurance and physical toughness that Tom Thibodeau, the Knicks’ coach at the time, lionized: Bridges had never missed a game in his N.B.A. career. Plus, he had proven chemistry with his new teammates, having won a national championship (or two!) with Brunson, Josh Hart, and Donte DiVincenzo while in college at Villanova. But the cost was stratospheric. The Phoenix Suns gave up roughly as much to get Kevin Durant, one of the top fifteen players of all time. Bridges had never made an All-Star team. “Did the Knicks Just Get Fleeced on the Most Expensive Reunion Ever?” asked a headline in the Ringer. It was a reasonable question. The only outcome that might justify such a sacrifice was an N.B.A. championship.

And that seemed unlikely. The Knicks had just lost in the second round of the playoffs, against the Miami Heat, when Bridges arrived, and, at the start of his first season, he missed shots and didn’t appear to be the defender that Knicks fans thought they’d been promised. Eventually, he settled in and became a key contributor to the team on their run through the playoffs last season, which ended in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Indiana Pacers. The starters, who’d played heavy minutes all season, were worn out by the Pacers’ speed, depth, and physicality, and after the series the Knicks fired Thibodeau despite his relative success. In came Mike Brown, who had a reputation for being much more tactically flexible and warmer. But Bridges struggled for long stretches of the season, including for the first three games of the first round, against the Atlanta Hawks. Bridges’s play was so poor that Brown benched him for part of Game Three, and New York’s commentariat called for Bridges’s benching—or perhaps his head. And then, as if a switch were flipped, he could not miss.

As Bridges went, so did the Knicks. In the final three games against the Hawks and in sweeps of the Philadelphia 76ers and the Cleveland Cavaliers, he made three-quarters of his two-point shots and nearly half his threes. What’s struck me most during the Finals, though, isn’t just his smoothness but his selflessness. He’s been doing what the situation asks of him.

In 2014, the Spurs won the championship by winging the ball from player to player, keeping it always a few inches ahead of the Miami Heat’s quick, aggressive defense. The ball moved at a blur. The players rotated quickly, setting flurries of picks and cutting, creating space by driving to the basket, stretching the defense to the point of breaking, and then flinging the ball to the open man in the corner. Basketball nirvana. My mind drifted back to those games when I saw the Knicks in Game Two drive and kick the ball out, drive and kick the ball out, over and over, passing it from player to player—each a threat to drive and also shoot from beyond the arc—until Bridges hit a three as the shot clock expired. And again when Towns drove to the basket and leaped, with four Spurs defenders collapsing on him, then threaded the ball through the Spurs’ defenders to Bridges in the corner for the open shot. And then again in the third quarter, while Brunson was struggling—he missed eighteen of his twenty-five shots that night—and Towns had to head to the bench with four fouls. With the Knicks’ lead dwindling, and Wembanyama playing with new urgency, Bridges found himself on the floor with a bunch of bench players. It was the type of situation that Thibodeau, who demanded maximal effort and minutes from his starters, had done everything in his power to avoid. But Miles (Deuce) McBride stepped up and scored, and Bridges hit two straight shots and then found Robinson at the rim for a gorgeous, wheeling alley-oop. It was modern free-flowing basketball at its finest, reminiscent of not only the Spurs in the early twenty-tens but the Golden State Warriors (where Mike Brown had been an assistant) and even the Pacers last season, when they wore opponents out during the playoffs with their rotations and their speed. The Knicks’ lead surged to eleven.

Bridges led both teams in minutes, and has proved himself to be every bit the iron man that Thibodeau revered. But the secret to the Knicks’ success during these playoffs has been the players’ ability to adjust, to step up and in for one another, and to rely on more than Brunson’s heroics. They can’t seem to lose because Towns has been the best player on the floor with Wembanyama, because Brunson owns fourth quarters, and because role players are making winning plays. Every rotation player has something to contribute, and right now they’re in the flow. In Game One, Hart was the hero in everything but the box score. In Game Two, a night when Hart faltered, the lift came from Bridges.

But why end there? Credit should ping from player to player as quickly as the ball does. The story of Game Two should also feature Jose Alvarado, who scored all of two points and played only ten minutes but seemed to discombobulate the Spurs with his fearlessness and his speed. And don’t forget OG Anunoby, the Knicks’ diesel engine on both ends of the floor, or Mitchell Robinson, who bullied Wembanyama into an existential crisis during San Antonio’s final two possessions. There should be a section on Landry Shamet, who started the season without a guaranteed contract. Now he can’t miss. In Game Two, he came off the bench and hit several critical three-pointers, including two in the fourth quarter, and the Knicks outscored the Spurs by nine points in the thirty minutes he was on the floor. (I’m pretty sure that Vinson Cunningham, the magazine’s Knicks-obsessed television critic, is ready to guarantee Shamet’s contract, personally, in perpetuity—paid for in pizza slices and lyricism.)

Now the Knicks have won thirteen straight, and are two wins away from their first N.B.A. title since Richard Nixon was President. It’s not over yet. But no team has ever come back from losing Games One and Two at home. The Knicks are rested. They have more experience. They have electrified an electric city. And they are winning even when Brunson is struggling to score. The Spurs have the biggest basketball star on the planet right now and a core of astonishingly poised and athletic young players. They can play better. But the thing is, the Knicks can play even better, too. ♦