It’s a party on many streets in New York – fireworks are being shot off, cars are driving around honking their horns, while cheers are coming from every nook and cranny. It is celebrated that the basketball players of the New York Knicks won the NBA title. Coach Mike Brown’s team fought back from a 16-point deficit in the fifth meeting in the final against the San Antonio Spurs and narrowly won: 90-94. In the best-of-seven series, the Knicks took a decisive lead of 4-1.
The enormous celebration in the city could partly be explained by the long wait to which the many Knicks fans in New York had been forced to wait. The team was last champion in 1973 and previously in 1970. The 53-year drought for the premier basketball team of the largest city in the country was painful. They last reached the final in 1999. Then they lost to Spurs. They remain five-time champions. Their last title dates from 2014.
The new title was also historic in another way. In the fourth game of the series, the Knicks pulled off the biggest comeback ever in the NBA Finals by erasing a 29-point deficit and defeating the Spurs 107-106. The winning point was a ‘tip-in’ that literally fell into the net one second before the end – like in a movie from the category inspiring.