It still feels a little weird to say out loud — the New York Knicks are champions. The parade already came and went, the confetti’s been swept up, and somehow this is still real. Jalen Brunson closed it out the way stars are supposed to, 45 points and 13 consecutive in the fourth quarter of a Game 5 close-out tells you everything you need to know about the man’s composition. But that’s not really the part that sticks with you.

What sticks is trying to figure out how the Knicks even got here in the first place. Not just from this season, but from everything they used to be — the chaos, the years where this franchise felt like a punchline more than a contender. And then suddenly, they’re in San Antonio, holding the Larry O’Brien trophy like it was always supposed to end this way.

The problem is, it didn’t happen the way champions usually do. No tank-and-draft savior. No one summer where everything flipped overnight. No obvious blueprint you could point to and say, yeah, that’s the move that changed everything. This was slower than that. A bunch of smaller bets that didn’t always make sense in the moment, layered on top of each other until one day it all just… worked.

Leon Rose built this thing piece by piece.

Before It Made Sense

When James Dolan hired Leon Rose as team president in March 2020, it didn’t feel like some turning-point moment. It felt like… another Knicks move. Another big name, another spin of the wheel for a franchise that had spent years trying to convince themselves the next hire would finally be the one.

And then you look at Rose and it’s even harder to pin down. He wasn’t an ex-player with built-in credibility. Wasn’t a coach who had been through the grind. Wasn’t some front office lifer who had checked every box on the traditional climb. He didn’t look like the guy who fixes this.

He was an agent. A powerful one, yeah — the kind of guy who had represented LeBron, Iverson, and a long list of stars — but still, an agent. Someone who had spent his entire career on the other side of these decisions, shaping rosters without actually building them. And now he’s stepping into a situation that had chewed through just about every type of decision-maker you could throw at it.

The Knicks were 19-42. They hadn’t touched the playoffs since 2013. Sixteen losing seasons since 2000. That’s not a job where you get to ease into things.

When Rose came in, there wasn’t some big, sweeping declaration about how everything was going to change overnight. It was quieter than that, and honestly, that’s part of why it didn’t immediately click for people. He understood people. He understood how players think, how they respond to pressure, how certain personalities fit together and others just… don’t.

That’s the stuff you don’t see on a spreadsheet. Rose had already been living in that world for three decades. He knew which guys could handle New York before they ever got here, and he said as much:

That's a huge piece of all the decisions you make with regard to players, coming to New York. Can they handle New York? Can they handle the big stage? Can they handle the moment?

So when he started building, it didn’t look like urgency. It looked like restraint. Which, in this city, almost reads like you’re doing nothing. No panic trades. No desperate swings just to prove you’re active. Just slow, deliberate decisions stacking on top of each other.

And at the time, it didn’t really make sense. It wasn’t supposed to yet. That was kind of the point.

The First Phone Call Was in 1995

The Brunson–Rose connection gets thrown around like it’s some godfather thing. Rose even laughed that off on the Roommates Podcast after the title — made it clear, with a smile, that he’s not Jalen’s godfather.

Rick Brunson was Leon Rose’s first client back in 1995. Not a big name. Not some future star. Just a tough, fringe NBA guard trying to stick around after going undrafted out of Temple.

Rose was there for all of it. Helped him find jobs, kept him in the league, stayed in his corner when it would’ve been easy not to. And over time, that turned into more than just business. He became a close family friend. He was at the hospital when Jalen was born. Held him before Rick even did. That’s not a connection you build later — that’s something that just exists.

So when Jalen comes into the league in 2018 as a second-round pick in Dallas, Rose already knows exactly who he is. Not just the player — the habits, the wiring, the way he handles pressure, the way he leads. All the stuff teams try to figure out from a distance. Rose had a front-row seat to it for years.

By the time he takes over the Knicks in 2020, Brunson isn’t some random free agent target. He’s someone Rose already believes in.

And the guy to my left, we brought him in, and he had shown what he could do in the Finals series when Luka went down. I truly believe that he could come into New York, and I knew New York wouldn't faze him... This was the first major move and I had all the conviction in the world.

Then you look at how it actually played out. Rick gets hired as an assistant in June 2022. Jalen signs a month later. Father and son on the same bench, in the same building where Rick used to play back in 1999. Now they’re chasing something that team never finished.

"I Got Killed About Jalen"

The criticism when the Knicks signed Brunson in the summer of 2022 wasn’t just loud — it felt automatic. Like people didn’t even need to think about it before reacting. Four years, $104 million for a 6-foot-2 guard from Dallas who had never been the main guy? In New York? That was always going to get crushed.

And it did. Immediately. Stephen A. went nuclear on TV. National shows treated it like another Knicks overpay. The easy takeaway was that they had just talked themselves into paying a role player like a cornerstone because of one hot playoff stretch. It fit the old narrative too perfectly — Knicks reach again.

What nobody really slowed down to consider was what that playoff run actually showed. Not just the numbers, but the responsibility. Brunson didn’t just score. He looked comfortable being the guy everything flowed through. But because it happened in a short window, it got brushed off as a moment.

Rose never saw it that way. He said exactly what he thought of all that on the Roommates Podcast:

I got killed about Jalen, and now everyone thinks I’m a genius. It’s about what we did in order to get [him]. Clearing space, at the time people thinking that it was so much money that we were paying [him]... I did it because I fully believed in him and thought he was that good. He had put in the work and he had proven himself. Maybe the rest of the world hadn't caught up yet.

That’s really the whole thing right there. Not the contract. Not the reaction. The belief.

So when the rest of the league saw a raw second-round pick with a nice playoff run, Rose saw someone who had been waiting for the chance to run a team — and had already shown he could handle it. To him, that wasn’t a projection. That was confirmation.

And once you understand that, everything else starts to make more sense. The patience early on. The refusal to chase flashier names. The way every move after that was built around making Brunson’s life easier instead of complicating it.

That contract that caused so much of a ruckus has aged incredibly well. He walks in as roughly the 20th-highest-paid point guard and immediately plays like one of the best in the league. Twenty-four a night in year one, full control of the offense, dragging the Knicks out of irrelevance basically overnight. There wasn’t a ramp-up period. There wasn’t a “let’s see if this works.” It just… worked.

$113 Million on the Table

In 2024, Brunson did something guys at his level just don’t do. Not in today’s league, not with the money the way it is. He signed a four-year extension worth $156.5 million when he could’ve just waited a year, hit free agency, and cashed in on a five-year deal worth around $269 million.

That $113 million he didn't take turned into the conversation that whole summer. Every show, every podcast. This was a guy coming off 29 a night, seven assists, top-five in MVP voting, and had basically dragged the Knicks back into relevance by himself. That’s the moment where most players take everything they can. You’ve earned it, you take it, and you let the front office figure out the rest later.

He didn’t.

And it’s not like the Knicks were in a position to push back. If Brunson wanted the full max, they were giving it to him. No hesitation. Whatever it took. That’s your franchise at that point.

By taking less, he didn’t just save the Knicks money — he gave them options. Real ones. The kind that only exist if your best player isn’t squeezing every dollar out of the cap. That flexibility is what opened the door for Bridges. It’s what made the Towns deal possible without completely gutting the roster. It’s what let Rose keep building instead of just maintaining.

And that’s the difference. There are a lot of really good teams in the league that stall out because once they pay their star, they run out of options. You’re filling holes instead of adding strengths. You’re reacting instead of shaping. Brunson’s deal flipped that. It let the Knicks stay aggressive after they already found their guy.

And the funny part is, it fits exactly with who Brunson has always been. Nothing about his career has followed the “take the easy route” script. Second-round pick. Played his way into a bigger role. Played his way into a lead role. Played his way into being one of the best guards in the league. This was just another example of the same mindset.

Brunson’s mother, Sandra, who drove an hour and a half from Austin to San Antonio the night of Game 5 after missing her connecting flight, put it the simplest way possible after the buzzer:

All I can say is it’s about belief.

The Moves That Changed The Ceiling

For all the chemistry talk and the Villanova through-line, this team really turned when the Knicks started taking bigger swings — three trades that all came with real consequences if they didn’t hit. Rose didn’t ease into those. He picked his spots and went for it.

When The Defense Finally Showed Up

The OG Anunoby deal was the first one that felt like a line being drawn. Late December 2023, middle of the season, Barrett and Quickley get shipped out, OG gets brought in. No first-round picks. That’s the part that made everyone pause for a second. You don’t usually get a wing like that without giving up some real draft capital.

And the reaction made sense. Barrett had been the homegrown piece people were attached to. Quickley was one of those guys fans talk themselves into becoming more every year. You don’t move both of those guys lightly.

But the second OG stepped on the floor, it felt different. The defense snapped into place almost immediately. Suddenly, there’s a guy who can take the toughest assignment every night and not just survive it, but control it. Tatum, Brown, Mitchell, Maxey, whoever — it didn’t matter. That changes how everyone else plays.

And then in the Finals, you see the other side of it. The tip-in in Game 4 — that’s not just a highlight, that’s a season swinging on one guy being exactly where he’s supposed to be. That’s what that trade was really about. Not just defense. Dependability.

I'm Sorry, How Many First-Rounders?

The Bridges deal is a different story entirely. That’s the one where even people who liked the direction had to sit back and go, alright… that’s a lot. Five firsts, a second, a swap, Bojan Bogdanović, and a few other players. That’s the kind of price that follows you. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t just miss — it sets you back years.

And for a while, it didn’t look clean. Offensively, Bridges wasn’t this instant co-star. There were nights where you could feel the expectation sitting on him a little bit. But Rose knew he was the piece they needed:

'Kail was like the last piece that would give us the group. We had just re-signed OG, that day… That was the last one. And probably why, if you wanna say it was too many draft picks, but to me, we were trying to get this. (touches the Larry O'Brien Trophy)

Him and OG together meant you could switch everything, cover mistakes, survive mismatches, and stop bleeding points when things got chaotic. And over time, the offensive part settled into the right place. Not forcing it. Not trying to be something he wasn’t. Just fitting into the flow of what the team actually needed.

The Big Who Gave Brunson Space To Work

Then KAT is the one that makes you go, okay — now I see it.

Because that wasn’t just a talent upgrade. That was a philosophical shift. Randle's a good player. He carried a lot of bad Knicks teams. But the way he plays, the way he needs the ball, the way things can stall a little when he’s the focal point — it just didn’t line up perfectly with what Brunson had become.

Towns does.

Spacing, passing, pick-and-roll gravity, the ability to score without hijacking possessions — all of that opens the floor up in a way that changes how the entire offense breathes. Suddenly there’s room. Suddenly Brunson isn’t navigating traffic every trip. Suddenly help defenders have to think twice.

And again, there’s risk there too. Towns came with questions. Fit questions, consistency questions, playoff history questions. That doesn’t just disappear because the jersey changes.

But when it clicked, you could feel it. Early in the Finals, especially. Those first two games, the way the offense flowed, the way San Antonio had to pick their poison — that’s the version Rose had in his head when he made the move.

The Thibodeau Question

This is the part that’s a little uncomfortable, because Tom Thibodeau deserves real credit for getting them here in the first place.

Before this roster was anything close to a contender, Thibs made the Knicks matter again. He built the defensive identity, demanded a level from Brunson that pushed him into something bigger, and gave a franchise that had been drifting for years an actual backbone. When James Dolan said in January that “the team is really built on Tom Thibodeau,” that wasn’t fluff. That was real. The culture stuck, even after he was gone.

Rose finally addressed it on the episode:

It was tough. Thibs is a great coach. Did so much for the organization. We were right on the doorstep. Just felt that, just needed a change in voice, a change in philosophy. It was a tough move.

That last part is what this really comes down to. Thibs is elite at what he does — defense, structure, accountability — but the way he runs things started to bump up against what this roster needed.

Because once you have Brunson, KAT, Bridges, OG — that kind of group needs space. They need flexibility. They need the ability to adjust on the fly when a series shifts. The Knicks were right there, but they kept running into the same ceiling.

At some point, you’re not fixing the foundation anymore. You’re trying to raise it. And that meant something had to change.

Mike Brown and the Collaborative Bet

Mike Brown isn't exactly the coach people picture when they think “title guy.” Four previous stops, four firings — Cleveland twice, the Lakers, Sacramento. That reputation sticks. For a long time he lived in that space where everyone respects you, but nobody fully believes in you. Solid. Dependable. Not the guy.

That’s how most people saw him, at least. Rose didn’t.

Mike is a guy that really fit what we were looking for. He's somebody that I've known for a long time. I represented LeBron when he coached him in Cleveland. Knew him and kind of followed him through his career. Didn't know him that well, but he always was a guy that was a good guy, that you could talk to, that you really felt good about. That was just your gut... First of all, just his openness and his willingness to share ideas — with the front office, his staff, and the inclusion of everyone. He really was open to things, open to people's suggestions, open to ideas. I believe that's what led to some of the changes that were made throughout the season. We started out a certain way, he may have had an idea about how something was gonna work, but he kind of evolved throughout the season, as did our team. I think that all went into the fact that we went into another gear in the playoffs.

That word — openness — is really what changed everything.

Brown didn’t walk in trying to prove he had all the answers. He walked in willing to adjust. Willing to listen. That doesn’t sound flashy, but it matters when you’re dealing with a group like this.

You could see it throughout the season. The offense didn’t stay static — it shifted. He tweaked things, tried different looks, leaned into what was working instead of stubbornly sticking to what should work. When Brunson pushed for morning shootarounds because he wanted the team sharper, Brown didn’t fight it. He rolled with it.

And when things got uncomfortable — like the Hawks series going sideways early, down 1-2 — that’s where it really showed up. He changed how they attacked, simplified reads, adjusted spacing, and the whole thing flipped. That’s not just talent correcting itself. That’s a coach recognizing something isn’t right and actually doing something about it.

From there, it snowballed. Thirteen straight wins, second-longest postseason streak ever. The most dominant 13-game stretch in all of NBA history — regular season or postseason — when it comes to margin of victory. The bench, which had been a problem the year before, suddenly becomes one of the most productive units in the playoffs. That doesn’t just happen. That’s structure.

And that’s probably the biggest difference with Brown. He didn’t try to control everything. He created something where the right players could figure it out together — and then he stayed out of their way when they did.

What Rose Actually Built

Nobody saw this exact champion coming because the Knicks never really looked like a champion while they were building it. They didn’t tank their way into a generational star. They didn’t flip a switch in one summer. There was no clean, obvious moment where you could point and say, that’s when it changed.

They built around a 6-foot-2 guard everyone kept saying was too small to be the guy. And that goes directly against how people think this is supposed to work. Rose addressed that as well:

One of the greatest things about this right here [the Larry O'Brien Trophy] is you can win with a small guard. How many times have we heard that over all these years?

ANd he's right. You’ve heard it forever — you need size, you need length, you need a certain kind of superstar. The Knicks just… didn’t follow that script. They built the entire starting lineup through trades. The 2019 Raptors were the only other modern champ with four starters acquired that way, and then took it a step further by closing the Finals with five guys who all started their careers somewhere else.

They fired a coach who had earned real credit. They hired one the league had already moved on from a few times. And they kept making moves that didn’t really make sense in the moment until, all of a sudden, they did.

Rose described the whole thing in a way that almost undersells how hard it actually is:

We were all about changing the culture and getting guys that fit within the culture that we wanted, a winning culture. Josh was a huge part of that also. The chemistry just means so much. The way these guys are on the court, it’s telepathic. KAT was another guy who fit great with the group. And OG, whom we had brought in the year before, was another that we thought was a two-way player who was gonna fit with the group. And then Mikal was the last piece, gave us a second wing. That was the vision.

It sounds simple when you hear it like that. Of course it does. It always does after you win.

But none of it felt simple when it was happening. Not when people were questioning Brunson. Not when they were counting draft picks after the Bridges trade. Not when they were trying to figure out if KAT actually fit.

Rose just kept going anyway. He had conviction when nobody else did.

All stats courtesy of NBA.com.

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