5 Huge Moments as Knicks Claim 2025 NBA Cup Glory

The New York Knicks are 2025 NBA Cup champions, and made a case on Tuesday they can accomplish even more this season in the process.

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Despite an 11-of-27 shooting night for Jalen Brunson and an injury that temporarily side-lined Karl-Anthony Towns, the Knicks erased a double-digit deficit to defeat the San Antonio Spurs 124-113 and win the third NBA Cup title. They join the Los Angeles Lakers (2023) and Milwaukee Bucks (2024) in accomplishing the feat.

For a team that hasn’t won the NBA Finals since 1973 and hasn’t reached the Finals at all since 1999, that certainly means something.

The win will earn every Knicks player $530,933 in prize money, a substantial raise for some of the team’s younger and less-heralded players. The Spurs will have to settle for $212,373 each as runners-up.

The Knicks’ bench stepped up in the NBA Cup championship

For a while, San Antonio had the leg up. After knocking off the 24-2 Oklahoma City Thunder in the semi-finals behind a returning Victor Wembanyama, the Spurs had the enormous Frenchman back and playing even more minutes, going from 21 on Saturday to 25 on Tuesday.

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They rode that momentum to an 11-point lead late in the third quarter. Seven different Spurs ended up scoring in double digits, while Brunson looked a long way off from his own 41-point semifinal performance. He still made a difference with his playmaking and gravity, but the Knicks needed someone else to step up, especially with Towns still grimacing from an apparent first-half injury.

Several players did.

OG Anunoby posted a game-high 28 points on 10-of-17 shooting, plus nine rebounds and three assists. Tyler Kolek and Jordan Clarkson both posted double-digit points off the bench. Mitchell Robinson extended possession after possession with 10 offensive rebounds and 15 total boards.

And Josh Hart kept doing Josh Hart things.

“Without Tyler Kolek, OG Anunoby, Mitchell Robinson and Jordan Clarkson, we don’t win this game,” Brunson said after the game, while accepting NBA Cup MVP honours.

Say what you will about the Spurs’ inexperience and Wembanyama’s health, it was an impressive win for a Knicks team and another addition to their case as the team to fear in the East. Off nights for Brunson and/or Towns have frequently spelled doom for a team often lacking in depth over the past few playoffs, but this time it had three bench players step up in a major way.

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With the team sitting in second in the East at 18-7, 2.5 games behind the Detroit Pistons, that’s a meaningful development.

Notably, none of the above stats will make it to the regular-season numbers. While every other game in the NBA Cup counts toward the regular season, the championship game does not.
Here’s how everything went down between the Spurs and the Knicks in the NBA Cup championship game.