The 2026 NBA Finals are set.
After surviving a Game 7 battle with the Oklahoma City Thunder, the San Antonio Spurs are headed back to the championship, led by Victor Wembanyama and one of the league’s fastest-rising cores.
Waiting for them is the New York Knicks, who stormed through the Eastern Conference and now stand four wins away from their first title in more than 50 years.
Our staff makes its predictions for Spurs-Knicks.
Andy Bailey: Knicks
The San Antonio Spurs are on an absurd heater right now. They went 30-4 over the last few months of the regular season. They just eliminated the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder. And they’re bigger and more athletic than the New York Knicks throughout most of the teams’ rotations.
But at some point, the difference in experience level has to matter a little (right?!). And the Knicks have an overwhelming advantage there. Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns and the rest of New York have all taken their postseason lumps. And they looked like a team of destiny throughout a dominant run in the East.
The Knicks have, by far, the biggest average point differential in playoff history (among teams that played at least 10 games). Jalen Brunson’s the most reliable clutch scorer in the series. They have multiple big bodies they can throw at Victor Wembanyama. And their jumbo wings can counter some of the high-end athleticism of San Antonio’s guards.
The Spurs are almost certainly going to make more Finals runs in the future, but this one is going to stop just short of the title.
—Bailey
The Knicks are set to party like it’s 1999 with the franchise forging an 11-game winning streak to make its long-awaited return to the championship stage. They’re even squaring off against the same team that handled them in five games during their previous title fight.
This series should be closer than that. Probably.
Frankly, it just wouldn’t feel great to predict a team as hot as New York to suddenly go subzero and get ousted in five games or less. Especially when San Antonio’s shotmakers can go cold, and this offense can sputter. The Knicks have enough firepower to really punish the Spurs for those frigid spells.
What they don’t have, though, is a great answer for Victor Wembanyama, who is pretty clearly staking his claim as the planet’s best player—some six-plus months ahead of his 23rd birthday. They also don’t really have a great counter for San Antonio throwing its long, physical defenders at 6’2″ offensive engine Jalen Brunson, either. This should be a competitive series, but San Antonio both poses more problems and has the better problem-solver.
—Buckley
Getting past the reigning champions has earned the Spurs’ a Finals-favorite billing entering Game 1. While that’s a reasonable presumption, it shouldn’t rest entirely on squeaking by Oklahoma City. The Thunder didn’t have either of their most important non-Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ball-handlers, Ajay Mitchell and Jalen Williams, and Chet Holmgren devolved into a cross between 2021 Ben Simmons and 2025 Myles Turner.
The Knicks have more secondary offensive weapons in the (likely) event San Antonio makes life hell on Brunson. They have gotten more creative using JB himself off the ball, extracted more facilitation out of Karl-Anthony Towns and enjoyed more downhill attacking and oomph from OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges.
Victor Wembanyama remains an unsolvable puzzle. Though New York has physical bodies up front in Towns and Mitchell Robinson, the latter just had surgery to repair a broken pinky finger on his shooting hand. It’s unclear how much the Knicks can count on his offensive rebounding to help win the possession battle. The Spurs’ own cast of live-dribble attackers will be the toughest test yet for New York’s defense. Dylan Harper, De’Aaron Fox, Devin Vassell and Stephon Castle have shown they can hit tough shots in big moments, and their jobs get a tad easier versus a Knicks defense that can’t press nearly as often as OKC.
This feels like a coin toss when factoring in San Antonio’s fatigue coming off a seven-game junket and New York’s rest earned through total annihilation of the East. With push coming to shove, I lean toward these Knicks of the past few weeks having more offensive options to counter the Spurs’ defense than vice versa.
The San Antonio Spurs will return to glory with an NBA Finals win over the New York Knicks in a hard-fought, six-game series.
The Knicks are more experienced. Jalen Brunson’s dominance has been magical. New York has a talented scoring big in Karl-Anthony Towns, paired with elite defensive wings who are strong contributors on offense.
Still, the Spurs’ athletic attack at guard will be too much for New York to handle, with Stephon Castle, Dylan Harper, De’Aaron Fox and Devin Vassell. Of course, the real issue for the Knicks will be Victor Wembanyama, a monstrous defensive presence and skilled scorer.
Knicks fans have been waiting for this moment for five decades, but the Spurs finish the series with another banner.
—Pincus