Howard Beck at The Ringer on the Knicks championship, and Finals MVP Jalen Brunson:

How do you calculate the weight of a 53-year championship drought? Or the hopes and dreams of 8 million New Yorkers? Or the burden of becoming their basketball savior? If you could measure it all, what would it look like? Feel like? Would it be too much? Would it be unbearable? […]

A franchise placed its trust in Brunson, Brunson placed his trust in his work, and now the Knicks—the New York freaking Knicks!—after decades of ridicule, scorn, and general dysfunction, are NBA champions once more, having vanquished Victor Wembanyama and a precocious Spurs cast that was just as relentless and feisty as the Knicks themselves. […]

“No pressure,” Brunson said late Saturday night, after he had scored every critical basket, granted every Knicks fan’s fondest wish, and seized the championship that had eluded them for more than a half century. “No pressure whatsoever.” He was talking broadly about becoming the Knicks’ franchise star. He might as well have been explaining how he’d rallied them once again, for what felt like the thousandth time in two months, to turn a potential loss into the most consequential Knicks victory in modern times.

A terrific profile of the Knicks, and of Brunson, a once-in-a-generation franchise player.