SAN ANTONIO — Surely, Jalen Brunson has imagined this.
He told reporters during a Zoom conference call before Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals that he’d been envisioning leading the New York Knicks to the NBA Finals ever since he signed with the franchise in free agency in the summer of 2022. And if he’s thought about going to the Finals for the last four years, it seems reasonable to conclude that he’s thought about winning them — about hoisting the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy, about adding an NBA title to the two NCAA national championships he won at Villanova — for at least that long. And, honestly, probably a hell of a lot longer.
Now that he’s here, though, with the Knicks holding a 3-1 lead over the San Antonio Spurs in the 2026 NBA Finals, Brunson’s response to a question before the Knicks’ Friday practice — a practice session whose beginning was soundtracked, appropriately enough, by the Wu-Tang Clan — about how it feels to be just one win away from the top of the mountain consisted of a grand total of two numbers:
“Zero-zero.”
It’s not surprising that New York’s captain would return to emphasizing the importance of taking a 0-0 mindset into Saturday’s Game 5. After all, the Knicks have managed to maintain a remarkable level of message discipline on that matter — a steady stream of references to resetting to 0-0 after every game, to staying desperate even when holding a lead in a game or series — for weeks now.
“Until it’s said and done, that’s got to be our mindset going into everything,” Knicks center Mitchell Robinson said.
The ability to put the past behind them, move on and focus solely on what’s in front of them has clearly served the Knicks well to this point. That’s the thing, though: How the heck do you just move on from pulling off the greatest comeback in NBA history, capped by arguably the greatest play in franchise history? How do you just reset to zero after that?
“It is hard,” Knicks head coach Mike Brown said. “We’re all human. It was hard even in the series that we swept — you win two, three, four, five games in a row, there’s a tendency to relax a little bit. That’s just in life. In your job, you have success for 10 months straight, maybe you feel like, ‘I got this, I know what I’m doing.’ You’re not as sharp then, because everybody’s been patting you on your back and telling you how great you are. Trying to manufacture things to help guys lock in, trying to talk to guys individually, so they can continue to talk to their teammates to lock in — all that stuff is huge.”
Multiple Knicks spoke about walking the fine, sometimes difficult line between appreciating the miraculous moment of Game 4 and getting themselves mentally prepared to be purely focused on Game 5.
“I think whenever you win or lose a game, that night, I mean, you’re going to think about it — think about the things you’ve done well, or what you did wrong,” Brunson said. “I’ve always told myself when you wake up the next day, it’s time to turn the page.”
“Obviously that game is a hardwood classic, something that the NBA has never seen before,” All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns said. “But I’ve also seen things, being in that situation, where the joy is at an all-time high and it could be at an all-time low pretty quick. So we understand the magnitude of locking back in, getting back to work. Of course that night, we all enjoyed the shell-shock of what happened, and obviously we were the ones that were part of it. But we all understood the next morning that we had to get back to work, and we had to lock back in, and get ready to find a way to win another one.”‘
“You can enjoy it that night, that evening, obviously — soaking it up, with the magnitude of what happened,” Knicks swingman Landry Shamet said. “But quickly turning around and understand there’s more to be done. It’s a tough balance, but one that’s necessary, and I think our whole group’s done that.”
Some members of the group apparently struggled a little bit less with striking that balance.
“It’s easy,” said Game 4 hero Jose Alvarado. “We’re coming in and trying to win this game. This one is the most important game. It’s something — you know, we enjoyed it, it was a crazy game, and we love how we got the win. But at the end of the day, we gotta leave that behind us and come out here and worry about tomorrow.”
“I think it’s pretty easy for us,” Knicks wing Mikal Bridges said. “I think that’s probably the most I can say. I think it’s pretty easy for us. […] As a player, we know our job’s not finished. Yeah, we’re ready.”
The Knicks have certainly been ready to capitalize whenever they’ve had a closeout opportunity in the 2026 postseason. They’ve gone 3-0 in elimination games, winning all three on the road — Game 6 in Atlanta, Game 4 in Philadelphia and Game 4 in Cleveland — by a combined 118 points, which Brown sees as a testament to the collective maturity and seriousness of his locker room.
“We’ve been preaching all year: It’s about the next possession, the next possession, the next possession,” Brown said. “We understand anytime you try to play a closeout game, the level of desperation for your opponents increases. The level of desperation for the fans of your opponents is increased. You have to bring your best effort, because even if you bring your best effort, it may not happen, especially on the road. That’s the only way you have a chance for it to happen.”
“We’ve got to go in there with the understanding of no comfortability, just really be desperate, execute at a high level,” Towns said. “Game-plan discipline has to be at a high level. I’ve said this multiple times: The hardest game to win is the one that ends someone’s season. So we’ve got to be our best version tomorrow.”
Which is to say: Ideally, a version of themselves that does not fall into a double-digit hole against the Spurs for the fifth straight game, and definitely does not go down by as many as 29 points.
“Also, in that moment of jubilation [after Game 4], that moment of absolute joy, we have to talk about the elephant in the room — we just didn’t play well at all, and we put ourselves in that deficit,” Towns said. “So while there is joy, there is also frustration that we even allowed ourselves to be in that kind of position, especially as much as the deficit was.”
“Yes, we won, but we still have a lot of work to do,” Brunson said. “We have a lot to learn. We didn’t play our best basketball. We still have a lot to revisit to make sure that we don’t really put ourselves in that position again.”
To a man, the Knicks seem to be approaching Game 5 with an understanding that the quickest way to put themselves behind the 8-ball again would be to let the Game 4 euphoria continue to linger.
“That’s the key,” said Knicks guard Miles McBride. “Can’t have a hangover of winning a game like that. Obviously it’s special, but we don’t want to repeat it. We want to go out there and take care of business.”
The Spurs, obviously, will have something to say about that as they attempt to extend their season. But whatever Victor Wembanyama and Co. might have in store, and whatever other independent variables might crop up, Brown enters Game 5 feeling confident that he and his coaching staff have done the work to instill the right mindset and develop the right habits to put his players in position to get the job done.
“I can’t 100% say, ‘This is what I’m going to do to make them not have the hangover from the win two nights ago,'” Brown said. “The biggest thing is, continuing to preach 0-0. Continuing to preach, ‘Stay present.’ Continuing to preach, ‘Next possession, next possession, next possession,’ and hope the experiences they’ve gone through as a group already, and their maturity — as well as our standards, which they’ve really hung onto all year — will help us lock into this game.
“It’s going to be hard. San Antonio’s a great team. They’re desperate. I still think they believe. It’s going to be hard for us. But it’s natural for that to creep in a little bit. You just hope that it doesn’t creep in too long throughout the course of the game.”
If it does creep in, it seems like a safe bet that, with a championship on the line, the Knicks’ captain won’t allow it to linger.
“Our mindset and focus is: one possession at a time, one play at a time, one quarter at a time,” Brunson said. “You’re thinking about the now — how you can be better [on] the next possession. How can you turn the page, positive or negative? Regardless of what’s going on, our mindset and approach has to stay the same. I think we’ve done a very good job of that. It’s something that has grown over the season. It’s really important — especially, obviously, now.”
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