Knicks to hold first-ever championship parade Thursday
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- The Knicks will hold a ticker-tape championship parade Thursday, June 18 at 10 a.m. ET, traveling down Broadway's Canyon of Heroes from The Battery to City Hall — the franchise's first parade in history, after skipping celebrations following their 1970 and 1973 titles.
- Mayor Zohran Mamdani will award the team keys to the city at a post-parade City Hall ceremony, saying New Yorkers waited more than 50 years for this moment and closing his statement with 'Bing bong.'
- The Knicks clinched the 2026 NBA title five days earlier, beating the San Antonio Spurs in Game 5 with a 16-point comeback to end the fifth-longest title drought in the league entering this season.
- The Finals series was historic in its comebacks: the Knicks rallied from 29 points down in Game 4 — the largest comeback in Finals history, tied for the second-largest postseason comeback in the play-by-play era — and won both Games 2 and 4 by a single point, joining the 1975 Golden State Warriors as the only teams to win multiple games in the same Finals by one point.
- Jalen Brunson was named Finals MVP after setting a Knicks Finals scoring record with 45 points in Game 5, joining Willis Reed as the only players in franchise history to earn the honor; he averaged 32.6 points, 4.2 rebounds, 4.6 assists and two steals in the series.
- Coach Mike Brown said he was 'pinching myself' after the win and told the crowd: 'I love my players, love the organization, but more importantly, let's go New York. We can't wait to get back home.'
Why it matters: After 53 years without a title and no championship parade in the franchise's history, the Knicks and the city of New York are staging their first Canyon of Heroes celebration — a route typically reserved for the rarest of civic milestones, reserved this time for a team that won every Finals game by 10 points or fewer and set the record for the largest Finals comeback.
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