NBA finals: In a mud wrestle shaped by 53 years of dread, Jalen Brunson was the difference

It is uncommon to begin counting down after the opening game of an NBA finals, but these are uncommon times in New York, and the Knicks have been counting since Richard Nixon was president, their coach, Mike Brown, was three years old, and their opponent, the San Antonio Spurs, played in the American Basketball Association. After the Knicks took Game 1 105-95, the anticipation in New York rose to yet another level.

Game 1 was not a good game, but it was a great game. The first quarter was ragged. So was the second. Neither team could shoot from distance – the Knicks shot 31% from three, the Spurs 26%. The Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama, the sport’s heir apparent, made his finals debut with six turnovers, 6-for-21 shooting from the field, defensively alive but never transcendent. Both Wembanyama and Jalen Brunson, the Knicks’ superb, always underestimated engine, took nine three-pointers. Each made two.

In terms of beauty and efficiency, Game 1 was mud wrestling, but a game need not be artistic to be great. Its greatness was not in the artistry but in its suffocating weight, its messiness the byproduct of the maximum effort by both teams and the omnipresent stakes, the special pressures inherited by the players. The Knicks have not won the final game of an NBA season since 1973, and New York is waiting, waiting to finally burst, to blow the lid off the city. The countdown is not by game but seemingly by possession.

In 1994, when the New York Rangers played Vancouver in the Stanley Cup finals, desperate for that first championship since 1940, the energy was similar. Fifty-four years. A sizable number of the fan base wasn’t alive the last time the Rangers had won. The ones who had been were middle-aged or senior citizens, convinced as all beaten fan bases are, that they’ll never see victory in their lifetimes. The images from 1940 – still photography and film, black and white because color was not yet ubiquitous – seemed from another time, and it was. The United States – convinced Europe wasn’t their problem – had not yet entered World War II and adopted the phrase “America First” to emphasize the point.

And yet even though these Knicks last won when the world was in color, the years are nevertheless the years. The Rangers waited 54 years for their fans to exhale; the Knicks have been waiting for 53 years and counting. The resultant feeling in Game 1 was a palpable tension reserved for playoff overtime hockey. Or baseball.

It could be felt by the frenetic pace of the opening minutes, the mood swings of Knicks fans on the socials. The result was watching something other than basketball, where possessions aren’t perceived as valuable because there are so many trips in an average game, and until the final minutes, there is very little about basketball that feels urgent.

1973 was a long time ago, almost as long ago as 1940 was to Rangers fans in 1994. The great director and Knicks superfan Spike Lee was 16. While the cameras panned to their fans’ faces alternating between elation and indigestion, the Knicks played Game 1 with more confidence than their legions did watching it, which is appropriate, even though no Knicks team in history has played as well and been as dominant as this one. They have won six of their last 12 games by at least 20 points, four by 30 or more, and one by 51, but have not eased into their what could once be called – during happier times in the Bronx – their Inner Yankee, believing victory to be inevitable. The Knicks have not lost a basketball game since 23 April, when Atlanta beat them in Game 3 of the first round, the sky fell and it was time to fire everyone. They’ve played 12 games since then and won them all. On Wednesday night, the Spurs trailing 94-86, ripped off nine straight points, led by Wembanyama, took a 95-94 lead with 2:16 remaining – and did not score again. The inevitability of the Knicks was shown again, and they closed matters with an 11-0 run.

The Knicks’ inevitability – if it does indeed exist – was again embodied by Brunson, again the best player on the floor when it mattered. At one point, he had missed 15 of his first 22 shots. When it was time to take money off the table, he made five of his last nine. Brunson is the antithesis of his nervous fandom, not only unbothered by the tension but hungry for it, certain how the story will end.

In San Antonio, there is pressure but of a different sort. The Spurs last won a championship 12 years ago, and they have won five in the last 27 years. No one on the Riverwalk is hyperventilating during a third-quarter inbounds play.

San Antonio pressure is watching joyfully knowing that the future belongs to them, hoping that future begins now but comfortable in the knowledge that they have arrived early. That is the contrast of these finals, one team desperate to erase a half-century of pain, another barely scratching the surface of their potential. The basketball world watching the Spurs know this, too, for Wembanyama does not only threaten the NBA order, but the American sense of basketball self, knowing that every moment of his improvement lessens the nearly century-old grip America has had on international competition. The Olympics are coming. Los Angeles, 2028, and Wembanyama is guaranteeing something no one has ever seen before: Team USA entering an Olympics as an underdog. The Americans have lost, but never have they not been favored.

On this night, however, he was human, the baby giraffe of a man expected to do something unprecedented each time he touches the ball was muscled and uncomfortable, defended admirably and effectively by Karl-Anthony Towns. While Brunson closed – a fadeaway, an offensive tip to maintain possession that led to a crushing corner three as part of a 13-point fourth – it was Wemby who, with a one-point lead, recklessly drove the lane and missed, and then slipped and lost the ball at midcourt.

It was only Game 1, and there is plenty of basketball to be played, but maybe – even regardless of the outcome – these Knicks have done enough to signal to their fans that it’s finally OK to watch the rest of the series thinking like winners. The year 1973 was indeed a very long time ago, and for Knicks fans every game is going to feel like this until the long wait ends – chests tight, expecting dread, even as their charges twice erased double-digit deficits, responding to the Game 1 challenge as they have for the past six weeks – by playing like the best basketball team in the world.

• Howard Bryant is the author of 11 books, including The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism and Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America.