ESPN’s Mike Breen: What the Knicks’ Title Means for Fans in New York

Mike Breen has called Knicks games from the best seat in the building for decades, and even he couldn't quite process the scenes from the last few days.

"I've never seen anything like it," Breen said. To explain why it matters, he reached for Roger Angell's essay on what it means to be a fan, the one about caring so much about something that you become irrational, pour in your time and money and emotion, and hurt so badly when they lose. Then an event like this happens, and the joy is overwhelming. Breen saw it at the arena and in the videos, and he called it a beautiful thing.

He had a personal example. His son Matt, 29, watched the clincher with friends in the city, and on a three-block walk afterward he hugged about 80 strangers. In New York, that never happens.

Rich matched it with his own. His wife printed Stevie Nicks shirts, the kind Taylor Swift wore, and while walking the dog in Los Angeles he passed a man in a Knicks hat who simply said, "How great is life?" Two strangers sharing a moment on a small street 3,000 miles from the Garden. Fan, as Rich noted, is the root of fanatic. That's exactly what this is.

Asked what the championship means, Breen called it one of the great moments in New York sports history, for a few reasons. First, New York has always been a basketball town. He's lived there his whole life and loves football too, but there's something about the city game being basketball. Second, this is a team the entire city gets behind, one that struggled for years while the fans never left. To stick with them through thick and thin and then watch a team this representative of the city, full of high-character players who carry themselves the right way, made it special.

The star matters most. Breen praised everything about Jalen Brunson, from his toughness to his refusal to give up, and pointed to a quality that goes underrated: he's extremely coachable, even at this level. When the rest of the team sees Brunson take guff from the coaches, including assistant Rick Brunson, his own father, everyone falls in line. Breen recalled the viral clip from the Atlanta series, down two games to one, of Rick pulling Jalen aside to tell him to knock off whatever he was complaining about. The old narrative was that the Knicks were coddling Brunson by hiring his dad. It was the exact opposite.

Breen's favorite Brunson trait is the devastation. He remembered an early second-round series against Miami when Brunson mishandled the deciding play, didn't even get a shot off, and was eliminated. Brunson was crushed, and that, Breen said, is who he really is. Everyone loves to win, but few are truly devastated to lose, and that fuels his off-the-charts work ethic.

Breen even took criticism once for comparing Brunson's will and mental toughness to Kobe Bryant. He stands by it. Brunson isn't as talented as Kobe, he conceded, but Kobe himself would be the first to point at Brunson and say, that's what I'm talking about.