“Pure Elation!” – Knicks Fan Rich STILL Can’t Believe NY Ended Its 53-Year NBA Title Drought

"Pure elation." That's how Rich, a lifelong Knicks fan, is reacting to New York ending its 53-year NBA title drought, and even that word doesn't quite capture it, because the dominant feeling is still disbelief that it finally happened.

"I don't know what to feel other than pure elation and still to this moment, disbelief that it's finally happened," Rich said. "Just look at that. This very moment, this morning, was just the second day in my natural born life that I could remember waking up and saying to myself, 'The New York Knicks are NBA champions.' I was 3 years old the last time it happened."

This is a fandom inheritance for Rich. Madison Square Garden was one of the first places he went as a kid, taking the ferry or driving in from Staten Island for Christmas Day games with his parents and the older brother who made him a Knicks fan in the first place. He rattled off the names that filled those years: Rory Sparrow, Michael Ray Richardson, Bill Cartwright, Marvin Webster the human eraser, Bernard King, Patrick Ewing, Hubie Brown. Then Latrell Sprewell and Larry Johnson, Carmelo Anthony, the brief euphoria of Jeremy Lin and Linsanity.

Rich admitted he had checked out. He sat at this desk "livid" over the Charles Oakley arrest, done with James Dolan's Knicks. "I was out on the Knicks and one person pulled me back in," he said. "Jalen Brunson when he showed up."

The photograph that floored Rich is Brunson holding the Larry O'Brien trophy in one hand and the Bill Russell Finals MVP trophy in the other. "An absolute pipe dream," Rich said. "None of us in Knicks fandom knew what burned inside this young man."

Game 5 in San Antonio looked like another long Knicks night, down double digits for the fifth straight Finals game, 16 points their largest deficit. Brunson dragged them back, breaking Victor Wembanyama down off the dribble and finishing left-handed off the glass during a personal 10-0 run. He scored 13 straight, 45 total, the most in a Finals game by a Knicks player.

What lands hardest for Rich is who else is in the picture. Patrick Ewing, ringless his whole career, now smiling with the trophy next to Brunson, the kid he has known since age two. "This is what Knicks fans were dreaming of," Rich said. "I can't believe it."