The CHRIS NBA Finals Preview
2026 Edition
The NBA Finals start tonight. The final matchup of the season will feature the San Antonio Spurs, who outlasted the defending champs in seven games, and the New York Knicks, who’ve been waiting for the chance to extend their 11-game Playoff win streak for over a week now. It’s a rematch of the 1999 Finals, a rematch of the 2026 NBA Cup, and a chance for future Hall of Famers to etch their names in history as NBA Champions for the first time.
There are a million1 good previews out there (these from The Athletic, Michael Pina, Neil Paine, Silver Bulletin, and Basketball Poetry are some of my favorites), so I’ll be previewing the matchup between these two teams from my unique perspective, through the lens of all the pieces I’ve written about the NBA this season. I’ve linked to each of the original stories in the headers if you missed one along the way and want to read more!
Mapping the Finals
The bench players (namely Dylan Harper, Keldon Johnson, and Luke Kornet for the Spurs and Mitchell Robinson, Landry Shamet, and Deuce McBride for the Knicks) will have a role to play, but these 10 are the main characters. Meet your starters:
Size Matched: For all the talk about Jalen Brunson’s height, he’s only one inch shorter than his counterpart, the Spurs’ Point Guard, 6’3” De’Aaron Fox. In fact, across the board the Spurs and Knicks match up almost perfectly in size … except for Wemby, of course, who is listed at 7’4” but could be 7’7” by this point. Still, OG Anunoby, a 6’7”, long (7’2” wingspan!) combo Forward has the (realistic) physical profile you would want to guard the Spurs’ alien.
Youth vs Experience: The San Antonio Spurs are the second youngest team to ever play in the NBA Finals.2 De’Aaron Fox was the only starter with Playoff experience before this run, and that was a single First Round series with the Kings. The Knicks have the experience edge: all of New York’s starters have been in the NBA about a decade (Wemby was 11 when Kat got drafted3) and each of them has played 50 or more Playoff games. That said, they only really came together two seasons ago, with the 2024 blockbuster trades for Mikal Bridges and Karl-Anthony Towns.
Home Grown vs Bought: The Spurs drafted three of their starters (as well as Dylan Harper), and signed a fourth (Julian Champagnie) after he went undrafted. De’Aaron Fox is the only trade piece in the Spurs’ starting rotation, and when he sits for Harper the Spurs can put out a fully home-grown unit. The Knicks are the opposite. They signed Jalen Brunson away from the Mavericks then traded three players and a pick to get his college roommate and podcast co-host, Josh Hart. They traded two players and a pick for OG Anunoby. Six picks for Mikal Bridges. They traded their centerpiece Julius Randle for Karl-Anthony Towns. This team was wholly assembled through wheeling-and-dealing, yet they feel like the perfect representatives for New York City.
The Value of Losing
It’s been a long, winding road for both teams to get back to the NBA Finals.
After two decades of dominance, starting with the 1999 title over the Knicks and extending to four more titles, the Spurs had been experiencing an unprecedented drought. They missed the Playoffs seven years in a row, and as recently as two years ago were among the bottom-feeders of the NBA. Of course, that helped them land three straight top-four picks, which set them on the launching pad back to the top of the league.4
The Knicks went the other way after the 1999 Finals, experiencing two decades of despair. From 2015 to 2020 they finished 29th out of 30 teams, then 24th, 24th, 22nd, 30th, and 25th and that only brings us to the start of the chart above, when they were the worst team in the NBA. It’s been a slow and steady climb from there, punctuated by a surge this postseason.
Trades
There had been lots of roster turnover the last few years in both San Antonio and New York, but by the time this season started, both teams were basically locked into their identities.
The Spurs were one of just three teams that didn’t make a single trade at the deadline, while the Knicks made just one move at the edge, grabbing New York City’s own Jose Alvarado.
What if ... Every Team was their Best Self?
The Spurs best lineup is their starting lineup: that five-some outscored opponents by nearly 20 points a game. Importantly, they got a lot of time on the court together: 284 minutes, ninth most of any team’s best lineup.
The Knicks starters were actually only slightly positive on the season (+0.3 net rating according to Databallr). Instead, their best lineup, statistically, swapped in Deuce McBride for OG Anunoby, and that group outscored opponents at an even faster rate than the Spurs’ starters, though in significantly fewer minutes.
Hot Shots
New York has the hot hand. Four different Knicks are making at least 40% of their threes this postseason, including Karl-Anthony Towns (the self-proclaimed “greatest big man shooter of all time”) at nearly 50% and Landry Shamet5 at 60%! In the Conference Finals against the Cavaliers, Shamet missed just a single three-pointer, sinking 11 of his 12 attempts.
That said, Julian Champagnie has all of the Knicks beat in volume. He’s made 46 threes this postseason, more than either KAT or Shamet have even attempted, and is making them at a very respectable 39% clip.
As I recently outlined on Instagram, this series may well be decided by the corner three, and it will be up to these guys to make those shots when they get them.
Advanced Darlings
Victor Wembanyama is the best player in the series. He may be the best player in the world. But the Knicks have the next best four guys, at least by one advanced stat called DARKO.6
Most would agree that Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns are the second and third best players in this series, stars in their own right. The advanced stats think OG Anunoby and Mitchell Robinson are just as good.
Plotting every player in the NBA Finals, we can see which players are the “empty calories ball hogs” and which are the “advanced darlings”. Game Score is on the x-axis with DARKO on the y, so the farther right a player is the more they fill the box score and the farther up the better all-around player they are. The dotted, 45-degree line is where the counting stats and advanced stats line up.
OG and Robinson are clear outliers, thanks to their defensive versatility and offensive rebounding, respectively. Luke Kornet, Julian Champagnie, and Harrison Barnes stand out for the Spurs, as do Dylan Harper and Stephon Castle, though in the other direction.
Stephon Castle is the 307th best player in the NBA according to DARKO. He isn’t a super efficient shooter, turns the ball over too frequently, and doesn’t rebound great for his size. That said, he’s the second most important player on a Finals team and he just needs four more good games. I doubt he cares about his advanced rating right now; I don’t think I do either.
Game Management
Mitch Johnson and Mike Brown are two of the best coaches the NBA has to offer. Johnson, in just his second year at the helm, was a finalist for Coach of the Year. Mike Brown has spent 20 years on NBA sidelines, and has coached the who’s who of the 21st century NBA: Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant among them. He knows the Spurs’ organization well, having started his career in San Antonio as an assistant coach on Gregg Popovich’s staff and coached the Spurs’ starting Point Guard De’Aaron Fox when they were both in Sacramento.
I trust both of these guys will do a tremendous job managing the next four-to-seven games, but we can still learn a bit about their philosophies from how they managed the 82-game Regular Season.
Both Johnson and Brown like holding on to their challenges. In fact, both teams were in the bottom quartile of the league in terms of exiting a game with at least one challenge still in hand.
When they use their challenges though, the paths diverge. Mike Brown was right about 75% of the time he spun his index finger this season, third highest success rate in the NBA, while Mitch Johnson and the Spurs won just 54% of their challenges, sixth worst.
The Knicks also use timeouts sparingly, while the Spurs call them at about an average rate.
The Name on the Front of the Jersey
Both the Spurs and Knicks have international jersey patches.
The Spurs are sponsored by a French crypto company, because of course they are with Wemby on the court.
The Knicks are sponsored by Experience Abu Dhabi, because of course they are with James Dolan in the front office.
Zach Lowe Teams
When I did this analysis in April, painstakingly documenting every one of the 545 topics Zach Lowe and his podcast guests talked about this season, the Knicks were the single most discussed team in the NBA.
They play in the biggest market in the country, with the most ears available to monetize with Spotify ads, but they’ve also had an objectively interesting season:
They were the preseason favorites to win the East and make the Finals.
The started strong, won the NBA cup, and stirred up unnecessary controversy for refusing to hang the banner.
While that controversy was building, they lost nine games in a three-week stretch.
Then they won nine games in a three-week stretch.
Pre-trade deadline, the Knicks were front-runners in the Giannis sweepstakes that dominated the headlines for months.
Karl-Anthony Towns was beloved, then hated, then beloved again (one of Zach Lowe’s podcast chapters is called “Why is the KAT experience so maddening?”) . Same with Josh Hart and Mikal Bridges.
San Antonio was also an oft-discussed team, with mostly positive coverage around Wemby’s potential. Here’s an excerpt of what was talked about this season, with my updates in bold.
“How Close is Victor Wembanyama to Being the NBA’s Best?“ Top 2 and it ain’t 2
“Imagine a Giannis and Wemby Pairing“ As a Nuggets fan, I don’t think I want to
“Assessing Wemby’s Readiness and San Antonio’s Promising Young Team“ Ready
“Can the Spurs Win it All This Season?“ Yes
“Dylan Harper’s Driving and Finishing are Phenomenal“ Still true
“The Spurs are Ahead of Schedule and Are Legit Title Contenders“ True
“Should the Thunder Have Chet Holmgren Guard Victor Wembanyama?“ No
“The Spurs are Not Afraid of Chet“ Chet is afraid of the Spurs
“The Spurs’ Role Players are Outplaying the Thunder’s Role Players“ They did
“What is the Ceiling for the Spurs?“ Champions
“How is Wemby Developing Offensively?“ Great
“Should the Spurs Go All In This Season?“ Yes
“Why Victor Wembanyama is the Defensive Player of the Year“ Unanimously
An Ode to Jalen
Last Playoffs, if you had picked the winner of every series based solely on which team had more Jalens, you’d have done surprisingly well.7 The Spurs just got by OKC’s Jaylin Williams, but Jalen Williams (the better one) was out for most of the series. They still haven’t proven they can beat an elite Jalen, and I don’t think they will.
Jalen Brunson and the Knicks in 7.
Last year, just three publications (The Athletic, The Ringer, and NBA.com) published 337,166 words about the NBA Finals. I’d expect even more this season.
Their minutes-weighted average age of 24.6 slightly beats last year’s Oklahoma City Thunder and only trails the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers.
Here are the two of them in 2015
This was so effective that the NBA has now banned teams from picking in the top five three years in a row.
Who looks like he should be a villain in Ratatouille.
Nine correct, three ties, three wrong.