{"id":1984269,"date":"2026-06-11T10:00:03","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T07:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1984269"},"modified":"2026-06-11T10:00:03","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T07:00:03","slug":"in-greatest-knicks-victory-of-all-james-dolan-was-the-biggest-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1984269","title":{"rendered":"In greatest Knicks victory of all, James Dolan was the biggest winner"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NEW YORK \u2014 This was the most glorious basketball night in Madison Square Garden history, made possible by an NBA Finals comeback like no other, by a crowd that just would not quit, and by a stunning midair play from OG Anunoby that no other New York Knicks player could have made.<\/p>\n

Not Willis Reed, Patrick Ewing, Dave DeBusschere, Bernard King or Carmelo Anthony.<\/p>\n

Nobody.<\/p>\n

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In the final seconds of Game 4, Anunoby swooped in while tracking Jalen Brunson\u2019s deep miss, Superman style, and went flying above the San Antonio Spurs players who forgot to put a body on him. The uber-athletic 6-foot-7 forward was thinking of executing a right-hand follow dunk, but the rebound didn\u2019t cooperate. It was over his head. Anunoby could get a piece of the ball only with his right fingertips, which deflected it toward the goal, through the net and into a forever place in NBA lore while he crashed onto his rump and slid out of bounds.<\/p>\n

The World Cup is here, so why not call OG\u2019s a \u201chand of God\u201d play? His coach, Mike Brown, argued that it was \u201cbigger than any other play in the history of Knicks basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerry Seinfeld was among the 19,812 witnesses who had that look on their face best captured by Jack Buck\u2019s immortal call of Kirk Gibson\u2019s homer in the 1988 World Series:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe what I just saw<\/i>.<\/p>\n

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The crowd went wilder than it did when one of the spectators, Larry Johnson, made his famous four-point play in the 1999 Eastern Conference finals. I was there that day. I was also at the Garden in 1994 when Ewing sent the Knicks to the finals, stood on the scorer\u2019s table and wrapped his extended arms around the city.<\/p>\n

This comeback from a 29-point third-quarter deficit, and OG\u2019s OMG finisher with 1.2 seconds left in a 107-106 victory<\/a>, defined the greatest event I\u2019ve ever attended in the Garden, hands down. The Knicks left the building with a 3-1 series lead. They are 48 earnest minutes of basketball away from their first championship since 1973.<\/p>\n

Hugs and kisses and tears all around. If you weren\u2019t a member of the Spurs\u2019 traveling party and you didn\u2019t have goosebumps, you should have checked immediately for a pulse.<\/p>\n

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Two nights after they kicked away a chance to sweep San Antonio like they had swept the Cleveland Cavaliers and Philadelphia 76ers, the Knicks were all big winners for the 14th time in their last 15 postseason games, everyone from Anunoby to Brunson to Karl-Anthony Towns to Jose Alvarado.<\/p>\n

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But only one Knick amid the celebration had the nerve to essentially guarantee the victory. And he was the one member of the home team who had the most to lose.<\/p>\n

\u2018We will win\u2019<\/h2>\n

James Dolan grew up on Long Island wanting to be Joe Namath. All these years later, as the billionaire baron of the Garden, Dolan was feeling comfortable enough about his Knicks\u2019 title chances to pull a Broadway Joe on WFAN Radio\u2019s \u201cThe Carton Show\u201d fewer than five hours before tipoff. A sample of what he said:<\/p>\n

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\u2022 \u201cWe\u2019re going to win tonight, and we\u2019re going to win the finals.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cIf our guys come out and play the game that they know they can play and they know how to play, we will win this game, and we will win the series.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 \u201cIt\u2019s not who we play, it\u2019s not the referees. It\u2019s how we play. \u2026 If we come out ready to play this game, I guarantee you we will win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some comments included qualifiers, some did not. But none of them was necessary right before the crucial Game 4.<\/p>\n

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At least when Namath guaranteed a Super Bowl III victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts, he was responding to a heckler who had predicted the Jets\u2019 demise during an awards banquet at the Miami Touchdown Club.<\/p>\n

Radio hosts Craig Carton and Chris McMonigle were not heckling Dolan, just asking him questions about the finals and the controversy over the canceled watch party outside of the Garden. As Dolan repeatedly ripped into Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, and Jessica Tisch, the police commissioner, for allegedly pooping the party, I couldn\u2019t help but think about the most compelling and combustible sports owner I\u2019ve ever covered.<\/p>\n

Even George Steinbrenner wouldn\u2019t be kicking up these dust storms hours before Game 4 of the World Series.<\/p>\n

Knicks coach Mike Brown said he wasn\u2019t aware of Dolan\u2019s interview before tipoff. \u201cYou know, he owns the team,\u201d Brown said. \u201cHe can say whatever he wants to say. Maybe he feels something, I don\u2019t know. But I\u2019m 100 percent OK with him saying whatever he feels like he needs to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

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“I don’t think they have faith in their own police force\u2026the mayor’s office, and the commissioner too, do not have the experience to do this\u2026they’re not Knicks fans. He’s not a Knick fan\u201d \u2013 James Dolan pic.twitter.com\/Qe4di2bdoq<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) June 10, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But this started before the Garden and the mayor traded punches in statements and posts<\/a>. Dolan had invited his dear friend, President Donald Trump, to sit with him in his suite for Game 3 on Monday night, creating the need for a police state right smack in the middle of the finals. It certainly changed the dynamic outside and inside the arena, and whether it impacted the team and the crowd is in the eye and the ear of the beholder.<\/p>\n

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Inviting the most powerful and polarizing person on the planet \u2014 also a native New Yorker and legit Knicks fan \u2014 is one thing. Fighting the mayor and police commissioner from a radio studio and putting more pressure on your basketball team while potentially angering\/inspiring the Spurs is quite another.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the postseason, Brown said the common thread connecting the Golden State and San Antonio title teams he worked for as an assistant was the fact that \u201cnobody got ahead of themselves. And nobody in this group, from ownership on down, got ahead of themselves during this run.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until this week. Dolan had waited so long for this moment since taking over the Garden in 1999 that he couldn\u2019t help himself. Hey, before Monday night, a lot of us were talking about a sweep and parade plans too.<\/p>\n

Then again, a lot of us don\u2019t own the Knicks.<\/p>\n

To be fair, Dolan was a good, entertaining listen on the drive into the Garden.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have an easier chance of getting into Area 51 today than you do into Madison Square Garden,\u201d he told his customers. The owner claimed that Mamdani and Tisch were in over their heads trying to manage the watch-party issue. \u201cIt\u2019s like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s coming out the sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dolan\u2019s funniest line? \u201cWe had Cardi B at halftime for our third game, and a reunification of Wu-Tang (Clan) for the fourth game. And San Antonio had a dog on a beach ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

But nobody was laughing when the Spurs were humiliating the Knicks for most of the night, almost silencing the crowd. More than a few credentialed scribes, including this one, were warming up their keyboards to tell the story of Dolan costing his team by losing focus as he closed in on the grand prize.<\/p>\n

And then the Knicks did what the man said they were going to do \u2014 they won the game, this time in astonishing fashion. They needed some breaks in the end, like De\u2019Aaron Fox trying to shoot the ball rather than dribbling out the clock.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got to have a little luck in sports,\u201d Brown said.<\/p>\n

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As it turns out, the Knicks\u2019 luck has been the residue of Dolan\u2019s design. Jimmy D is the one who gambled with the Leon Rose hire. He\u2019s the one who spearheaded (with Rose) the drive to replace Tom Thibodeau, an even riskier roll of the dice. He\u2019s the one who notarized Brown\u2019s hiring.<\/p>\n

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Dolan has made a ton of mistakes in his day with the Knicks, on and off the court, but this is his time at last. His basketball team means even more to him than his hockey team, the Rangers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would make his life complete,\u201d Wayne Gretzky once told me, \u201cif he could win a Knicks championship.\u201d<\/p>\n

James Dolan\u2019s life is about to become complete then. His Knicks just authored the greatest Garden story ever told, and all but booked him for a float in a ticker-tape parade.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 This was the most glorious basketball night in Madison Square Garden history, made possible by an NBA Finals comeback like no other, by a crowd that just would not quit, and by a stunning midair play from OG Anunoby that no other New York Knicks player could have made. Not Willis Reed, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1984269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1984269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1984269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1984269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1984269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}