The Ringer NBA Show
Jalen Brunson’s Moment, Wemby’s Next Move, and Finals Ripple Effects | Group Chat
15 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What does Jalen Brunson's championship win mean for Knicks fans?
Hello and welcome to Group Chat. I am Justin Verrier. Joining me, Rob Mahoney, J. Kyle Mann. Gentlemen, the Knicks, they're champions. Who'da thunk it?
Genuinely, who would have thunk it? I have to say, I, in the back of my mind, had considered that I might just go until I die without ever seeing the Knicks win an NBA championship, given the way that, I don't know, the first 30-something years started since I've been alive. And yet here we are. I can only imagine how it feels to be an actual Knicks fan who has gone along for that ride.
Yeah, man. I mean, that's, if you had told me before the season, Hey Kyle, like if I could, if you know, if I'd gone in a time machine, like, Hey, the Knicks are going to win the title. I wouldn't have been like, you're using the time machine for, of all the things I would use it for many things, but I wouldn't have just fallen down from shock, but it definitely would have been a like, Oh really?
Chapter 2: How did Jalen Brunson perform in the Finals?
Wow. You know, it would have been a much bigger surprise than if you told me, okay, see, or I just, or the Nuggets, or whatever it is, it's a nice surprise. I mean, I picked them to get to the finals, but I still am feeling pretty like... It's pretty impressive, and it's a nice surprise that they won it, even though I'm not like, you know, utterly shocked. Do you all feel the same way about that?
I don't know.
Well, I just like how you wove in there that you picked them to make the finals. Like, you didn't make a big deal out of it, but you just made a little bit of it.
Oh, I've said it repeatedly throughout the playoffs. I've said it repeatedly. I had a moment at the beginning, Pina and I had a funny back and forth at the beginning of the playoffs where I was like...
really really regretting that decision where I was just like what was I thinking yeah I we had a funny ongoing thing about Brunson who we can get to where I was just like is this a is this doable in the playoffs and my goodness is it ever doable turns out well that was the last time that they were down because they would not lose two games in a series and
ever again throughout the playoffs.
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Chapter 3: What are the expectations for Wemby and the Spurs after the Finals?
What a time for New York. What a time for amateur arsonists out there. But Rob is right. It does feel like everything that we were told for so long in sports, like this team's sad sack franchise, never going to happen for them. It feels like those things, time has just kind of had a way of meting those out. Like the Red Sox growing up were sad sacks when I lived out there.
The Cubs, for instance, the Knicks are on that level. Unfortunately, there are some teams that probably will literally never happen for like the Sacramento Kings. But, you know, 50 years down the road, perhaps maybe spaceships will be there. Maybe they can ride on motor scooters or whatever while they're playing. And that'll be the difference.
That's the thing. Like when we're still doing this pod 30 years from now, still working out technical difficulties. I think that's when the Kings are going to finally do it. And we're going to be there live to podcast on Netflix about it.
floating heads in like back to tanks on Futurama or whatever it is, whatever the, I forget the mode of, uh, of, uh, technology they use there. But the big thing here is, I mean, you know, you, we joke about the aftermath. People always, people always get up in arms about the stuff that happens after a title happens. I got news for you. It happens everywhere. It happens in Lexington.
It's happens in stores. It happens in every city, but the intensity of this one is Justin, you can speak to stores more specifically, I'm sure. But, um, I got on my immediate like reaction was I need to go get on the live traffic cameras for New York. I just got on there. It was just scrolling through them.
I know a lot of people had this experience of, I was just trying to see what was going on and, uh, the partying.
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Chapter 4: What ripple effects did the Finals have on the NBA landscape?
Yeah. It was more, I was joking about it on Twitter. Cause I, you know, we can talk about the crime and things and get into some of that more specifically, but they care more than anybody else. And that's the thing about the, you know, the juxtaposition of their misery. Um, it, it's inextricable from, from how much they care.
You know, a lot of cities care, but it's so woven into the fabric of New York and the generations of Knicks fans. Just when you start getting that into the kind of tapestry of who you are as a fan base, you grow up. I don't know. Did you all have a fan experience like this? Like, did your parents tell you like these larger than life tales about, cause that's a thing in Kentucky.
And that's a big thing about when you grow up is I hear you hear about these guys who become larger than life. That's a huge part of the Knicks experience of just like, man, let me tell you about Bernard King. Let me tell you about, you know, Mark Jackson and John Starks.
Like, yeah. For what other fan base would John Starks become an immortal piece of lore and just like a banner carrier for everything the Knicks are and have been to this point? I just I am caught in the wake of all this.
Chapter 5: How did the Knicks build a championship team?
Around this time every year, we reflect on the season, we reflect on the championships, we talk about all the things that they pulled off, the incredible team-building maneuvers that it took to get to this point. But we don't have to pretend that all of these things are the same, that every championship feels the same way.
And I would say particularly striking coming off of the Thunder's win last year, where an incredible run that the Thunder had to win the title, a seven-game NBA Finals, and yet this is just a different thing. And that's okay, and it's okay to acknowledge that. And I think...
part of the reason this has been such a joy just in terms of watching the finals but also kind of basking in the aftermath of it is just this like incredible emotional connection that not just knicks fans have with this particular team but basketball fans as a whole kind of got wrapped up in it and the bandwagoning of really the entire sport has just been on a roll for weeks on end in a way that has just been incredible to watch yeah
All right, we need to get into all of this. We got to talk about the Spurs. We got to talk about some ripple effects from the finals, but we also got to dig into Jalen Brunson, the New York Knicks, and everything that happened in game five right after this.
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So why don't we start here? Because I think Rob was right before we went to the break here that this one feels a little different, not only because of the emotional aspect because of New York and all the suffering and everything kind of coming around there, but this game five and the way that they won just felt so like, Oh, like you felt it in your gullet, this one.
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Chapter 6: What challenges do the Spurs face moving forward?
And I think this stat says it better than anything. And this was from ESPN. I think they mentioned this on the broadcast. The Spurs actually led the finals 69% of the time. Which, you know, it's just like you wince when you hear that thing.
Yeah. Because the way that they lost it.
So, Wimby's quote wasn't wrong.
Oh, he was absolutely right.
He was right. But then, obviously, the way they lost in game four, and then it happened similarly in game five. There was just a real, like, reach into your heart, rip it out, and then just, like, eat it in front of you quality to this Knicks win. Like, a decisiveness that hadn't been there previously. Where it's just like, oh, yeah, there are no doubts.
They really just kind of waxed them in the most, like,
embarrassing fashion unfortunately yeah i think when the knicks started something like four of 22 from the field and the spurs defense was amazing to start game five like they deserve all due credit for holding the knicks to that kind of shooting percentage but the knicks were shooting like four of 22 and the spurs were only up like seven or eight points i was like okay this thing is this this is going to be a wrap uh the push is coming the comeback is inevitable and
I just at this point have the utmost faith in the Knicks and Jalen Brunson to close out any of these games that are even remotely close.
And the incredible accomplishment of their run is that several of these games were close at all, that they had the comeback gear to just like dismiss a start like that, to come back to swat away an opponent that's winning 69% of the time for an entire series and pull out just improbable win after improbable win after improbable win.
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Chapter 7: How does Jalen Brunson compare to other NBA stars?
It's basically Jason.
More kind of Michael Myers, almost.
Yeah. Well, yeah, you're right. I mean, they're derivative, but you get these situations where the Spurs come out and they think, all right, we're going to hold our taser or whatever it is. What is it? Stun gun? Stun gun to the gasoline and catch him on fire. And it's like, he's on fire. I think we're in good shape here.
when really you kind of have to be Patricia with a shotgun to the Knicks head all the way to the, all the way to the, the crematorium and make sure that they are dead because they just time and time again. And I think this is a function of, um, they, they came back, like you were saying, these felt scripted, um, almost in a way that was flipped from the way the Boston series went.
Was it, was it in 2024, the one where the Knicks kept coming back and late game, but, um, I think this is a function of at the NBA level where you don't really see this in college that the amount of good players that can accrue on a good playoff team, um, can really put, put together these sequences in a game where if you don't have a great, you don't have great depth.
Um, the Knicks just repeatedly would come back during these stretches where this first had problematic stretches within their rotation that they just kept losing over and over again, which will factor into some of their off season common conversation that we can get into. But, um, They just seem kind of unkillable.
It just seemed like Brunson repeatedly was like a boxer, just prepping them for the late round. I'm going to hit you with the heavy stuff. And he, and he, he paid, paid off.
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Chapter 8: What does the future hold for the NBA after this Finals?
He delivered.
Well, that's the flip side of the first half defense where the pressure and how high they were picking them up and how much physicality they were exerting gave way to like what happened in the second half, which is, it didn't seem like they had the same sort of pep. Wemby in particular, we're going to talk about that a lot. I'm sure later in the episode, uh,
But also just to have Brunson to be able to turn to, to go to work there. I could just watch him pivoting and making these small little head fakes and look offs in order to get downhill in the way that he was pretty much all day. I'm curious why the Spurs defensively still, despite the fact that he seemed like he was getting a free run into the basket, kept picking him up.
Like there was a really crucial possession where Castle was basically picking up a half court. Brunson makes one move and he's basically at the rim at that point. I think that's something like the Spurs need to ask themselves is just like their process coaching wise in the midst of a game.
I don't know if you guys saw the clip from game four as well, where the last final possession, where they didn't know who they were guarding and actually got mashed up on the wrong guys, which led to the switch for Wemby, which led to him being so far out there. There's a lot of that going.
on there but obviously I think this is Jalen Brunson's moment 45 points and out of the 94 that the Knicks had in this game I also just felt like his walk-off interview with Lisa Salters was just like so affecting like that's literally everything you want from sports from this moment
Unfortunately, it was a pretty stark comparison to what happened with Jason Tatum probably two years ago, a moment that felt a little too manufactured, a little too like he had rehearsed what he was going to say once he got to that point. Brunson was basically like couldn't talk because he was just so emotional in that point.
And I was just thinking like throughout the year, we've talked so much about face of the league and like how the league is selling itself and like what works, what doesn't, the tanking and all this stuff. I feel like that was probably – one of the dominant storylines throughout this NBA season, at least the regular season.
But, like, once we got to this point, like, I felt like this is exactly why we all plug into sports. Like, to watch someone like Brunson, who's a bit of an underdog, overcome adversity time and time again in order to win in the biggest moments. Like, I don't know. This is why Jerry Bruckheimer is a zillionaire, you know? It was a real, like... How can you not be romantic about basketball moments?
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