We have reached the 2026 NBA Finals, featuring the Eastern Conference champion New York Knicks and West champion San Antonio Spurs, which means it is time for our annual rundown of legacies on the line in this edition of the championship series.
And there is plenty hanging in the balance. The Knicks, playing in the league’s largest media market, have not won since 1973, while the five-time champion Spurs, featuring the NBA’s largest player, 7-foot-4 Victor Wembanyama, are trying to forge a new dynasty.
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So, let’s get to it: The legacies on the line in the 2026 NBA Finals.
(Bruno Rouby/Yahoo Sports illustration)
Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs
We don’t have to decide right now whether Victor Wembanyama will be the GOAT. We have plenty of time to debate that. But if he were to win a title this year — at the age of 22, in just his third season — he will certainly be on a GOAT trajectory.
Consider this: Wembanyama is the NBA’s unanimous Defensive Player of the Year — the league’s best player on that end by far, having just vanquished the runner-up, Oklahoma City Thunder big man Chet Holmgren, in the Western Conference finals.
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Wemby finished third in MVP voting and just defeated the back-to-back regular-season MVP (and reigning Finals MVP), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, in that same series.
Only a handful of players have flirted with MVPs and titles — and, hence, the Best Player Alive moniker — in their first three seasons: Bill Russell (two-time champion and one-time MVP in his first three seasons), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (two-time MVP and one-time champ in his first three seasons), Magic Johnson (two-time champion and two-time Finals MVP in his first three seasons), Larry Bird (one-time champ and two-time MVP runner-up in his first three seasons) and Tim Duncan (third in MVP, a champion and the Finals MVP in 1999, his second season). All of them, maybe with the exception of Duncan, were on a GOAT trajectory, and even he won five rings.
Bird’s three titles are the least among them, and that will be the floor for Wemby, then, if he gets one so early into his career. The ceiling? GOAT. Yes, it is on the table.
There are those, including a number of smart basketball people (i.e., Becky Hammon), who believed the Knicks would not win a championship, so long as Jalen Brunson was their lead operator, because they thought — and history told us this — that it was almost impossible to win a title with a diminutive point guard as a roster’s superstar.
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Only Stephen Curry, the greatest shooter to ever live, and Isiah Thomas, also one of the handful of best point guards in the sport’s history, have met those parameters. Both creators had incredible ensembles around them, as does Brunson in New York.
Never before did we consider Brunson among the all-time greatest point guards. Curry and Thomas, of course, won multiple titles as the best player on their teams, but beyond them, at least among traditional point guards (excluding bigger guys like Magic Johnson, Oscar Robertson or even Gilgeous-Alexander), who wouldn’t trade careers with Brunson, should he win Finals MVP, ending a 53-year title drought?
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Would Steve Nash have given up his two MVPs to win a title with the Phoenix Suns? (And that’s not even New York — the biggest media market in this hemisphere.) You’d have to ask him. Surely, Chris Paul would swap his 11 All-NBA selections and four top-five MVP finishes for Brunson’s three All-NBA nods, a single top-five MVP finish, a ring (for the Knicks, no less) and the chance to be 29 again, with that title behind him.
John Stockton, for all his accomplishments as a playmaker, wasn’t the best player on either of his Utah Jazz teams that made the Finals. Jason Kidd twice made the Finals as the New Jersey Nets’ best player, but never got over the hump — until he was a 36-year-old role player for the 2011 Dallas Mavericks. Wherever Brunson is to land, this is the territory in which he could reside, along with his predecessor, Walt Frazier, the point guard of the 1973 champion Knicks, among the best point guards to ever do it.
Were Brunson to lose, it’s not like he would tumble down the point guard rankings. He has still done something we rarely see. Think of Gary Payton as one of the few great point guards to be the best player on a team that could even reach the Finals.
But there are levels to this, even between truly great point guards and all-timers, and titles often differentiate in these debates. Brunson has a case to make in front of him.
Often times, players in Fox’s position — drafted by the Sacramento Kings — languish on terrible teams for some time, spending their whole careers in search of a winning atmosphere, or pivoting to some other, probably more individual, professional goal.
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Think of someone like Baron Davis, who was drafted to the Charlotte Hornets, found his way to a pre-dynasty Golden State team, and it never got better for him than the We Believe Warriors (who weren’t all that different from Fox’s Light the Beam Kings).
Davis made plenty of money (almost $150 million), but there was something missing from his career, something that separated him from Hall of Fame point guards: wins.
But you are more likely as a multi-time All-Star point guard to live the life of a Stephon Marbury, starring for moribund outfits, playing yourself out of the league, than to be, say, Dennis Johnson, landing in the perfect spot (not just once, with the late-1970s Seattle SuperSonics, but twice, again with the 1980s Boston Celtics).
Credit Fox’s agent, Klutch Sports founder Rich Paul, for steering his client to the Spurs, who had both the money to give Fox a maximum contract and Wembanyama, someone who is about to change the league, capable of carrying a contender at 22.
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Whether Fox is in San Antonio for the long term will depend more on how much they’re willing to pay him in addition guards Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper, but only 18 point guards in NBA history have won a title and made an All-Star team in the same season. Of the 14 who are eligible for the Hall of Fame, 12 of them made it.
So, in a span of less than 18 months, Fox went from one of the worst situations in the entire league, where legacies go to die, to one of its best, where a legacy is possible. Let this be instructive to all star players stuck in bad situations: fit is everything in the NBA, and sometimes the best one is within arm’s reach if you just see the vision.
James Dolan, New York Knicks
Let’s just say James Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, and his team’s fans haven’t had the best relationship over the years. New Yorkers have often called for him to sell the team — loudly, inside and outside Madison Square Garden — and he has sometimes treated critics as his enemy in return, memorably calling a fan “an a**hole,” another “a hateful mess,” and running beloved Knicks enforcer Charles Oakley from the building.
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Dolan presided over almost a quarter-century of futility in New York. His Knicks missed the playoffs every season from 2005-2010, an era that coincided with a sexual harassment lawsuit against the franchise, and again from 2014-2020. Only Carmelo Anthony could resuscitate the Knicks from death’s door — until Brunson arrived.
That is about when Dolan handed the keys over to executive Leon Rose, removing himself from the day-to-day basketball business, and he has largely stayed out of the headlines, other than when he delivers a dissenting voice against most NBA reforms.
Now, if the Knicks were to win, you would at least expect him to be welcomed a little more friendlier at whatever cocktail parties a billionaire in New York gets invited to, even if most fans in the city will keep holding a grudge against him. But who knows? Maybe there will be a few less boos at Dolan’s next JD and the Straight Shot concert.
Dylan Harper, San Antonio Spurs
Harper, a 20-year-old rookie, is averaging 13.1 points (on 53/36/85 shooting splits), 5.3 rebounds and 2.6 assists in 460 playoff minutes as an integral member of the Spurs.
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Only six rookies in NBA history have played 400 or more playoff minutes on a title run: Manu Ginobili (2003), Sam Cassell (1994), Magic Johnson (1980), Johnny Davis (1977), Jamaal Wilkes (1975) and Bill Russell (1957). All but Davis went on to make an All-Star team. Four enjoyed Hall of Fame careers. (How unfair is it that these Spurs feature facsimiles to Duncan and Ginobili on another potential budding dynasty!)
Harper’s father, Ron, won five titles with the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers. If Dylan were to win, they would become the sixth father-son duo to each win a championship, joining Matt Guokas Sr. and Matt Guokas Jr., Rick and Brent Barry, Bill and Luke Walton, Mychal and Klay Thompson, and Gary Payton and Gary Payton II.
The Harpers’ six titles as a tandem would tie the Thompsons for the most among father-son duos. Given that Dylan is only 20 years old, and on Wemby’s team, might they have a shot to become the most successful father-son duo in NBA history?
Be honest: For much of Karl-Anthony Towns’ career — for the entirety of his tenure on the Minnesota Timberwolves, and even for much of his time with the Knicks — you thought he was kind of unserious in a basketball sense. The 7-footer fouled too often. He shot too much as a big. He didn’t defend well enough. He projected false bravado.
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Whatever it was, you had thoughts on Towns, and they most likely weren’t the kinds that ended in a title. And he’s been dismantling our opinion of him one win at a time.
At the end of this run, in a couple of weeks, Towns could be a six-time All-Star with a ring. And how many six-time All-Stars with titles are not in the Hall of Fame? None.
Stephon Castle, San Antonio Spurs
If Wembanyama is doing things only Tim Duncan and few others have done, and Harper is doing things only Ginobili and few others have done, does that make Castle the Tony Parker of this trio? Parker won a title as a starter in San Antonio’s backcourt in his second season at the age of 20, and Castle could do the same at 21.
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Parker spun his early success as a complement to Duncan and Ginobili into six All-Star appearances, four rings and a Hall of Fame career. This is the path forward for Castle, who we can absolutely expect to be a mainstay in the All-Star conversation every season for a while, especially if he wins a title. In fact, after Jamal Murray made the All-Star team for the first time in his career, Castle might immediately pick up the mantle as The Best Player Not to Make an All-Star Team — until he makes his first.
By the way, 21-year-olds who won a title averaging at least a 15-5-5 (Castle is averaging a 19-5-7 so far): Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant. That’s it. That’s the list.
Literally everyone on the Knicks
That’s right: Everyone on the Knicks, and that includes you, Tyler Kolek, would be able to dine in New York forever on a title. John Starks and Latrell Sprewell already get courtside seats to whatever Knicks game they want, and they only made the Finals. Imagine what perks come with winning a championship in the city that never sleeps.
Consider Bill Bradley, a wing for those 1973 Knicks, who spun his popularity into three terms as a U.S. Senator in New Jersey. I’m pretty sure my dad, a childhood fan of the Knicks, voted Bradley as a write-in candidate for president once or twice in the ‘90s.
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Forget being the next Clyde Frazier, color commentating for the Knicks in a job for life, might Josh Hart be New York’s next governor? Why stop there, President Hart?
A reservation for two at Eric Ripert’s three-Michelin-starred Le Bernardin? Anything for Landry Shamet. Carriage rides across Central Park? Unlimited for Ariel Hukporti. Mitchell Robinson cuts the line any time for ice skating in Rockefeller Center. You get the point. OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges won’t just be champions. They’ll be gods.
Mitch Johnson, San Antonio Spurs
San Antonio legend Gregg Popovich belongs on the Mount Rushmore of coaches, along with Red Auerbach, Pat Riley and Phil Jackson. Following any of them is no easy encore, but the 39-year-old Johnson has done about as well as anyone could possibly do in his position, taking the Spurs back to the Finals in his second season.
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(Well, save for Bill Russell, who took over as player-coach from Auerbach in the late 1960s and delivered two more championships. You are far more likely to be, say, Tim Floyd, who inherited the Chicago Bulls from Jackson, driving them into the ground.)
It is helpful, of course, to have Wembanyama on your side. He and the 39-year-old head coach could be in each other’s lives for some time, just as Pop shepherded Duncan’ career. (The parallels between these Spurs and the dynastic edition are kind of wild; just as crazy as the similarities between these Knicks and the 1973 version.)
For the record, Johnson could become the fifth coach since the 1976 NBA-ABA merger to win a title before his 40th birthday, joining Joe Mazzulla (35), Riley (37), Tyronn Lue (39) and Billy Cunningham (39). Only Mazzulla and Johnson did not play in the NBA. (Perhaps there is a trend developing here, identifying great coaches early.)
Likewise, with a title, Johnson would join Lue, Steve Kerr and Nick Nurse as recent head coaches to win a title in their first season as the lead man on any NBA bench.
Mike Brown, New York Knicks
Brown has been kind of ubiquitous in the NBA for a quarter-century, only not always as a head coach. He was an assistant to Popovich on the 2003 champion Spurs. He was an assistant to Rick Carlisle on the Indiana Pacers during the Malice at the Palace (which may have cost him another ring). And he was an assistant to Kerr on the Golden State Warriors teams that won championships in 2017, 2018 and 2022.
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His stints as a head coach have been rockier, though he led LeBron James’ Cavaliers to the 2007 NBA Finals and won Coach of the Year twice — in Cleveland in 2009 and in Sacramento in 2023. Brown was also twice fired from the Cavs, once fired from Kobe Bryant’s Lakers in 2013 and even fired from Fox’s Kings less than two years ago.
He wasn’t New York’s first choice, either. Before settling on Brown to lead the team, the Knicks had a handful of interview requests to replace Tom Thibodeau rejected.
Now, in one year on this job, Brown has already helped forge another bit of basketball history, leading the Knicks to the Finals for the first time since 1999. A title of his own would not only solidify him as one of the great coaches of the last 25 years, but it would make Brown — like his players — a king in New York for all time.
Brian Wright, San Antonio Spurs
This past summer, when we last released our rankings of each NBA team’s lead executive, using The Danny Ainge System, we had a surprise No. 1: Brian Wright.
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It made plenty of sense. Sure, San Antonio’s general manager lucked into Wemby, but look at what he had built around the Frenchman — a team loaded with draft picks, a ton of young talent and some veteran depth, and we didn’t even know how good Harper was going to be yet. It turns out Wright hit another draft pick on the money.
Like Johnson following Pop on the bench, it cannot be easy inheriting the lead shot-caller role in San Antonio’s front office, but somehow Wright spun forward another potential dynasty in this small media market. Something’s in that river in San Antonio.
Leon Rose, New York Knicks
Rose, a former player agent, is somewhat of a mysterious figure in New York. He has not met with the media for a solo press conference since taking the job in April 2020.
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Not that Rose has had much to answer for. He signed Brunson. He traded for Towns, Anunoby, Bridges, Hart and Jose Alvarado. He drafted Deuce McBride. He has built this team entirely from scratch, inheriting a 21-win team in the middle of a pandemic.
Now, he has a chance to become a legendarily mysterious figure in New York, and maybe then he will accept praise in public. Or enjoy perks from behind closed doors.
Barnes won a title with the Warriors in 2015, and Kornet won one with the Celtics in 2024. Both have a chance to join guys like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Danny Green and James Posey as recent role players to win multiple rings with multiple teams.
Does Sochan, who was waived by the Spurs in February, only to sign with the Knicks two days later, get a ring either way? Drop us a line if you can think of any other players ever in a similar situation. Enjoy the Finals. It should be quite a show.
