Jalen Brunson’s status as one of the greatest small guards in NBA history crystallized. A\u00a0New York Knicks\u00a0franchise starved of eternal glory exorcised its demons, finally basking in the cathartic elation that accompanies a league championship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Knicks wrote the final chapter of a storybook season that included a 13-game playoff win streak, part of which came at the expense of\u00a0San Antonio Spurs\u00a0wunderkind\u00a0Victor Wembanyama. The otherworldly Frenchman’s talent was on display during an NBA Finals that, despite lasting only five games, proved cinematic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The series finished as the most-watched NBA Finals since Michael Jordan capped his “Last Dance” with the\u00a0Chicago Bulls\u00a0in 1998,\u00a0according to ESPN PR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year’s Finals averaged 20.6 million viewers, a 100% increase in viewership from last year’s championship series, which saw the\u00a0Oklahoma City Thunder\u00a0outlast the\u00a0Indiana Pacers\u00a0in seven games, per ESPN. For reference,\u00a0as reported by Sports Media Watch, Jordan’s Bulls defeating the\u00a0Utah Jazz\u00a0in six games in ’98 drew an average of a whopping 29.04 million viewers. That year, of course, Jordan collected his sixth ring, cementing his case as the NBA’s GOAT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While this iteration of Knicks-Spurs is firmly behind that fabled Bulls series, at least in terms of ratings, it did surpass the 2017 NBA Finals in that category. A series that featured a rematch of\u00a0LeBron James’\u00a0Cleveland Cavaliers\u00a0against a dynastic\u00a0Golden State Warriors\u00a0squad averaged 20.41 million viewers, per Sports Media Watch, the year after the Cavs completed their unprecedented 3-1 comeback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 2026 NBA Finals set an ABC and ESPN audience record, according to ESPN, which cited Nielsen. It’s important to note that Nielsen\u00a0shifted to a new methodology last fall\u00a0that couples its traditional panel with “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes. Plus, Nielsen didn’t begin factoring in out-of-home viewing in its estimates until 2020 and started doing so in 100% of markets only a year ago, according to Sports Media Watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless,\u00a0the numbers this year’s Finals did\u00a0are still undoubtedly monumental.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Game 3 stood out. It’s\u00a0the only contest the Spurs won in the series. They stole the game on the road at Madison Square Garden. The esteemed arena was hosting its first Finals game since 1999. Donald Trump was in the house,\u00a0making him the first sitting U.S. president to attend an NBA Finals game. The showdown pulled in an average of 23.8 million viewers, the largest NBA Finals Game 3 audience since 1998,\u00a0according to ESPN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This year’s version of Knicks-Spurs also secured the largest NBA Finals Game 5 audience since 1998, per ESPN. In\u00a0New York’s closeout game\u00a0at\u00a0San Antonio’s Frost Bank Center, Brunson \u2014 like Jordan in Game 6 of the ’98 Finals \u2014 erupted for 45 points. While earning NBA Finals MVP honors, he lifted the Knicks to their first NBA title since 1973. His performance headlined an outing that averaged 24.5 million viewers, peaked with 33 million viewers and put a bow on one of the more spectacular playoff runs in both league and sports history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Jalen Brunson’s status as one of the greatest small guards in NBA history crystallized. A\u00a0New York Knicks\u00a0franchise starved of eternal glory exorcised its demons, finally basking in the cathartic elation that accompanies a league championship. The Knicks wrote the final chapter of a storybook season that included a 13-game playoff win streak, part of which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12903],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12903"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417307,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417306\/revisions\/417307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}