Kevin Durant has admitted that even he did not believe the New York Knicks would win the NBA championship until the final game of their remarkable Finals series against the San Antonio Spurs.
The Knicks came back from huge deficits throughout the series, repeatedly leaving Durant unsure whether they could actually finish the job.
New York eventually defeated Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs 4-1 to claim their first NBA title in 53 years.
San Antonio repeatedly found itself in control early in games, but the Knicks kept producing late comebacks when the pressure was at its highest.
Kevin Durant reveals when he finally believed the Knicks could win it all
Speaking about the championship run, Durant admitted that he was ‘on the fence’ about New York’s chances for most of the series.
‘I was on the fence if they were going to win,’ Durant said. ‘And then they got down every game I’m just like, I don’t know. And then it’s like as they started coming back, I didn’t become a believer to be honest until the last game.’
There was good reason for Durant’s hesitation.
The Spurs repeatedly built commanding leads, including a 29-point advantage in Game 4. Somehow, New York erased it and escaped with a 107-106 victory, producing the largest comeback in NBA Finals history.
That comeback summed up the entire series for Durant.
‘I was just like the Spurs would be up 15 points every game, 29 points, and then they’ll just come back and steal a game,’ he said.
The Knicks did not simply recover from one bad start, either. New York erased double-digit deficits in all five games against San Antonio.
For Wembanyama and the young Spurs, the defeat could become an important lesson. They showed enough to establish early leads, but the Knicks’ defensive intensity and physicality eventually proved difficult to handle in the fourth quarter.
Durant’s comments also underline just how unusual the Knicks’ championship run was. Even someone watching from the outside struggled to believe they could repeatedly escape situations that appeared to have put the Spurs in control.
By the time New York closed out the series, however, Durant had finally become a believer.
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