JALEN BRUNSON'S VICTORY LAP TAGGING ALONG WITH THE MVP AS KNICKS FANS EXHALE AND THE CITY ERUPTS.

FATIGUE HAD CAUGHT up to Jalen Brunson.

- TOM KLUDT

For two grueling months of playoff basketball, he had seemed immune to it, growing stronger in the game's last minutes just as his opponents would begin to fade. The pattern repeated itself throughout the NBA Finals, when the youthful San Antonio Spurs and their sinewy phenom Victor Wembanyama wilted in the fourth quarter, bricking free throws and committing mystifying turnovers.

Brunson and his teammates, however, consistently rallied, turning deficits into leads, and leads into wins, including a stunning 29-point comeback in game four. The most concise explanation for how the New York Knicks won their first title in more than a half-century is that they simply outlasted everyone else.

On his fourth day as an NBA champion, however, Brunson's voice bore the raspiness of a man running on fumes, his responses clipped and halting. The night before, he had planned on staying up to watch Argentina's opening match in the World Cup but dozed off, awaking only after Lionel Messi had completed a vintage hat trick. "I was pissed," he told me as we spoke in a hotel suite at the Mandarin Oriental overlooking Central Park.

Brunson had just come from CBS, where he and his father, Knicks assistant coach Rick Brunson, sat for an interview with Gayle King and Nate Burlesonanother stop in a post-title media tour that stretched from daytime television to late night. By then, Brunson had already appeared alongside his fellow Knicks starters on Good Morning America, Today, and The Tonight Show and also made solo appearances on The View and First Take.

That evening, he and Josh Hart were expected in the Bronx to toss the first pitch at a Yankees game. A friend's wedding in New Jersey was on tap for that weekend.

And in between, Brunson and the Knicks would be cheered on by some 2 million fans at a ticker-tape parade that culminated in Mayor Zohran Mamdani giving each player a key to the city.