The Knicks finally won their first title in 53 years behind Finals MVP Jalen Brunson, but with massive contracts looming and the second apron approaching, keeping this core together may be even harder than winning it all.
Let’s take a second and actually sit with this. The New York Knicks are NBA champions. The trophy is real, the 53-year drought is over, and the parade is set for Thursday. For a city that spent the better part of three decades being the league’s most glamorous punch line, this is the moment that changes everything — the before and the after, the line in the sand that separates the dark years from whatever comes next.
Now comes the hard part.
Winning a championship is one thing. Staying on top is another conversation entirely, and the Knicks are about to learn that the second part of this story is significantly more complicated than the first. The roster that just won the title is expensive, aging at the margins, and sitting on the edge of a financial cliff that the entire organization has been quietly navigating for two years. The window is real. The question is how long it stays open.
Start where it all started, with Jalen Brunson — who etched his name into Knicks lore after claiming the Finals MVP by dropping 45 in a closeout game on the road — and the contract. When Brunson signed his four-year, $156.5 million extension in 2024, he left an estimated $113 million on the table, a decision that at the time felt almost too good to be true for a franchise that had spent years making the wrong moves at the wrong times. Two years later, he’s the face of a championship team and the reason the roster around him was good enough to get it done.
The math is simple: no discount, no OG extension, no Bridges trade, no KAT. No title.
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But here’s where the math gets complicated. Next summer, Brunson will be eligible for a projected four-year, $257 million extension. If he waits until 2028, that number could balloon to five years and $417 million. He already telegraphed his position on this earlier in the year. “Obviously, we’d love for them to do right by me,” he told Vanity Fair. “I think anyone would. I feel like I sacrificed.” He’s not wrong to say it. He earned every penny of whatever comes next. But paying him what he deserves — and what he’s owed — is going to set off a chain reaction that reshapes everything the Knicks have built.
Karl-Anthony Towns and Josh Hart both have contracts expiring by the summer of 2028, which turns that season into a potential pivot point for the entire roster. The Knicks have essentially been operating on borrowed time, building a championship window while keeping one eye on the second apron threshold established by the new CBA to limit dynasty-building. Sustaining championship-level rosters under the current collective bargaining agreement is harder than ever, and the second apron has fundamentally changed how organizations allocate money. The Knicks have been dancing right on the edge of it. That dance is about to get a lot more complicated.
So what does running it back actually look like? The core is intact for at least one more season. Brunson, KAT, OG, Bridges, and Hart are all under contract for 2026-27. The Knicks have the capability to run back all or most of their team for next season’s title defense, and the expectation is that they will. Defending champions with this much continuity and this much to prove don’t blow it up after one ring. They come back hungrier. That’s the easy part.
The trickier question is 2028 and beyond. When Brunson’s extension hits and the KAT and Hart contracts expire in the same summer, the Knicks are going to face a roster crossroads that no amount of championship equity can fully solve. Do you pay Brunson the max and build around an aging point guard coming into his mid-30s? Do you let Towns walk and rebuild the frontcourt around Brunson and OG? Do you find a way to keep everyone and absorb the luxury tax bill that would make even Madison Square Garden‘s ownership wince?
None of those are easy answers. All of them have real consequences.
And then there’s the larger question, the one that gets at the soul of what just happened in New York. Will we ever see a run like this again?
The honest answer is probably not exactly like this. What Brunson did in 2024 was singular. His decision to play on a below-market contract could be one that catches on among other NBA superstars, but the realities of the current CBA make it a binary choice — maximize earning potential or maximize championship equity. You can’t fully have both anymore. Brunson chose championships. He got one. The bill is coming.
What the Knicks have going for them is something that can’t be manufactured with cap space or trade assets. They have a culture now. They have an identity. They have a city that showed up every single night and made MSG the most hostile building in the league all postseason. That doesn’t go away because the roster shifts. It gets built on.
But make no mistake: The window that opened in 2024 when Brunson took less than he was worth is the same window that’s going to start closing the moment he gets paid what he deserves. The Knicks bought themselves two extraordinary years with that discount. They used them perfectly.
Now they get to find out if they can do it all over again — this time, the hard way.
