Knicks to face Spurs in NBA Cup finale

The NBA Cup will come down to Vic and the Knick.

The third edition of the NBA’s in-season tournament’s championship in Las Vegas will officially feature the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs. Hours after the Knicks wrapped up a 132-120 win over the Orlando Magic in Saturday’s Sin City semifinal action, the Spurs upset the Oklahoma City Thunder in a 111-109 thriller.

The championship game, which will not count toward the regular season standings, will be staged on Tuesday night in a return to T-Mobile Arena (8:30 p.m. ET, Prime Video).

New York and San Antonio’s interconference matchup, of course, is best-known for the meeting in the 1999 NBA Finals. That was a 4-1 victory for San Antonio and gave rise to the long-lasting Spurs dynasty that produced four more championships through 2014.

More recently, though, the Knicks and Spurs have engaged in some modern thrillers: in March 2024, Jalen Brunson put up one of the most prolific scoring efforts in Knicks history with 61 points at Frost Bank Center. But a 40-point, 20-rebound double-double from then-rookie Victor Wembanyama was enough to give the Spurs a 130-126 win in overtime.

The Knicks and Spurs did battle last Christmas at Madison Square Garden, which produced a 117-114 win for the hosts. Mikal Bridges scored 41 points, the second-best tally any Knick has put up on Christmas behind only the 60 from Bernard King in 1984. The Spurs mustered a split with a 120-105 win on their home floor, propelled by a shocking outburst from Sandro Mamukelashvili, who was one of the Knicks Cup quarterfinal victims in Toronto.

Both the Knicks and Spurs stand to benefit from whatever benefit an NBA Cup victory has to offer: the Knicks, for example, have not raised any sort of banner at MSG since the one commemorating their Atlantic Division title win in 2012-13. San Antonio, on the other hand, could use such a victory as an assuring sign that their post-Gregg Popovich era headlined by Wembanyama is in good hands.

Reaching the Cup final has also been a decent omen for postseason success, as the runner-ups in each of the first two editions (Indiana, Oklahoma City) wound up meeting in last year’s NBA Finals.

The Knicks and Spurs’ de facto exhibition for the NBA Cup win comes just over two weeks before they were supposed to originally do battle on Dec. 31 at Frost Bank Center. San Antonio comes to MSG for its annual visit at the start of March.