![\"New](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/061326Knicks060JS.jpg\")
New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson (11) goes up for a shot pass San Antonio Spurs guard Stephon Castle (5) during the fourth quarter of Game 5 of the 2026 NBA Finals. Jason Szenes for NY Post<\/p>\n
The Finals, the highest-rated ABC has had, saw a 100 percent increase in viewership over the 2025 seven-game series between the Thunder and Pacers. This year\u2019s Finals was also the top program on TV each day.<\/p>\n
On top of all the macro-level data, Game 5 averaged 24.5 million viewers and peaked at 33 million, becoming the most-watched Game 5 since the 1998 Finals. <\/p>\n
![\"Knicks](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/061326NBAFinals174CW.jpg\")
The Knicks celebrate after defeating the Spurs to win the NBA championship.
\n Charles Wenzelberg \/ NY Post<\/p>\n
The peak viewership of Game 5 reached nearly 10 million more people than the Knicks\u2019 epic 29-point comeback in Game 4<\/a>, which had a viewership high of 23.2 million. <\/p>\n The Knicks\u2019 title, their first in 53 years<\/a>, has had New York and the rest of the tri-state area buzzing. <\/p>\n The team\u2019s heroes have been making plenty of TV hits, with Finals MVP Jalen Brunson joining the \u201cToday\u201d show<\/a> on Tuesday, one day after he and his New York teammates were feted on the \u201cTonight Show\u201d with Jimmy Fallon<\/a> and \u201cGood Morning America\u201d on Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n The celebration hasn\u2019t ended, however, as Karl-Anthony Towns is expected to make an appearance on \u201cLate Night with Seth Meyers\u201d on Tuesday before New York City hosts a parade up the Canyon of Heroes on Thursday morning. The parade is expected to use an eye-popping 1.25 tons of confetti<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every game of the 2026 NBA Finals was a nail-biter. And the television ratings reflected as such. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":763180,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[611,7,130,6,1220,191,969,474,4075,4074,66,2086,3647,534],"class_list":["post-763179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio-spurs","tag-abc","tag-basketball","tag-espn","tag-nba","tag-nba-finals","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-spurs","tag-sanantonio","tag-sanantoniospurs","tag-sports","tag-sports-entertainment","tag-sports-media","tag-spurs"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116764457464442910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763179\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/763180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=763179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=763179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}