53 年的等待：尼克斯队终于拿下 NBA 总冠军

Today we'll talk about something that brought countless fans to tears.

Yesterday, America's New York Knicks

won the NBA championship.

This sounds like just a team winning a game.

But for New Yorkers,

this was a day waited on for a full fifty-three years.

Let's first briefly cover the background.

The NBA is America's professional basketball competition.

It's also the highest-level basketball competition in the world.

It has thirty teams.

Each year, these thirty teams play a whole year.

In the end, only one team can take the championship.

Taking the championship

is a basketball team's greatest honor.

The New York Knicks are, within the NBA,

a very famous and very old team.

In New York, it has countless fans.

New Yorkers' feelings for this team run especially deep.

But there's a fact

that has long pained New York fans.

It's that the Knicks

hadn't taken a championship for a very, very long time.

The last time they won a title was in 1973.

In other words, by this year,

they had waited fifty-three years.

This is, in NBA history,

the longest wait for a championship.

What kind of concept is fifty-three years?

It's many fans growing from children into old people.

It's some people who waited a whole lifetime,

and by the time they passed, never got to see it again.

But this year, things were different.

This year's Knicks were especially strong.

They cut through every round

and made it to the Finals.

The Finals is best-of-seven.

Whoever wins four games first is the champion.

Their opponent

was another very strong team, the San Antonio Spurs.

On the Spurs,

there's also a French prodigy the whole world is watching,

called Wembanyama.

He's extremely tall and extremely well-rounded in skill.

In this series, he played very well too.

He averaged nearly 28 points.

But basketball is a five-person sport.

In the end, the Knicks

still won the series four to one.

Just yesterday, in Game 5,

the Knicks, 94 to 90,

won the decisive game.

They took the third championship in team history.

And the first since 1973.

The moment the game ended,

all of New York boiled over.

Many fans on the streets cried and laughed at once.

Some white-haired old people said:

'In my whole life, I finally got to wait for it.'

Speaking of this title,

there's one person who absolutely must be mentioned.

He's called Brunson, the core of the Knicks.

He's not very tall,

but he's especially good at scoring, especially clutch.

In the last game, he alone scored 45 points.

Across the whole Finals, he averaged nearly 30 points.

So, deservedly,

he won the Finals Most Valuable Player,

which we commonly call FMVP.

Also, in this series,

there's one more game that will be remembered for a long time.

That was Game 4.

In that game, the Knicks, in the first half,

were at one point behind by 29 points.

In basketball, being behind by 29

basically means the game is hopeless.

But the Knicks didn't give up.

In the second half, they chased points like crazy.

At the final moment, on a put-back,

with only 1.2 seconds left, they hit a buzzer-beater on the opponent.

107 to 106, they won.

This is, in NBA Finals history,

the biggest comeback ever.

Finally, let's think together.

Why is this championship so moving?

Because it isn't just a championship.

It's fifty-three years of perseverance.

It's the waiting of several generations.

It's countless times of coming up just short,

but never giving up.

When it comes down to it,

what's most moving about sports

has never been only winning.

It's that spirit of,

even after waiting fifty-three years,

still wanting to keep playing.

Finally, I want to ask you.

In your life,

is there something

you've persevered at for a very, very long time?

Maybe your own 'fifty-third year'

is just around the corner too.