‘A bucket list thing’: Mike Breen on calling Knicks in the NBA Finals

As Mike Breen prepares to call his 21st NBA Finals on ABC, he’s also preparing to do something he’s never done before.

Breen has been the Knicks’ play-by-play voice on MSG Networks since 1998 — but this is the first time during that stretch that he’ll announce the Knicks in the Finals.

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“It’s kind of a bucket list thing,” Breen said. “Twenty-one Finals is impossible to comprehend for me, and I always thought it’d be pretty cool to have the Knicks in one. And to see the growth of the team the last couple of years and to see what this team has done for the fan base of New York — I’ve lived in New York my whole life. It’s really energized the city like nothing I’ve ever seen, so I’m really looking forward to it.”

Breen will be on the call with analysts Richard Jefferson and Tim Legler when the Knicks end their 27-year Finals drought and tip off Game 1 against the Spurs on Wednesday, June 3.

Breen announced the Knicks’ 1994 Finals series loss to the Rockets on the radio for New York’s WFAN. In 1999, when the Knicks made it back to the Finals, Marv Albert was on the call instead of Breen.

Now, Breen is getting a second chance. This year’s Knicks-Spurs championship series is a rematch of the 1999 Finals, when the Knicks became the first 8-seed to make the Finals at the conclusion of the lockout-shortened NBA season. But with Patrick Ewing out injured and Larry Johnson banged up, New York couldn’t finish the job and the Spurs won the first of coach Gregg Popovich’s five NBA titles.

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“That’s when you started to realize Tim Duncan was going to be one of the greatest players of all time,” Breen recalled. “It was actually a great year for both teams, even though the Knicks fell short. But San Antonio, you started thinking, OK, this could be a team that’s going to win a lot of titles in a row.”

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Publish date : 2026-06-02 17:59:00

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