Capture

SAN ANTONIO — Jalen Brunson and the Comeback Knicks did it again. And now they’re the Champion Knicks.

For the first time in 53 years, New York rules the NBA. Brunson scored 45 points, including 13 straight for New York in the fourth quarter, and the Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 94-90 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals on Saturday night.

The Knicks won the series 4-1, rallying from double-digit deficits in all four of those victories. The deficit was 16 on Saturday night. Brunson and the Knicks were never fazed.

“I have no words,” Brunson said during the on-court celebration. “It’s everything I ever dreamed of.”

New York guard Jalen Brunson drives in front of San Antonio center Luke Kornet during the second half of the Knicks’ 94-90 win Saturday.

(Darren Abate / Associated Press)

Brunson, fittingly, closed with a flourish. He set a Knicks record for points in a finals game; it had been 38 by Willis Reed against the Lakers in Game 3 of the 1970 series. It now belongs to the left-handed point guard who changed the franchise’s fortunes when he arrived four years ago.

Mikal Bridges and Josh Hart — the other two parts of the “Nova Knicks” trio that also includes Brunson, three players who were NCAA champions at Villanova and teamed up in New York to try to do the same — combined to score 27 points. Bridges had 14, Hart 13.

“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” Brunson said. “I’m in awe. Whenever someone counted us out, we found a way to come back and do something about it.”

New York Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns, right, hugs forward Og Anunoby after defeating the San Antonio Spurs for the NBA title on Saturday.

(Darren Abate / Associated Press)

Dylan Harper scored 25 for the Spurs, who got 19 points, 14 rebounds and five blocked shots from Victor Wembanyama.

The Knicks improved to 4-0 in closeout opportunities this season, winning them all on the road. It didn’t feel like the road, though — not with thousands of New York faithful having made the trip to Texas to see a moment 53 years in the making.

New York got to the brink of this title by rallying from 29 points down in Game 4 to win 107-106 on OG Anunoby’s tip-in with 1.2 seconds left on Wednesday night. It was the largest comeback in NBA Finals history and the biggest comeback in any game this season, regular season or playoffs.

By comparison, then, a 16-point rally in this one seemed easy.

The game followed the same script in the opening minutes as all the others in the series, with the Spurs taking a double-digit lead in the first quarter and then frittering most of it away in the second quarter.

The Spurs became the first team in the play-by-play era, which started in the 1996-97 season, to lead five finals games by 10 points or more in first quarters.

The Knicks simply could not make a shot, missing on 16 of their first 18 tries and each of their first 11 two-point attempts. There even was a point in the second quarter when Wembanyama had more blocked shots (five) than the Knicks had made shots (four). San Antonio’s lead was as many as 10 in the first quarter, as many as 16 in the second.

Of course, none of it mattered much. As always, the Knicks came back.

New York Knicks fans react in New York after the team’s title-clinching win over the Spurs on Saturday night.

(Heather Khalifa / Associated Press)

A 22-9 run in the second quarter got New York within three, before Devin Vassell scored just before the halftime buzzer to give San Antonio a 42-37 edge at the break.

And that capped an opening 24 minutes of either offensive ineptitude or defensive prowess, depending on perspective. The 79 combined points in the first half were the lowest in a finals game since Game 7 of Lakers-Celtics in 2010, and the combined 31.8% field goals shooting by the Knicks and Spurs was the lowest in the first half of a finals game in the play-by-play era.

Brunson won NCAA crowns twice with Villanova — both in Texas, the 2016 one in Houston and the 2018 one in San Antonio, just a few miles away from the arena that the Spurs call home.

A Texas three-step of titles, and this one was surely the sweetest of all.

Travis d’Arnaud hit a three-run homer, Walbert Ureña threw six innings of two-hit ball, and the Angels defeated the Chicago White Sox 8-2 on Wednesday.

The Angels won a series for the first time since April 10-12 at Cincinnati. The Angels (15-23) are 2-7-2 in series this season.

D’Arnaud’s 396-foot shot off Noah Schultz (2-2), the backup catcher’s first homer of the season, kicked off a five-run second inning for the Halos. After Bryce Teodosio doubled on a ball that got past right fielder Jarred Kelenic, Zach Neto hit a stand-up RBI triple.

Mike Trout brought one more across with an infield popup that second baseman Chase Meidroth lost in the afternoon sun for a single.

Jorge Soler and Jo Adell were hit by back-to-back pitches from reliever Osvaldo Bido with the bases loaded to bring in two runs in the fourth.

Ureña (1-3) allowed one run, struck out five and walked three in his second quality start of the season. Brent Suter, Drew Pomeranz and Chase Silseth completed a four-hitter.

Meidroth had two hits for Chicago (17-20). Standout rookie Munetaka Murakami, who is tied for the major league lead with 14 home runs, struck out four times for the second time this season.

Schultz allowed seven hits and seven runs in 3⅔ innings. He had allowed a total of six earned runs in four previous starts this year.

Up next for the Angels: Open a three-game series at Toronto on Friday with LHP Reid Detmers (1-2, 4.28) facing Blue Jays RHP Dylan Cease (2-1, 3.05).

A prominent shipping organisation has condemned the United States and Iran’s tit-for-tat capture of commercial ships and is calling for the immediate release of their crews.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, John Stawpert, marine director of the International Chamber of Shipping, said seafarers must be allowed to go about their business “freely and without persecution”.

Stawpert, whose organisation is the top trade association for merchant shipowners and operators worldwide, called the capture of the vessels an affront to freedom of navigation as enshrined in international law.

“All these people are doing is transporting trade. And really, we can’t have a situation where ships are being seized, ultimately for political ends, to prove a political point,” said Stawpert, whose organisation represents about 80 percent of the world’s merchant fleet.

“These are innocent farers and they should be allowed to go about their jobs without fear of, essentially, imprisonment.”

Stawpert said Iran’s stated wish to charge tolls in the Strait of Hormuz had no basis in international law and would set a dangerous precedent.

“If you can do it in the Strait of Hormuz, why can’t you do it in the Strait of Gibraltar, say, or the Straits of Malacca?” he asked.

Stawpert also said the US President Donald Trump’s naval blockade of Iranian ports had heaped further uncertainty on shipping companies already reeling from Iran’s effective closure of the strait.

“We don’t know what conditions are in place. We don’t know what the targeting criteria of Iran are really,” Stawpert said. “And so we then have another state coming in, effectively doing the same thing through the blockade of the straits”.

The US and Iranian militaries have each announced the capture of two commercial vessels over the past week as Washington and Tehran continue to face off in the strait and in waters beyond the Gulf.

The US defence department on Thursday said it had captured the Iran-linked Majestic X as it was transporting sanctioned oil in the Indian Ocean, days after announcing the interception of another ship, Tifani.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Wednesday said it seized the Panamanian-flagged MSC Francesca and the Greek-owned Epaminondas for “operating without the necessary permits and tampering with navigation systems”.

The Philippines’ Department of Migrant Workers on Wednesday confirmed 15 Filipino seafarers were on the two vessels.

Officials said they had been assured by Iranian authorities that all the crew were “unharmed” and “safe.”

Montenegro’s maritime minister, Filip Radulovic, said in an interview with the state broadcaster earlier this week that four Montenegrin crew on the MSC Francesca were “fine”.

There have been no official updates on the condition of the crews on the vessels captured by US forces.

“It seems they’re not being maltreated,” Stawpert said. “But even so, that’s not really the point. The point is they shouldn’t be in custody in the first place”.

Stawpert also expressed concern for the well-being of an estimated 20,000 seafarers who have been left stranded in the Gulf due to the effective closure of the strait.

“Their welfare is also a priority for us,” he said. “The psychological burden, I think, will be beginning to tell on them after seven weeks now of what’s, to all intents and purposes, house arrest”.

Stawpert called on both the US and Iran to respect freedom of navigation.

“Let’s resume freedom of navigation and respect the right to innocent passage as soon as we possibly can,” he said.

The blockage of the strait, which usually carries about one-fifth of global oil and natural gas supplies, has driven up fuel prices worldwide and forced many governments to start emergency energy-saving measures.

Traffic in the waterway remains a fraction of pre-war levels, with reports saying just five ships transited the strait in the last 24 hours.

Before the US and Israel launched their war against Iran on February 28, the strait saw a daily average of 129 transits, according to the United Nations Trade and Development.

April 23 (UPI) — A U.S. Army special forces soldier who participated in capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has been charged with using classified information about the operation to make bets on Polymarket, a decentralized prediction platform, federal prosecutors said Thursday.

Gannon Ken Van Dyke, stationed at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., is alleged to have profited by more than $400,000 through wagers he made on Polymarket concerning the future of Venezuela, Maduro and U.S. military intervention.

“Our men and women in uniform are trusted with classified information in order to accomplish their mission as safely and effectively as possible, and are prohibited from using this highly sensitive information for personal financial gain,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.

Polymarket is one of several crypto-based prediction markets that grew in popularity during the 2024 general election, allowing users to make wagers on seemingly anything, from who will be drafted first overall in the NFL Draft to when President Donald Trump will announce the war in Iran is over.

In the indictment unsealed Thursday, federal prosecutors alleged that starting from around Dec. 8, Van Dyke participated in the planning and execution of Operation Absolute Resolve.

On Dec. 26, Van Dyke allegedly created a Polymarket account, which he used to make 13 bets from Dec. 27, wagering a combined $33,034 on contracts concerning U.S. military involvement in Venezuela.

Before dawn on Jan. 3, U.S. military forces conducted a clandestine operation in Venezuela, resulting in the capture of Maduro and his wife, who were brought back to the United States to face narco-trafficking charges.

After Trump announced the operation that night, Van Dyke allegedly made $409,881 off his bets, which he withdrew to a foreign cryptocurrency vault before depositing them into a newly created online brokerage account, federal prosecutors said.

After the operation, news broke that one user had wagered $32,000 that Maduro would be ousted by the end of January, netting the multi-hundred-thousand-dollar payout.

Prosecutors alleged that as reports of the unusual wager spread, Van Dyke asked the platform on Jan. 6 to delete his account and he allegedly changed the email address registered to his cryptocurrency exchange account.

The indictment charges him with use of confidential government information for personal gain, theft of nonpublic government information, commodities fraud, wire fraud and making an unlawful monetary transaction.

If convicted, Van Dyke faces up to 10 years in prison for each of the three Commodity Exchange Act counts, 20 years for the one wire fraud count and 10 years for the unlawful monetary transaction charge.

The charges come amid concern about such decentralized markets that allow for betting on real-world events and calls for them to be regulated

In late March, dozens of lawmakers called on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Office of Government Ethics to address illegal insider trading on these platforms by federal employees following the Polymarket payout on the capture of Maduro and other suspicious trades.

Asked about the development and if he is concerned about bets being placed on the Iran war, Trump told reporters at the White House that he will look into it.

“The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino. And you look at what’s going on all over the world, in Europe and every place, they’re doing these betting things,” he said.

“I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it, conceptually, but it is what it is.”

US forces have released video appearing to show the capture of an Iranian-flagged ship near the Strait of Hormuz, which President Donald Trump says was attempting to breach its naval blockade. Iran has condemned the operation as ‘maritime piracy,’ warned of retaliation, and cast doubt on new talks with the US. Here’s what we know.