Nearly 800 Diamonds, a Tiny Garden That Opens, and 'Knicks in Five': Inside the Knicks' Championship Rings

NEW YORK

The banner was always going to be the emotional part. Fifty-three years of waiting, rising into the rafters of Madison Square Garden while the building shook. But the object New York Knicks fans will be zooming in on all week is much smaller: a 22-carat white-gold ring, built by Jason of Beverly Hills, that packs nearly 800 diamonds and blue sapphires onto one finger — and hides a miniature Madison Square Garden inside it. The Knicks were presented with their 2026 NBA championship rings on Tuesday night, before the season opener against the Philadelphia 76ers, in a ceremony led by announcer Mike Breen, according to USA Today. Then everybody got to work trying to describe the thing.

A ring that opens like the Garden

Start with the trick at the center of it. According to Page Six, a built-in mechanism raises a miniature re-creation of Madison Square Garden's iconic exterior with a simple turn of the ring — a first in championship ring history. The ring body twists open to reveal a detailed miniature of the Garden's lower bowl, and the underside of the removable ring top recreates the arena's distinctive ceiling architecture. USA Today described the same reveal from the other side: the top of the ring opens up to show the inside of the Garden, with the Knicks logo rendered in orange gems on the face and a line of blue gems circling the base.

The materials are exactly what the team's colors demand. Page Six reported that the ring mixes round brilliant and emerald-cut white diamonds with radially set blue sapphires, all set in white gold — orange and blue translated into stones. Jason Arasheben of Jason of Beverly Hills, who designed the ring, told Page Six Style that the piece “was designed to capture the team's identity and the defining moments of its title run.” He went further in describing what sets it apart: “What makes this ring unique from others I've created is how every detail — from the combination of round brilliant and emerald-cut diamonds with radially set blue sapphires to the individual player tributes and championship milestones — tells a story that is distinctly New York Knicks,” Arasheben said, according to Page Six.

Every number on it is a story

Championship rings have become storytelling devices, and this one is unusually literal about it. The jersey numbers of the entire championship roster wrap around the top of the ring, and each player's own ring is personalized with his last name above a diamond-encrusted version of his number, according to the jeweler's design details reported by Page Six. Engraved on the shank, per Page Six and USA Today, are two phrases that did a lot of work in the Knicks' spring: “Knicks in five,” for the five-game Finals win over the San Antonio Spurs, and “10 weeks” — the team's mantra, described by Page Six as a commitment to 10 weeks of sacrifice, discipline and complete focus on winning a championship. USA Today noted the “10 weeks” inscription sits inside the band in black, a callback to the rallying frame around the playoff run.

The numerology keeps going. According to Jason of Beverly Hills' design notes, a 0.16-carat round diamond set into the miniature Larry O'Brien Trophy on the ring's championship side commemorates the Knicks' 16-point comeback in the clinching Game 5, and 16 emerald-cut diamonds line the inner bezel — one for each of the team's 16 postseason victories. The words “WORLD CHAMPIONS” are set with 69 points of round white diamonds, honoring the 69 combined wins of the championship season. None of it is decoration for its own sake; every count on the ring points back at a specific night, a specific game, a specific number the fan base already knows by heart.

The run it remembers

It helps that the run itself was the stuff of franchise legend. As Page Six recounted, the Knicks won 13 consecutive playoff games — just two short of the NBA record — to end the 53-year drought, closing out the Spurs in Game 5 of the Finals. The moments compressed into the ring's engravings are the ones fans will tell first: OG Anunoby's tip-in at the end of Game 4, and Jalen Brunson's 45 points in the clincher, a Finals MVP performance that turned the Garden into the center of the basketball world. That is the season now sitting, in miniature and in diamonds, on the players' hands. For the full arc of the title defense ahead, see Previously's 2026-27 NBA season preview.

You can buy one. Sort of.

For fans who want in, there is a price — several, actually. Page Six reported that a limited-edition fan version inspired by the championship ring is available for $20,000, with other pieces in the collection ranging from $299 to $15,995. That is real money for a replica, but it is also the going logic of championship jewelry now: the players' ring is a one-of-one story object, and the fan collection is how everyone else buys a seat, however small, inside the story. Expect the $299 end of that range to move a lot faster than the $20,000 end — though on Tuesday night in New York, with superfans like Ben Stiller filming the ceremony on his phone, according to USA Today, never bet against this fan base's willingness to spend on a 53-year wait finally ending.

And then the game started

The ring, of course, is also where the fairy tale met the schedule. The ceremony ended, the banner settled into the rafters, and the Philadelphia 76ers — the team that spent the summer building a roster specifically to end nights like this — beat the champions 106-100 in their own building. Previously's recap of the opener has the full story of how Tyrese Maxey and Philadelphia's new arrivals spoiled the party. The Knicks are 0-1 as defending champions, which is its own sentence nobody in New York wanted to read this week. But the ring is the ring. It will be on their hands in Boston on Friday and everywhere else this season, 22 carats of proof that the wait really did end — no matter how rudely the defense of it began. More coverage is on the Previously sports front.