Alex Jakubowski watched the New York Knicks erase another San Antonio Spurs lead Wednesday night, cherished the historic 29-point comeback victory and then climbed into bed. Before Jakubowski fell asleep, a joke about the game popped into his head. He typed it into his phone and shared it on X.The 23-year-old Knicks fan from Hartford, Conn., initially thought the post was a “throwaway tweet.” But the joke — a riff on the NBA Finals matchup written in the voice of a “Seinfeld” joke, accompanied by a courtside photo of Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David together at Game 4 — resonated far beyond the walls of Jakubowski’s bedroom.
The Spurs know how to TAKE the lead, they just don't know how to HOLD the lead. And that's really the most important part of the lead: the holding pic.twitter.com/3JABgJ7DFt
— Alex (@ajak1033) June 11, 2026By the time Jakubowski woke up Thursday morning, his post had been viewed more than 600,000 times on X and had already spread across other social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Reddit. His “throwaway” joke was well on its way to becoming one of the defining memes of the 2026 NBA Finals.The post sounded like the kind of conversation that Seinfeld would have had on his eponymous 1990s sitcom with the character George Costanza, who was based on “Seinfeld” co-creator David. Or like the kind of observation David would have made on his HBO comedy series, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Paired with the image of the two famous New York comedians, the post was perfectly timed to go viral.
