Karl-Anthony Towns watched the most important sequence of the New York Knicks' season from the one place he never wanted to be: the bench, in foul trouble, with the franchise's first title since 1973 hanging in the balance. When OG Anunoby's tip-in dropped to complete the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, Towns reached for something beyond basketball to explain it.
"Right hand from God. Right hand of God," Towns said of the play that won Game 4.
The Knicks trailed by as many as 29 points on Wednesday before storming back to beat the San Antonio Spurs 107-106 at Madison Square Garden, seizing a 3-1 series lead. Anunoby finished the rally with a tip-in after Jalen Brunson missed a three-pointer with 1.2 seconds left — the kind of bounce that, to Towns, did not feel like coincidence.
It was a fitting end for a teammate Towns says he trusts implicitly. "Every time I talk to him, I say, 'I already know what OG Anunoby's gonna do in the fourth quarter,'" Towns said. "He did exactly what I thought he would do. Gave us a chance to win."
Anunoby earned the faith. He poured in a playoff-high 33 points on 10-of-15 shooting and, moments before his winner, blocked a De'Aaron Fox layup that would likely have iced the game for San Antonio.
Knicks head coach Mike Brown, who has spent a career around big moments, struggled to find a comparison. "That has to be the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball," Brown said. "I'm not you guys. You guys know better than me. But it was just unbelievable."
The reaction rippled out to the franchise's icons. Carmelo Anthony, who spent six-plus seasons in New York without reaching a Finals, framed the comeback as proof of the team's character. "The Knicks ain't quit. That's what championship teams do. They're never down and out," Anthony said.
He went further on the scale of what he had watched. "This got to be one of the greatest games, one of the greatest comebacks ever in the history of the NBA," Anthony said. "To see how they did it, they never gave up. They were down 20, 30 and they fought back piece by piece by piece. They were incredible tonight."
For Towns, the spiritual framing is not new. He has spoken openly about leaning on faith since losing his mother, Jacqueline, in 2020, and earlier in this series he told reporters he had prayed to his late mother before a pivotal Game 2 play. On Wednesday, that belief met a result even neutral observers struggled to rationalize.
The defeat left the Spurs to absorb a collapse that will trail them into a do-or-die Game 5 in San Antonio. New York, meanwhile, can close out its first championship in 52 years on Saturday — and if it does, Towns and the Knicks will point back to a Garden night when, as their big man put it, a higher power lent a hand.
