The New York Knicks trailed by 29 points. With 9:40 left in the third quarter of Game 4 of the NBA Finals on Wednesday night, the San Antonio Spurs led 81-52 and looked set to even the series, dragging it back to a best-of-three with two of the final three games in Texas.
Instead, the Knicks authored the largest comeback in Finals history, beating the Spurs 107-106 at Madison Square Garden to take a commanding 3-1 series lead. New York is now a single win from its first championship in 53 years.
"Our guys showed their resiliency," Knicks head coach Mike Brown said. "And showed they're connected enough to handle a moment like that."
The turn began, improbably, with a flagrant foul. When Victor Wembanyama was whistled with 9:27 left in the third, Karl-Anthony Towns' two free throws sparked a 13-0 run that trimmed the 29-point deficit to 16. Jalen Brunson buried a pull-up 3, Towns found OG Anunoby in the corner, and Josh Hart drilled an open look from the top of the arc as the Garden roared back to life.
The margin kept shrinking: 14 points down with 7:14 to play, 11 at 6:24, then four after an Anunoby corner 3 with 4:34 left. When Brunson pulled up from 27 feet to make it 104-103, a blowout had become a coin flip.
It ended with the player Brown had singled out before tip-off. Anunoby, who finished with 33 points, got a hand on De'Aaron Fox's ill-advised layup with 11 seconds left to force a final New York possession. Then, as Brunson's 3-pointer clanged off the front rim, Anunoby flashed up the lane, split two defenders and tipped the ball home with 1.2 seconds remaining.
"When the shot went up, I was free. There was no one boxing me out," Anunoby said. "The ball went over my head, so I couldn't really dunk it. So I tried to tip it in softly and it went in."
Brown did not undersell the moment. "I don't know if there was a play bigger than any other play in the history in Knicks basketball," he said.
Brunson, who has watched Anunoby absorb criticism all postseason, came to his teammate's defense. "His confidence has grown just because of his work ethic, everything that I've seen, he's got exponentially better at," Brunson said. "So regardless of what the outside world thinks of him, we know what we have in our locker room. And we have a superstar in that locker room."
Brown credited a defensive gear rather than a tactical overhaul. "We didn't change much. We basically kept the same game plan," he said. "But defensively, we just did it harder for longer stretches, and we were really in tune to what we were supposed to be doing. Our level of physicality increased without sending them to the free-throw line, as well, which is huge."
The numbers were brutal for San Antonio. After pouring in 76 points in the first half, the Spurs managed just 30 after the break, shooting 6-for-35 over the closing stretch.
The analysts watching saw a familiar trait. "The Knicks are never out of a game, even when making NBA history is required," ESPN's Vincent Goodwill wrote. Colleague Tim Bontemps was blunt about where the series is heading: "Do I think the Knicks will ultimately win the title? Yes."
History sides with him. New York became the 39th team to take a 3-1 lead in the Finals, and 37 of the previous 38 went on to win the championship. Game 5 is Saturday in San Antonio, where the Knicks need one more win to end a title drought stretching back to 1973.
