San Antonio’s locker room fell completely silent. Players stared at phones. Others looked blankly into space. Nobody said much of anything. The Knicks Spurs NBA Finals Game 4 comeback 2026 had just produced one of the most staggering collapses in championship history. As a result, the Spurs sat inside Madison Square Garden trying to understand how they had allowed it to happen.
A deficit that looked impossible to overcome
The numbers told the story bluntly. New York trailed by 27 points at halftime. In the third quarter, San Antonio pushed that advantage all the way to 29. Even entering the fourth, the Knicks still faced a 15-point hole. With about six minutes remaining, they were still down 11. Nevertheless, they kept coming.
Then, with one second separating them from defeat, Jalen Brunson launched a desperate 30-foot three-pointer. The shot missed. However, OG Anunoby appeared from nowhere and tipped the rebound off the glass and in with 1.2 seconds left. The final score read Knicks 107, Spurs 106.
The Garden erupts as Anunoby delivers
Madison Square Garden went into an immediate frenzy. The crowd chanted Anunoby’s name in unison. In the tunnel afterward, Taylor Swift waved a towel and jumped up and down, celebrating with strangers as a crowd gathered around her. Timothée Chalamet exited through the same tunnel, hollering alongside fellow fans. Earlier in the game, a video board had caught him with his hands on his face in total disbelief a reaction that mirrored the 19,000 people packed inside the building. Consequently, New York now leads the series 3-1 and stands just one win away from the franchise’s first NBA title since 1973.
Where the Spurs lost the game
San Antonio managed only 30 points in the second half. Victor Wembanyama acknowledged the breakdown plainly — his team stopped moving the ball and stopped executing. Those 2 failures, compounding over two quarters, transformed a dominant lead into nothing.
The most painful moment came with 1:47 remaining. Wembanyama stepped to the free throw line while the Spurs clung to a one-point lead. The Garden crowd did everything possible to get inside his head. In Game 3, Stephon Castle had faced the same noise and calmly sunk both free throws. This time, however, Wembanyama missed both. That miss would loom large over everything that followed.
The De’Aaron Fox decision that changed everything
Even after the missed free throws, San Antonio still had a chance. With 13.5 seconds left and the Spurs still ahead by one, Brunson misfired on a shot. The rebound ricocheted to Fox, who found himself alone ahead of the pack with a clear path to the basket. Rather than dribbling out the shot clock and drawing free throws, Fox drove for a layup. Anunoby, sprinting back from behind, rejected it cleanly. In hindsight, Fox admitted that dribbling out the clock and sending him to the line would have been the safer choice. At the time, he simply thought he could outrun the pursuit.
How the Spurs described the loss
Spurs forward Keldon Johnson did not search for complicated explanations. The team gave the game away, he said. It hurts. Head coach Mitch Johnson stood in a makeshift press conference room just 40 feet from where the Knicks celebration was already audible dancers in orange and blue sequined outfits singing along as New York, New York blared through the speakers. Despite everything, he said the loss never felt inevitable until the final buzzer.
Wembanyama reflected on Anunoby’s game-winning tip without bitterness. He had been contesting Brunson’s shot, turned and simply saw Anunoby rising above everyone. That was all he could tell anyone. Meanwhile, rookie Dylan Harper, standing right beside the play as it unfolded, believed he had a hand on the ball in the final moment. Regardless of that, the outcome remained the same.
What Game 5 means for both teams
The series now moves forward with New York holding a 3-1 advantage. Furthermore, no team in NBA history has ever recovered from a 3-1 deficit in the Finals to win the championship. For the Knicks, therefore, one more win delivers the franchise its first title in more than five decades. For the Spurs, survival requires 3 consecutive victories beginning on the road, in the very building where the most painful night of their season just played out.
Around 12:40 a.m., Wembanyama and his teammates walked quietly down the ramp toward the Garden exit. The tunnel celebration had long since ended. Somewhere outside, however, Knicks fans were still celebrating.
Source: NBC News
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