The Knicks trail as they try to clinch their first NBA title in more than 50 years
By Kyle Feldscher, CNN
(CNN) — The New York Knicks are looking to clinch their first NBA championship since 1973 on Saturday in San Antonio. The Spurs are not going to go all that easily.
After the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history, the Knicks took a 3-1 series lead into San Antonio and have the opportunity to send The Big Apple into delirium by clinching their first championship since “Tie A Yellow Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree” was top of the charts.
Another hard-fought quarter is leading to a close game down the stretch, with defense dominating the proceedings and some key players in foul trouble. The Spurs have staked themselves to a 72-65 lead as the Knicks look out of sorts amid the intense pressure of the San Antonio defense. They head into the final quarter needing a solid run to push the series back to The Big Apple.
The opening half started as so many others have in this series. After coming out hot in the opening quarter, the Spurs’ lead grew to 16 early in the second quarter as Victor Wembanyama used his size and skill to pace his team to the big lead. Wembanyama wreaked havoc on the defensive end with five blocked shots before halftime.
In the face of accomplishing history, the Knicks started off ice cold. Through the first 16 minutes of Saturday’s game, they were 5-for-26 from the field, a whopping 19%. Added into that underwhelming start were nine turnovers, all making for a middling offensive performance that helped San Antonio build its sizable lead.
It didn’t take long for that lead to get cut in half as the Knicks, as they are wont to do, turned it on in the middle of the second quarter.
It was Brunson leading the way for New York, as he got to any spot on the floor that he wanted, ending the half with 16 points. A Mikal Bridges shot with 2:45 to go in the second quarter brought New York to within six points as they traveling Knicks fans in San Antonio screamed – though their revelry was cooled seconds later when Karl-Anthony Towns picked up his third foul.
With Wembanyama and Towns out for the final two minutes and change of the half, the Knicks’ Josh Hart drew a flagrant foul from De’Aaron Fox as he laid the ball in on a fast break. Hart made the free throw to cut the Spurs’ lead down to five and Bridges scored on the ensuing possession to make it a three-point game.
Devin Vassell sank a shot as the buzzer expired, a nice shot of momentum for the Spurs after the Knicks had nearly erased their big lead.
A key moment took place just after the restart when Towns picked up his fourth foul, yet another game when the Knicks star was locked in intense foul trouble. With him on the bench, Wembanyama surged and helped lead his team back to a double-digit lead with more than nine minutes to play in the quarter.
The lead stretched to 12 before Brunson and the Knicks rallied again, cutting the lead down to five halfway through the quarter.
A moment of controversy came after Brunson nailed a 3-pointer with 5:29 to go in the third quarter when Wembanyama got one of his long legs in the star guard’s landing area. Brunson’s ankle rolled slightly and he was slow to get up, as the Spurs went down the court and nailed another three. Brunson and his coach, Mike Brown, were heated, believing the French star should have been whistled for a flagrant foul.
There was no call – and the story repeated itself seconds later when Bridges took a hand to the face from a Spurs defender. With the quarter running down, the lead went to 15 as the Spurs made a 9-0 run with Towns on the bench.
The Knicks chipped away, as Jordan Clarkson scored the first points for the New York bench late in the third quarter and then Mitchell Robinson tipped in a miss just before the clock ran out to make it 72-65 going into the final frame.
Calm before the storm
The series moving back to San Antonio after a few days in New York has appeared to calm some of the off-the-court noise.
The prelude to Game 3 was hijacked by the presence of President Donald Trump and the intense security a presidential visit requires – not to mention the loud booing of the commander in chief when he was shown during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Before Game 4, Knicks owner James Dolan decided to go into a PR war with Mayor Zohran Mamdani, bickering over the status of the watch party that had become a staple outside the Garden in earlier rounds.
With the Knicks now on the precipice, and the series returning to The Alamo City, much of that has died down. Instead, the most impatient city in the world is forced to wait.
“The biggest thing is everybody has to stay present. You have to be present. You can’t think about the outcome. It’s about the process, the next play, the next play, the next play,” head coach Mike Brown told reporters on Friday.
“Sometimes you can think about the process, and it not work out. But when you’re playing against other great teams especially, that’s how you have to take it because anybody’s mind can start wandering when you think about the outcome.”
What’s at stake
The stakes are simple for the Knicks: Win and become New York legends.
The Knicks are an iconic NBA franchise and one that, despite the presence of the Nets (first in New Jersey and now in Brooklyn), has been a part of the soul of the tri-state area for generations. But those most recent generations have known far more heartbreak than would really be considered fair for most other teams.
For the first 10 years after that 1973 championship, the Knicks were in the wilderness. There were a few playoff runs, but mostly they missed the playoffs. In 1985, a young center named Patrick Ewing, who had just starred at Georgetown, came to the Garden and a turnaround seemed not only possible but probable.
From the late 1980s to the early 2000s, Ewing’s Knicks were regular playoff participants. But still, those teams could never get over the hump. In 1994, they finally got Michael Jordan out of the way (he went to play baseball), won a dramatic Eastern Conference Finals series against the Indiana Pacers in seven games and faced the Houston Rockets in the NBA Finals.
It went the distance, a full seven games, but that 1994 team fell short. And much of their Finals journey was overshadowed by the OJ Simpson case that began with a white Ford Bronco slowly driving down Southern California freeways in the middle of the opening game.
It took five more years, and another Jordan return and three-peat, for the Knicks to make it back to the biggest stage – against none other than the San Antonio Spurs. That Spurs team was just on the verge of becoming the next century’s most consistent franchise and easily dispatched the Knicks in five games.
And then for most of the next 20 years, the Knicks were terrible.
Sure, they had moments. Linsanity was fun. Carmelo Anthony had many productive years. Stars came and stars went. The only thing that stayed was the losing.
A turnaround decades in the making
It wasn’t until last year – when the Knicks made a series of tough off-season calls and traded for Towns and made Brunson their go-to guy – that suddenly it looked like a real possibility that New Yorkers would get to watch, and enjoy, basketball in June.
That run ended at the hands of Tyrese Haliburton and the Indiana Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals, but the stage appeared set for the Knicks in 2025-26.
What followed was a regular season filled with some high highs and some low lows as the Knicks ended up as the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference. But beneath that modest performance over 82 games was a beast ready to turn it loose.
After dropping the second and third game of their opening round series against the Atlanta Hawks, the Knicks turned it on. They rolled through the Hawks the rest of the way, blowing them away in six games. Next up were the Philadelphia 76ers, who were little more than a speed bump. The Cleveland Cavaliers, fresh off a seven game upset of the top-seeded Detroit Pistons, couldn’t muster anything against the New York steamroller.
Through two games in San Antonio, it looked like the party would end in New York in four games. The Knicks used their experience and moxie to hold off the exuberant young Spurs’ early game runs, eventually turning the screws in the second and third quarters to build solid leads. They held off late charges and went back to the Garden with a two-game lead and chants of “Knicks in four!” blaring in their ears.
Those chants, after the Game 4 comeback, have turned into “Knicks in five!” Closing it out on Saturday and not going back to the Garden for anything other than a victory parade is not just the best option – for a nervous fanbase like New York’s, it might be the only option.
To paraphrase one of their famous fans sitting at courtside during game 4, the Knicks feel ready for it.
“We know they come out with a lot of energy. They’ve been doing it all playoffs. We’ve been very up and down with that a lot this year. So we’ve got to make sure we come in focused with a great attention to detail and taking things a possession at a time,” said Knicks star Josh Hart. “We know if we do that and we play our style of basketball, we’re going to put ourselves in a good position to be successful.”
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