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Good things come to those who wait for a long, long time. The New York Knicks clinched their first NBA championship in 53 years with another thrilling late comeback win over the San Antonio Spurs on Saturday.
Three days after grabbing a 3-1 NBA finals series lead by completing the largest comeback in finals history at Madison Square Garden, the Knicks sealed the deal on the road with another epic display of resilience and recovery, stunning the Spurs at Frost Bank Center.
As the Spurs blew a 16-point lead and wilted under pressure, missing a swath of makable shots, and with their young superstar Victor Wembanyama faltering when it mattered most, the Knicks’ Jalen Brunson hauled his fitful side to glory with a commanding performance, putting up 45 points in a 94-90 victory.
“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” Brunson, fighting back tears, said after the game. He was later names the NBA finals MVP. “I’m just like, I’m in awe. I don’t know. Whenever someone counted us out, we found a way to come back and do something about it.”
The Knicks had moved to the brink of the championship on Wednesday when they shredded the Spurs’ 29-point cushion thanks to an astonishing second-half surge crowned by a feathery game-winning tip-in from OG Anunoby with 1.2 seconds left. That 107-106 win tilted the balance of the series firmly in their favour, but San Antonio began resolutely in front of their own fans on Saturday only to let a big advantage slip again.
“There aren’t really words you can put into what these guys have done, the character that they have, the fight they have, the grit they have, the never-say-die attitude,” team president Leon Rose said. “It’s incredible. Incredible, the run they’ve been on.”
This series deserved its stellar ratings, including the biggest television audience for a Game 4 since 1998, with stars shining on the court and on the sidelines – a bevy of famous names made the trip to Texas for Saturday’s game, including Prince Harry. It has been compelling and confounding – close battles that at times looked anything but, with Mike Brown’s Knicks escapologists hauling themselves out of deep holes. Mitch Johnson’s Spurs, meanwhile, have been at fault for failing to raise the escape rope out of reach.
“Everybody knows we’re gonna do it,” Wembanyama told reporters on Friday. Expectant fans who thronged bars and watch parties in New York disagreed, but the skyscraping star backed his words with deeds, at least in the opening stages. Yet as the night wore on he appeared to tire, not for the first time in these finals. He had five blocks less than five minutes into the second quarter of a contest with echoes of the earlier match-ups: a fast Spurs start followed by a slowdown.
The Cleveland Cavaliers, who beat the Golden State Warriors in 2016, remain the only team to have recovered from a 3-1 deficit in the finals. San Antonio’s problems had seemed fixable: game-management issues stemming from inexperience and fatigue, rather than inferior ability.
The Spurs held double-digit leads in all five games and raced into an 18-8 advantage in the first quarter on Saturday, aided by repeated New York turnovers but mainly powered by a furious intensity that left the visitors gasping for breath and searching for a way past a resolute defense. It was 23-13 at the end of the first quarter, with the Knicks a mere 4 for 22 on field goal attempts.
The advantage swelled to 16 points midway through the second quarter before a momentum shift. Though Karl-Anthony Towns was making more fouls than points – and would ultimately foul out – a scorching scoring streak from Brunson saw the lead sliced to seven. Then De’Aaron Fox – he of the costly “dumbass play” in Game 4 – was whistled for doing something that certainly wasn’t smart: a flagrant foul for a shove on Josh Hart in what turned into a five-point possession for New York.
At half-time the Spurs held only a five-point lead, which looked ominously modest for them given their dominance on the night amid New York’s scoring woes and in the wider context of their tendency to fade late.
Though New York received scant offensive help from their bench the third quarter was initially tight, with the teams trading baskets and the temperature rising. Brown and Brunson were livid that a landing-zone flagrant foul was not called against Wembanyama after Brunson notched a three-pointer then fell awkwardly on his ankle under contact. It could have been a crucial moment in the series: with three flagrant points already against him before the game, Wembanyama was one more infraction away from an automatic one-game suspension.
With nine successive points from the impressive 20-year-old rookie Dylan Harper, who scored 25 points on the night, San Antonio built a 15-point advantage deep into the third quarter, but the Knicks promptly pegged them back and were only seven points behind as the game entered its final period.
As Wembanyama struggled to command the court, Brunson almost single-handedly kept the Knicks close and the mood grew tense in the stands, with memories fresh of the Spurs’ nightmarish collapse in the previous game. For good reason: Brunson’s brilliance tied the game inside the last five minutes, scoring his 40th point with a lay-up that was the visitors’ 10th point a row, then giving his team the lead.
They held on to it as San Antonio grew desperate and ragged, and duly claimed their third title, and their first since 1973, proving that what matters most is not how you start – it’s how you finish.
