NBA Finals: Knicks stun Spurs with historic comeback for 3-1 lead

By BRIAN MAHONEY AP Basketball Writer

NEW YORK — A record-breaking comeback, capped by what could go down as a legendary play.

The long road back to the top of the NBA is almost complete for the New York Knicks, and the step they took Wednesday night was unforgettable.

The Knicks came from 29 points down and moved to the brink of their first championship since 1973 by beating the San Antonio Spurs, 107-106, in Game 4 of the Finals on OG Anunoby’s tip-in with 1.2 seconds remaining.

“That has to be the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said.

It’s certainly high on the list – as high as Anunoby leaped when Jalen Brunson’s long 3-point shot bounced off the front of the rim, with his right hand stretching high to softly flick it in.

“Right hand from God,” Knicks center Karl-Anthony Towns said.

OG ANUNOBY WITH THE PUTBACK.

KNICKS COMPLETE THE 29-PT COMEBACK FOR THE WIN.

LARGEST COMEBACK IN NBA FINALS HISTORY pic.twitter.com/ZtWVWY6JsR

— NBA (@NBA) June 11, 2026

The Knicks, who have just two titles in their 80-year history and hadn’t even been to the NBA Finals since 1999, have a 3-1 lead and three chances to win the best-of-seven series – starting with Game 5 on Saturday night in San Antonio.

It looked impossible early, when the Spurs rolled to a 27-point halftime lead. But Brunson helped bring the Knicks back with 36 points and Anunoby finished with 33.

No team had come from more than 24 points down in a Finals game, when Boston did it against the Lakers in 2008, since the NBA began keeping detailed play-by-play for all four quarters in 1997. The Spurs led 81-52 in the third quarter.

“We’re a resilient group. We’ve been through a lot,” Anunoby said. “We’ve come back plenty of times when we’re behind. Just staying with it, weathering the storm, not being too down or angry or frustrated.”

The only bigger comeback on record in any playoff game was 31 points by the Clippers against Golden State in Game 2 of a first-round series in 2019.

“You look at it when you’re down 29 of, ‘OK, let’s get it to 20.’ There’s three minutes left in the third quarter, we’re down 18, you’re thinking, ‘Let’s get it to 10,’” forward Josh Hart said.

“In the fourth quarter, you’re like, this is winning time. Anything can happen.”

And it did.

The Knicks had their 13-game winning streak snapped in Game 3 and seemed headed for a second straight defeat throughout the first half, when Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs opened the biggest halftime lead by a visiting team in the Finals.

But the young Spurs, who made 11 of their first 16 3-pointers, went cold in the second half, going 3 for 17 from behind the arc as the Knicks outscored them 58-30.

“We got on our heels – we missed some shots,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “It’s disappointing, to say the least.”

Delirious fans inside Madison Square Garden sang along to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” a few minutes after watching something that seemed almost impossible.

Wembanyama had 24 points and 13 rebounds but shot just 9 for 25 from the field.

Road teams had won the first three games, only the second time that had happened in the Finals. San Antonio was well on its way to making it 4 for 4.

President Donald Trump wasn’t at this game – Taylor Swift was – but the same restrictions remained around Madison Square Garden as when he attended Game 3. That angered the Knicks, who decided not to go forward with plans to hold an outdoor watch party outside the arena.

Inside the building in the first half, there wasn’t much for the hosts to be happy about, either.

But the Knicks gave themselves a chance by limiting the Spurs to 14 points on 4-for-20 shooting in the third quarter, using a 13-0 run to get back in it and cutting it to 90-75 heading to the fourth.

These Knicks, who erased a 22-point deficit in the fourth quarter against Cleveland in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals, just don’t quit. Even when the comeback seemed for naught when Stephon Castle was fouled after the Knicks had taken the lead and made two free throws to put San Antonio back ahead with 30 seconds left, the Knicks had one more rally in them.

Dylan Harper scored 21 points and De’Aaron Fox and Devin Vassell each had 18 for the Spurs, who will try to regroup and send the series back to New York for Game 6 next Tuesday. Only one team – Cleveland in 2016 – has recovered from a 3-1 deficit in the Finals.

“I think it began before (the fourth quarter),” Wembanyama said of the Spurs’ collapse. “I can’t really explain it right now. I don’t know. … We clearly weren’t the most hungry in the second half.”

Fans booed Wembanyama when he came on to the floor to warm up about an hour before the game and the Knicks tried to get rough with him, with Mitchell Robinson called for a flagrant foul for hitting him above the shoulders and Jose Alvarado reviewed for one after going below the belt.

Wembanyama – who was also called for a flagrant – stood up OK against the Knicks but will regret the two free throws he missed with 1:47 left and San Antonio leading 104-103.

The Spurs broke to a 12-2 lead, giving them a double-digit advantage in the first quarter of all four games. They kept pouring it on and led 41-22 after one, then extended it to 57-32 when Julian Champagnie’s 3-pointer made them 11 for 16 behind the arc.

WEMBY MISSES LATE FREE THROWS

For all the shots Wembanyama hit to get the Spurs to the Finals, the series is beginning to be defined by a few of his misses.

After clanking his shot off the rim at the buzzer on what would have been the Game 2 winner, Wembanyama did the same on two key free throws late in Game 4. With the chance to put his team up by three with 1:47 left, he instead went 0 for 2.

“It’s just a shot,” Wembanyama said. “You might work on your form hours and hours. At the end of the day it’s just a shot, so you need to shoot it the normal way.”

Wembanyama and the Spurs are now on the brink of elimination, and it mattered little that the 7-foot-4 big man finished with 24 points and 13 rebounds.

It mattered more that the Knicks held Wembanyama to eight points in the second half while staging their historic comeback.

“It’s going to go one of two ways,” Wembanyama said. “One of two ways, a bad one and a good one. The bad one would be giving up. The good one would be getting stronger through this, getting more together. I know this is what we’re going to do.”

Wembanyama enters Game 5 on the edge of possible discipline after being called for a flagrant foul early in the second half for a right elbow to Towns’ chin. Because of the NBA’s flagrant foul point system, he now has three and is one more away from an automatic one-game suspension.

“Of course I’m going to be a little more careful, but it’s not going to change much,” Wembanyama said.

An officiating decision in the aftermath of Game 3 going the other way would have put him in danger of already staring down a suspension. The NBA acknowledged officials missed Wembanyama striking Brunson in the head but did not retroactively make it a flagrant.

“The league’s going to do what they’re going to do,” New York coach Mike Brown said before Game 4. “They aren’t going to listen to me. They aren’t going to listen to nobody else.”

Wembanyama early in Game 4 looked to be getting under the skin of his opponents. After scoring on Mitchell Robinson and letting him hear about it while going back down the court late in the first quarter, he took a forearm to the face and appeared to say, “I’m in your head, bro,” while pointing to his right temple.

A similar play happened early in the second, when 6-foot guard Jose Alvarado jostled with Wembanyama before ultimately pushing the big man’s right leg to get him to the ground.

Things changed after halftime. San Antonio had its biggest lead of the night at 81-52 when Wembanyama elbowed Towns, and the Knicks outscored the Spurs 55-25 the rest of the way.

Wembanyama played all but three minutes of the first half, which Johnson called normal. Johnson said Wembanyama, who ended up playing nearly 44 minutes, got a little more playing time to try to close it out.

“With two days after this, what was at stake, we wanted to win the game and try to put it away,” Johnson said.

Asked if that caused him to wear down as the game went on, Wembanyama responded: “Substitution patterns, I don’t know. It’s not really my expertise. But, yeah, I guess I did.”

NOTABLE NUMBERS

• The Knicks never led by more than one point and won – the first time any team has done that this season. The last time it happened, in any game, regular season or playoffs? Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals, when Indiana beat Oklahoma City, 111-110.

• There had been three comebacks from 20-point fourth-quarter deficits in the last 30 years of playoff basketball … until three weeks ago, that is. The Knicks were down by 22 in the fourth and beat Cleveland in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals. They were down by 20 in Game 4 against the Spurs and won again.

So, the Knicks in that situation in these playoffs: 2-0.

The rest of the NBA in that situation in the last 30 postseasons: 3-751.

• Brunson scored 36 points and Anunoby had 33 for the Knicks, becoming the 10th set of teammates with at least 33 points apiece in a Finals game.

Elgin Baylor and Jerry West did it six times for the Lakers from 1962 through 1966. Kyrie Irving and LeBron James did it twice for Cleveland against Golden State, once in 2016 and again in 2017.

The other duos to do it: Philadelphia’s Hal Green and Chet Walker (1967); the Lakers’ West and Wilt Chamberlain (1970); the Lakers’ Magic Johnson and Jamaal Wilkes (1980); the Lakers’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy (1985); Portland’s Clyde Drexler and Jerome Kersey (1990); the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal (2002); and Golden State’s Steph Curry and Kevin Durant (2017).

• San Antonio led 76-49 at the half, the 27-point margin tying the third-largest in Finals history.

Boston led the Lakers by 30 (79-49) at halftime of Game 1 of the 1985 Finals. The Lakers led Miami by 28 (64-36) at halftime of Game 6 of the 2020 Finals in the Orlando bubble; the Heat were the designated “home” team for that game, but it was played in the neutral site of Walt Disney World.

The Knicks also had a 27-point lead at the half of a Finals game in 1970; they led the Lakers 69-42 at the break of Game 7 that year.

• San Antonio made 14 3-pointers in the first half, an NBA Finals record for any half. The previous record was 13 by Cleveland in the first half against Golden State on June 9, 2017.

The Spurs also made eight 3s in the second quarter, one shy of the NBA Finals record for most in a quarter. Golden State made nine in the first quarter against Cleveland on June 7, 2017 and Boston made nine in the fourth quarter against the Warriors on June 2, 2022.

The other teams with eight in a quarter: Phoenix against Milwaukee in the 2021 Finals and Dallas against Boston in the 2024 Finals.

AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds and AP Sports Writer Stephen Whyno contributed to this story.

“Do whatever it takes to win… I just tried to make a play.”

OG Anunoby (33 PTS) on his GAME-WINNER as the Knicks mount the largest comeback in NBA Finals history (29 points) https://t.co/Xu4OesLdPQ pic.twitter.com/D47Z6qric8

— NBA (@NBA) June 11, 2026