OG Anunoby's game-winning putback in the final seconds caps an unprecedented 29-point comeback victory by the Knicks in Game 4.
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NEW YORK — With the gates opened early to accommodate security screenings, there were extra folks in the stands at Madison Square Garden as the players warmed up. That gave many an extra shot or three at San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama as he worked out with two San Antonio staffers.
Boos rained down on Victor the Villain as he raced up and down full court. More boos came when he shot free throws (though they lustily cheered the one he missed).
After that, the fun looked to be over for the night for the home fans.
New York fell behind by a lot, then by a bundle, then eventually by 29 points in the third quarter of Game 4 of the 2026 NBA Finals on Wednesday. And that looked as if it would be too big a lead. The Knicks had come back from 22 down against Cleveland in the opener of the Eastern Conference Finals.
But 22 wasn’t 29. And Wembanyama and the other Spurs weren’t the Cavaliers.
Then the magic kicked in. The ghosts of New York’s freshly ended 13-game playoff winning streak stirred. And — what do you know? — the home team finally won a game.
The Knicks are up 3-1, one victory away from ending a 53-year NBA championship drought because they believed when so few others did.
“Coming from 29 down … it gives you the confidence to know that, okay, hey, we are never out of a game,” coach Mike Brown said. “And if we’re down again, which you hope you don’t get down that much, let’s just keep fighting.”
Here are four takeaways from the biggest comeback in Finals history:
1. The NBA’s best 2-way player?
Brown began the evening talking pregame about OG Anunoby (“He’s gotten better as the series has gone along. I think he can even reach a higher plateau”). By the end of the night, New York’s multi-tool of a player had rendered tens of thousands of people speechless.
Anunoby came up with the two most crucial plays of his team’s improbable comeback. First, Anunoby got a piece of De’Aaron Fox’s ill-advised layup attempt with 11 seconds left to set up the Knicks’ final possession. Then he flashed up the lane as Jalen Brunson’s 3-point shot hit the front rim, splitting two Spurs defenders and getting his right hand on the ball to boost New York to a 107-106 lead with 1.2 seconds left.
“OG was one of the guys I challenged,” Brown said, as Wednesday bled into Thursday. “I told OG, as big, as strong, as athletic as he is, he’s got to be a monster on the offensive glass tonight.
“I don’t know if there was a play bigger than any other play in the history in Knicks basketball.”
Said Anunoby: “When the shot went up, I was free. There was no one boxing me out. … 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.”
It's even better in slow motion 😏 https://t.co/Xu4OesLLFo pic.twitter.com/xDPPSuF3yf
— NBA (@NBA) June 11, 2026
It’s been going that way with Anunoby in The Finals and through most of the 2026 NBA Playoffs. When the Knicks win – which they had done for 13 games in a row until Monday – he is invaluable, a two-way player who chips in in pivotal moments regularly (just not as showy as Wednesday’s). When the Knicks lose, as they had in Game 3, he seems undervalued, with media and fans speculating that his coaches and teammates should have looked for him more.
There is nothing, though, that others can tell the Knicks about Anunoby that they don’t already know. And love.
“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.”
2. Spurs take record-breaking gut punch
Things seemed to set up for a rousing return to San Antonio for the Spurs. They were seconds away from doing to the Knicks what the Knicks had done to them – spoiling a whole lot of pricey fun by sticking the home team and fans not once but twice.
At 2-2, The Finals would have been rendered a mini-series, best-of-3, with San Antonio’s homecourt, er … advantage restored.
Then the nightmare from which the Spurs could not wake got real. Their 29-point lead – 81-52 with 9:40 remaining in the third quarter – began to dwindle.
Slowly at first, then seemingly all at once. But the cushion was so plush, wasn’t it? The Knicks had been taking so little away from the Spurs’ multi-headed attack, right?
But what was 20 points with 9:33 left in the fourth was 14 with 7:14 to go. Then 11 at 6:24 and, whoosh, a mere four with 4:34 left thanks to Anunoby’s 3-pointer from the left corner. When Brunson pulled up from 27 feet on the right wing and got New York within 104-103, it suddenly felt like a completely different game.
Up for grabs, as if that fat lead had never happened.
“Yeah, 76 points one half and 30 [in the second] – that’s a stark difference in a lot of surface-level things,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “You don’t get to peel too many layers and dig too deep to find some differences.”
How can the Spurs mount their own comeback now, not from 29 points in a game but from 3-1 in the series? Well, winning at home is possible – the Knicks just showed them that. There’s a starting point for Saturday’s Game 5 (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
“It’s going to go one of two ways. A bad one and a good one,” Wembanyama said. “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.”
Said Johnson: “I told them to feel the emotion tonight, because they’re competitive. That’s unhumanly possible to not. Tomorrow, take all the emotion out. They better be ready to play in two days and win.”
There was an “or else” there that Johnson didn’t even have to voice.
3. ‘Captain Clutch’ dons his cape
Jalen Brunson finishes with 36 points (12-25 FGs), five rebounds and seven assists in the Knicks' 29-point Game 4 comeback.
There was some heresy rumbling around Manhattan this week, with some critics and disappointed Knicks fans plucking Brunson’s plus/minus number out of the mountain of available stats and wondering if somehow the team was better off in this series when the point guard was sitting rather than playing.
All it took was the 44:27 Brunson, aka “Captain Clutch,” played in Game 4, including the entire second half, to flip that argument and demonstrate the fallibility of plus/minus as an individual rating.
“I say the same thing about Jalen every game,” Brown said. “He does what an MVP is supposed to. And he did it again.”
Brunson hadn’t shot well in the series before Wednesday, but he was 12-for-25 this night, sinking nine of 11 foul shots, scoring 36 points and finishing plus-11 in a 1-point victory.
The distribution of his scoring was fairly even, with 19 points in the first half, 17 in the second, nine in the final quarter. But Brunson’s flair for the dramatic never seems to wane: His 3-pointer with 2:21 left got the Knicks within a point. His floater in the lane gave them their first lead at 105-104. His miss with 16 seconds left had Spurs counterpart De’Aaron Fox sprinting out for what should have been serious clock-killing.
And of course it was Brunson’s shot that Anunoby went and got.
Brunson’s unflappable demeanor served New York well when it retreated to the locker room at halftime trailing 76-49. No fiery speeches. No fists through whiteboards.
“Really wasn’t that much to be said at that point,” Brunson said. “It was really just we need to chip away. We need to hit singles, get on base and make plays from there.”
The Knicks followed their leader after that.
“My parents raised me to never be a follower, always be a leader,” Brunson said. “I feel like it’s something that’s helped me grow as a person, and it’s a role I enjoy having … I enjoy being able to lead by example and lead vocally, as well. But it’s the chemistry with my teammates that allows me to do so.”
The legend grows.
4. Sixty-five horrible seconds, but not lethal
The madness of the final minutes on Wednesday overshadowed the game’s first 65 seconds, when New York’s plans to right the wrongs of Game 3 cratered almost immediately.
Eighteen seconds in, on the Spurs’ first possession, Fox drove inside and got belly-bumped by Towns. Foul on the big guy and a 2-0 Spurs lead.
On New York’s second possession, Towns caught a pass, attacked the rim and appeared to be dragging Wembanyama along for the ride.
Johnson challenged the foul on his guy (who happened to block Towns’ layup anyway) and got a remarkable reward: Not only no foul on Wembanyama, but also a second whistle on Towns. Replays showed that at the very start of the play, Towns caught the ball with one hand while clamping down with his other arm to trap Wemby. The Spurs center went with it, as if his coat got caught in a car door, trying to show the refs. During the review, they saw it.
The unthinkable for Knicks fans was happening before many even made it to their seats. Towns was yanked, appeared for just 2:44 in the first quarter, then picked up his third foul and lasted only 5:00 in the second.
Fortunately for New York, Towns played 18 minutes in the second half, had seven points and seven rebounds, helped pester Wembanyama to his 3-for-14 shooting in that half and was around for almost the entire comeback.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
