On Chasing History presented by Michelob ULTRA, the Knicks hang on to top the Spurs seal a 2-0 lead in a thrilling Game 2.
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NEW YORK – It gets late early in the NBA Finals, particularly when the road team grabs a 2-0 lead the way the New York Knicks did in San Antonio last week. That rarely has happened – think Chicago in 1993 and Houston in 1995 – but when it has, there’s been no digging out for the team that so quickly squandered its home court.
That reality forces some emotions into this 2026 championship series, whether the combatants acknowledge it or not.
The Knicks and the Spurs both prefer to block out yesterday and tomorrow, dwelling only on today as if each game were a self-contained pop quiz, unconnected to the others, their final grade coming weeks from now at the end of a semester. But they’d better be careful with mental gymnastics. Teams have been known to one-game-at-a-time themselves straight into summer if they don’t face their predicaments head on.
Things should feel dire to San Antonio, out of its comfort zone, trying to climb back into the series at Madness Square Garden. It needs to bother the Spurs that they held double-digit leads in both Game 1 and Game 2, only to get walked down by the Knicks and to come up short each time thanks to a handful of pivotal plays.
And it cannot be lost on the players and coaches that Gregg Popovich – the franchise’s “El Jefe” – made sure to send off the squad before their chartered aircraft took off Saturday afternoon for this Manhattan mission. The NBA’s all-time winningest coach, Popovich, 77, wasn’t ready for the Spurs’ playoff run to be over. Nor should they be.
“Pretty much his message was just, let the last two games go,” said guard Stephon Castle on Sunday. “It happened. They were very winnable games. We feel like we gave them those games.”
As deep and dark as their 2-0 hole appears – beyond 7-foot-4 center Victor Wembanyama’s standing reach, at least – one victory Monday in Game 3 (8:30 ET, ABC/ESPN) would open a world of new probabilities and possibilities for the Spurs.
Where they sit now suggests “never,” and going to 3-0 screams it; no NBA team in 15 tries all-time has pulled out of that tailspin. But getting to 2-1 offers legit hope – 14 teams have rallied from there to snag the title (50 have not).
The trick moving forward is to neither deny the situation nor to dwell on it.
“We’re at a stage now where the next game is going to be the biggest game until we’re not playing,” said Spurs coach Mitch Johnson. “We have to continue to execute and compete and finish plays and move on to the next play. Understand that there [are] going to be circumstances, there [are] going to be outcomes throughout a game that may not go your way.
“When you break down the 96 minutes of the two games, the fourth quarter … we’ve done some things well. We have not played to our standard – New York has played very well, they have something to do with that.”
San Antonio knows there are plays it owns, physical mistakes or misjudgments that get blown into game-deciding gaffes. Happens to the best of ’em.
“If there’s a thematic thing,” Johnson said, “the biggest thing is we’ve put in some good, hard work at times and have not taken advantage of that hard work.”
Rookie guard Dylan Harper, asked for his approach to Game 3, said: “Desperation. I think for me I feel like I’m at my best when I play with that type of desperation. I think that’s what’s kind of needed for this occasion.”
Besides staying true to their preparation, the Spurs will try to stay focused as the potential crashers of the vast Garden party Monday. The Knicks will be hosting a Finals game for the first time since 1999. The city is abuzz.
“I just feel like it’s going to be mayhem out here,” Spurs wing Devin Vassell said. “We know it’s going to be crazy. The fans are going to be going crazy, outside the arena is going to be crazy, the media’s going to be crazy. We just need to be focused on us and everybody that is in our locker room and the team.”
Said veteran guard De’Aaron Fox: “We got to try to take the crowd out of it as quickly as possible. I think even like our Game 7 [at Oklahoma City], we never really let the crowd get into the game.”
The Knicks face the flip side of the Spurs’ emotions on virtually every front. Because they lead the series 2-0, complacency is a threat. Having survived San Antonio’s home court advantage, they know MSG guarantees them nothing – a bucket by Ben Stiller or Fat Joe would be their first.
“To be honest, I’m not doing too much walking around the city right now,” said Knicks wing Josh Hart on Sunday. “If you go to different places and people are singing your praises … it’s very easy to get complacent and to start feeling good. Then you start relaxing.”
The Knicks saw enough flaws during their film sessions to know they have much to clean up despite winning twice. Forward Mikal Bridges can share the Finals whiplash he felt back in 2021, when his Phoenix Suns opened 2-0 against Milwaukee, only to have the Bucks win four straight.
And as formidable as New York’s current 13-game winning streak seems, it was triggered by the scare of dropping two of the first three games in the first round against Atlanta. The Knicks stared at their own playoff mortality and have not forgotten the lesson.
“Just having that kind of understanding and desperation,” said center Karl-Anthony Towns. “We don’t ever want to put ourselves in that position again. So … maybe that’s what’s led us to this point of being on a heater.”
The Knicks know this much: If a series hole in the first round can prompt a team to string together 13 victories, so can a similar hole in the Finals ignite the Spurs to two, three or four in a row.
Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
