There are two ways to look at what happened inside Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night. If you're the Knicks, you pulled off the craziest comeback in Finals history. If you're the Spurs, you authored the biggest single-game choke job in NBA Finals history.
In reality, both things can be true, and probably are. Nobody erases a 29-point second-half lead -- the largest comeback in NBA Finals history -- without playing lights out on their end and getting some help from the other. The Knicks deserve the bulk of the credit for their 107-106 Game 4 win and 3-1 lead in this series, but we can't let the Spurs off the hook for the significant role they played in their own demise -- not just in this game, but in the series as a whole. Starting with ...
The De'Aaron Fox meltdown
After all that had happened -- from setting a Finals record for first-half 3-pointers (14) en route to a 76-49 halftime lead to scoring just 30 second-half points -- the Spurs still should have and likely would have won this game had Fox simply pulled the ball out, eaten some clock, and forced New York to foul him with under 10 seconds to play.
Instead, with San Antonio just having gotten a stop to preserve a one-point lead, Fox chased down a loose ball in the front court and tried to beat OG Anunoby to the rim for a layup. It was not a good decision.
WHAT IS FOX DOING?? pic.twitter.com/1nzaBmgm9U
— Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) June 11, 2026
"I just thought I'd be able to outrun [Anunoby]," Fox explained after the game. "That's it."
It wasn't crazy for Fox, a speeding bullet with the ball, to think he could outrun a defender he already had a head-start on. What was crazy was thinking he needed to. If it's a clear breakaway layup, sure, take the free points and avoid the pressure of having to hit two free throws. But if there is going to be any contest whatsoever, you cannot take on that risk. Maintaining possession of the ball was more important.
With as fast as Fox is, he could've hit the brakes and retreated up the sideline to eat up a few more seconds and then gone to the line. Make two free throws, and then you can foul New York with a three-point lead and you have the win all but secured. Instead, he gave the ball back to the Knicks and set up Anunoby's winning tip-in with 1.2 seconds to play.
OG Anunoby becomes Knicks legend as iconic game-winner pushes New York to brink of first NBA title in 53 years Adam Silverstein
Fox was terrible in the second half overall. He dribbled the air out of the ball for most of the half, taking it largely out of the hands of Dylan Harper, who was San Antonio's best player in Game 4 by a mile. His 44 second-half touches were the most on the team; he only got into the paint on five of them, and the Spurs only averaged 0.38 points out of a Fox touch, per Caitlin Cooper of Basketball, She Wrote.
Fox wound up missing four of his five shots in the fourth quarter after committing two costly turnovers at the end of the third.
WHAT IS DE'AARON FOX DOING 💀 Back to back turnovers pic.twitter.com/VKNCNQfFFO
— Hater Report (@HaterReport) June 11, 2026
These turnovers might not seem significant when you look at the score when they happened, but all these little self-inflicted cuts are what ultimately turned into the gaping wound from which the Spurs finally bled out.
It's also worth pointing out that on Anunoby's game-winning tip-in, when the Spurs brought Victor Wembanyama to contest Jalen Brunson, Fox was the only Spurs player with a chance to get back to Anunoby and get a body on him instead of letting him run free to the rim. Instead, Fox didn't really impact Brunson's shot and then just stood there ball-watching after the fact.
OG ANUNOBY WITH THE PLAY OF A LIFETIME! pic.twitter.com/SHGHq0yfDS
— NBA on NBC and Peacock (@NBAonNBC) June 11, 2026
For all of the talk about the youth of the Spurs, it was Fox, the ninth-year pro who was brought in to be a veteran leader, the calming point guard presence, who fell apart at the worst time.
The Wemby free throws
The Spurs made 17 of their 20 free throws in Game 4. Wembanyama was responsible for the three misses, and two in particular are probably going to live in his mind for the rest of his life.
With under two minutes to play, the Spurs caught a massive break when Josh Hart smoked a wide-open layup that would've given the Knicks a one-point lead. When Wembanyama got fouled on the other end, it was a chance to flip at least some of the momentum and extend the lead back to three. Given the way things were going for the Spurs, with their once-comfortable lead steadily disintegrating, that would've felt like an inhaler hit in the middle of an asthma attack. Instead, he bricked them both and that's when the panic officially set in.
WEMBY CHOKED BRICKED BOTH FREE THROWS pic.twitter.com/sE6pCnyBr1
— Hater Report (@HaterReport) June 11, 2026
Less than 30 seconds later, Brunson finished a friendly-roll floater to give the Knicks their first lead of the game. Yes, the Spurs probably still would have won had Fox not lost his head in the waning seconds, but this is now two games in these Finals that you could accuse Wembanyama of choking.
I don't like saying that, because he has been sensational throughout the postseason and plenty clutch to boot. But at the end of the day, there were the two shots off the side of the backboard late in the fourth quarter of Game 1, the crossover off his foot a few minutes after that, then, of course, the pass off Stephon Castle's back in Game 2, and now these free throws in Game 4.
It's an unfairly thin line between being talked about as the future GOAT and being labeled as an actual goat in real time, but that's how it goes on these kinds of stages.
The Spurs have not been able to close
That's the story of this series so far. The Spurs have led all four games of this series with under two minutes to play. They got outscored 11-0 over the final 1:50 of Game 1. Wembanyama passed it off Castle's back and missed a buzzer-beating jumper in Game 2. They won Game 3, and blew a 29-point lead in Game 4.
Kenny Atkinson definitely believes this should be, at worst, a 2-2 series, if not 3-1 in favor of the Spurs, who are making literal history for their inability to hold leads and close out wins in this series. From our CBS Sports research department:
- The Spurs are the only team to blow 10-point leads in three of the first four games of an NBA Finals in the last 30 seasons.
- The Spurs are the only team to trail in a Finals series after leading each of the first four games with under two minutes to play.
- The Spurs have held the lead in this series for 133 minutes and 12 seconds, a record for any team that has found itself trailing an NBA Finals after four games in the past 30 years.
- The Spurs have held at least a 10-point lead for a remarkable 26% of this series, and they now reside alongside the 1975 Washington Bullets as the only two teams in history to suffer two one-point losses in a single Finals.
Even in an age when basically no NBA lead is safe, these are some tough beats. The Knicks are too good a team, particularly late in games, to let your foot off the gas and start turning your cushions into carelessness.
If the Spurs don't pull off a miraculous 3-1 comeback, it's going to be a tough pill to swallow when they look back at this series and take full stock of all the opportunities they had to win it.
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