One Win From Forever
They were down 29 points. It was the third quarter of Game 4 of the NBA Finals at Madison Square Garden, and the San Antonio Spurs — shooting 60 percent from the floor, raining in 14 three-pointers before halftime, playing the best basketball of their season — appeared to have finished the New York Knicks off in their own building. Then OG Anunoby tipped in a missed Jalen Brunson three with 1.2 seconds left to complete the largest comeback in NBA Finals history and send the Garden into delirium. The Knicks lead the series 3-1. Game 5 tips off tonight at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC in San Antonio. One win, and New York ends 53 years of waiting.
The Weight of 53 Years
The New York Knicks last won the NBA championship on May 10, 1973 — a title built around Willis Reed's iconic hobbled appearance in Game 7 three years earlier and Walt Frazier's virtuoso performance in the clincher. That was the last time the city celebrated. What followed was not merely a drought but a decades-long exercise in raised and crushed expectations: the Patrick Ewing era that brought heartbreak against the Bulls, the Pacers, and the Rockets; the 1999 Finals loss — to these same San Antonio Spurs — that launched the dynasty that now stands one defeat from extinction. In the 53 years since 1973, 29 other franchises have won at least one championship. Six of them have won multiple. The Knicks have won none. Tonight, in the building where it all went wrong in 1999, they have three chances to make it right.
The series has been as dramatic as the drought demanded. The Knicks stole both road games in San Antonio to open 2-0 — only the third team in Finals history to do so, joining the 1993 Bulls and 1995 Rockets, both of whom won the title. Wembanyama silenced MSG in Game 3 with a 32-point masterpiece. Then came Game 4: the Spurs built a 29-point lead, set a Finals record with 14 first-half three-pointers, and appeared to have wrestled the momentum back entirely. Instead, Brunson — 36 points, relentless — slowly dragged New York back, and when his long three bounced off the front rim in the final seconds, Anunoby was already rising. His right hand swept the ball through the net. The Garden erupted. The Spurs, who have never blown a 3-1 lead in the Finals, now face the same arithmetic that has ended every team that has ever faced it: no NBA team has ever come back from 3-1 in the Finals. The Spurs must win tonight or go home.
For the Spurs and their 22-year-old generational talent Wembanyama, tonight is a referendum on resilience. For the Knicks — and for a city that has absorbed half a century of near-misses — it is something larger. Every great sports drought ends the same way: suddenly, with one play that the city will describe to its grandchildren in the same way New Yorkers of a certain age describe Reed limping to center court in 1970, or Frazier's 36-point performance in 1973. Somewhere in San Antonio tonight, that play is waiting. Tip-off is at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC.