There are NBA games, there are playoff games, and then there is whatever happened at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday night. This wasn’t a basketball game. It was a séance. A collective hallucination. Something that had no business happening – and yet, here we are.
The New York Knicks came back from 29 points down to beat the San Antonio Spurs 107-106 in Game 4 of the NBA Finals, completing the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, and taking a commanding 3-1 series lead. One more win on Saturday and New York ends a 53-year championship drought.
A nightmare start at the Garden
The night began with a warning sign that quickly turned into a full-on catastrophe. After days of talk about free-throw discrepancies and flagrant fouls that weren’t, the Garden came unglued after Karl-Anthony Towns picked up two fouls in the first 62 seconds of Game 4 – the second of which was initially ruled a foul on Victor Wembanyama, only to be overturned into an offensive foul after a challenge by San Antonio head coach Mitch Johnson. Sixty-two seconds. That’s how long it took for the night to start unraveling.
Towns’ early exit forced Mitchell Robinson into an atypical substitution pattern, and the big man quickly grew fatigued. Robinson went 0-for-4 on free throws as the Spurs successfully exploited the Hack-a-Mitch routine. The Knicks were all over the place – meandering offensive possessions, unfocused defensive rotations, empty-gesture physicality that seemed to suggest that, yes, Wembanyama and the Spurs had gotten into their heads.
San Antonio sets records and MSG goes silent
The Spurs didn’t just take advantage of the chaos – they torched the Garden for one of the great halves in NBA Finals history. San Antonio set a Finals record with 14 threes in the first half and scored 76 points on 28 of 47 shooting, an absurd 59.6% clip. They were getting whatever they wanted, from anywhere on the floor. Their 19-point lead after the first quarter was the largest for any road team in Finals history, per ESPN Research, and so was their 27-point halftime advantage.
Wembanyama was his usual alien self. He had 16 points and six rebounds in the first half, finishing the game with 24 points and 13 rebounds while shooting 9 of 25 from the field. His first-half version was practically unguardable, pulling up from anywhere, finding mismatches, controlling the paint. He was plus-28 in 21 first-half minutes. Stephon Castle did his part too, and would later prove crucial in the closing stretch with a pair of free throws that gave San Antonio the lead with 30 seconds left. Four Spurs hit double figures in the first half alone. This looked like an execution.
After giving up a Finals-record 14 first-half 3-pointers, missing eight free throws and logging as many turnovers as assists, the Knicks went into intermission down by 27 points – the largest halftime deficit of any home team in NBA Finals history (excluding the COVID bubble). Madison Square Garden was stunned into something approaching silence. And then, mercifully, Wu-Tang Clan took the halftime stage.
The Wu-Tang intermission nobody forgot
Say what you want about the basketball – the halftime show was a moment in itself. The Wu-Tang Clan performing at MSG during an NBA Finals game where the home team trails by 27? If you scripted it, nobody would buy it. The crowd needed something to hold onto, and the Clan from Staten Island delivered. Whether it was a genuine spiritual intervention or just good booking, the energy coming back out of that locker room told a different story than the one that had played out in the first half.
The comeback nobody believed in – except them
Towns, bouncing back after those two early fouls, invoked the team’s collective experience in the locker room: “I said last year, we were in this situation two games in a row in Boston, and we found a way to get it done.” This group has been here before – or close enough. The Knicks began their ascent in the third quarter, winning it 26-14 and holding the Spurs to just 20% shooting while hitting 5-of-10 threes to begin clawing back.
But it wasn’t over. Not even close. In the fourth, San Antonio still led by as many as 20 with 9:33 to go. At that juncture, their win probability sat at 99.6%, per ESPN Analytics. This was over. Mathematically. Historically. In every possible way – except the final buzzer.
Jose Alvarado, Brooklyn’s own, saves the night
Then came the subplot nobody fully anticipated. Jose Alvarado checked in with 9:46 left in the fourth quarter, and 30 seconds later made a 3-pointer to cut the Spurs’ lead to 95-78. His layup with 3:49 remaining trimmed it to 102-97, and his 3-pointer with 3:07 left made it 104-100. He also assisted on an Anunoby 3-pointer and a Brunson triple during a two-minute stretch late in the fourth when he had five points and two assists.
Alvarado, born in Brooklyn and a product of Christ the King High School in Queens, was as indispensable as Jalen Brunson, KAT, OG Anunoby and Josh Hart in the fourth quarter. Some guys are made for moments like this. Alvarado is one of them.
Jalen Brunson refuses to let this die
When Brunson hit a 3-pointer over the outstretched arm of Wembanyama with 2:21 left, Madison Square Garden sounded like the inside of a jet engine. The structural integrity of section 325 was in question as the roar of the crowd caused the upper reaches of the arena to literally start rumbling. That shot cut the lead to one. One point. From 29 down.
Brunson finished with 36 points and seven assists, shooting 12-of-25 from the field. He was doing everything – manufacturing buckets, drawing attention, setting up others. The Spurs had no answer.
The Josh Hart miss that aged well
Then came the moment that nearly gave every Knicks fan a heart attack. After De’Aaron Fox made a bad pass and Josh Hart stole the ball, Hart had a wide-open lane to the hoop and drove all the way to the rim for an uncontested layup – and missed. Wide open. Right at the rim. Gone. Hart said after the game he would have had a “lifetime of regret” had Anunoby not made his game-winner. That quote says everything you need to know about how close this came to going sideways. NBC NewsNBC News
After the Hart miss, New York fouled Wembanyama and put him on the line. He entered the game shooting 86.2% from the stripe. He missed both. Two missed free throws from the best player on the floor with the game on the line. The Garden lost its mind.
OG Anunoby – the block, the tip, the legend
Then came the sequence that will be replayed for decades. De’Aaron Fox grabbed the ball in a full sprint with under 10 seconds to go and attempted a layup – but Anunoby charged toward him, rose up and rejected it cleanly. Fox had options. He chose the one that ended with OG Anunoby swatting it into history. It was an all-time boneheaded play by Fox. Alvarado collected the loose ball, got fouled, and the Knicks set up one final possession.
Stephon Castle had given the Spurs a one-point lead after sinking two free throws with 30.3 seconds left, setting up the Knicks’ final possession, which saw Brunson launch a 30-footer that hit front iron. Two defenders doubled Brunson, leaving Anunoby free to crash the glass and streak to the rim for the putback. Anunoby said he initially wanted to try to dunk the miss, but had to pivot when the ball went over his head. “So I tried to tip it in softly,” he said, “and it went in.”
OG Anunoby finished with a playoff career-high 33 points on 10-of-15 from the field, adding the block on Fox and the game-winning tip with 1.2 seconds left.
“Bedlam here at the Garden!” ESPN’s Mike Breen shouted. “They can’t believe it!” Nobody could.
One win away
The previous record for largest comeback in NBA Finals history was 24 points, set by the Boston Celtics in the 2008 Finals against the Los Angeles Lakers. That record stood for 18 years. It lasted about a quarter in Game 4 of the 2026 Finals.
“That has to be the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball,” coach Mike Brown said after the game. Hard to argue with that. Anunoby responded to the gravity of the moment in typical fashion: “It feels cool. I mean, everyone’s pretty excited. I’m excited, too.” Said to laughter. Classic OG.
The Knicks are now one win away from their first NBA championship since 1973. Game 5 is Saturday in New York. After what happened Wednesday night, you’d have to be genuinely out of your mind to bet against them.