Knicks stun Spurs with historic 29-point comeback in Game 4 win

A 29-point hole vanished in front of a stunned Madison Square Garden crowd, and OG Anunoby finished the comeback with a tip-in with 1.2 seconds left that gave the Knicks a 107-106 Game 4 win over the Spurs. New York, which had not reached the NBA Finals since 1999, erased a 76-49 halftime deficit, seized a 3-1 series lead and moved within three chances of its first title since 1973.

The final possession became the center of the blame game almost immediately. With San Antonio up by one and 11.1 seconds left, De’Aaron Fox drove into the kind of late shot decision that critics quickly identified as the collapse’s key mistake, and the sequence got worse from there as the Spurs never produced a clean answer on the ensuing possession. Magic Johnson’s criticism only sharpened the focus on Fox, but the breakdown was larger than one touch: San Antonio also had an inbound problem and never recovered its composure.

The numbers show how complete the unraveling was. The Spurs had built a 41-22 first-quarter lead and were ahead by 27 at halftime before New York turned the game into a second-half sprint. ESPN reported that the Knicks outscored San Antonio 58-30 after the break, while the Spurs, who had made 11 of their first 16 three-pointers, went cold and shot 3-for-17 from deep in the second half. Victor Wembanyama’s missed free throws added another layer to the failure, but the decisive damage came from a stretch in which the Spurs stopped getting organized shots and the Knicks kept forcing pressure.

Charles Barkley delivered the harshest verdict, calling the Spurs “the dumbest basketball team in the history of civilization” and saying their late-game decisions were mismanaged and helped New York win. The outburst matched the scale of the collapse. Before Wednesday night, the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history was the 24-point rally by the 2008 Celtics over the Lakers, and the only larger playoff comeback on record was the Clippers’ 31-point surge against Golden State in 2019. Game 5 moves to San Antonio on Saturday night, with the Spurs now trying to avoid becoming the answer to a Finals footnote that New York wrote in one furious half.