The San Antonio Spurs determined who will be NBA champions this season on Wednesday night.
Hint: It won’t be them.
The Spurs are now owners of the worst collapse in NBA Finals history after blowing a 29-point lead and falling 107-106 to the New York Knicks.
New York never led in the game until 1:22 remained en route to taking a 3-1 series lead.
The Knicks now have three chances to win their first title since 1973, beginning with Game 5 on Saturday night in San Antonio.
It’s going to be hard for the Spurs to wipe away the residue of a brutal setback.
Another problem: Only once has a team overcome a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals and that team had LeBron James in his prime.
That occurred in the 2016 NBA Finals when the Cleveland Cavaliers recovered to win the final three games against the Golden State Warriors.
The previous biggest documented comeback in an NBA Finals game was 24 points when the Boston Celtics recovered in Game 4 against the Los Angeles Lakers in 2008. Boston won the series in six games.
That’s what San Antonio faces in the wake of OG Anunoby’s tip-in heard around the world with 1.2 seconds left.
But the problems began much earlier as the Spurs were outscored 58-30 in the second half.
It was an unforeseen collapse after the Spurs played one of the best first halves in Finals history. San Antonio made an NBA Finals record 14 3-pointers and led 76-49 at the break.
It’s glaring to blow a 29-point lead when your team is good enough to play in the NBA Finals.
“To put as much good work into that first half as we did, get the lead that we had and not finish the job, is disappointing to say the least,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said.
Johnson said he wanted his players to feel the pain Wednesday night and then turn the page and move forward Thursday.
Though things started slipping away in the third quarter, the Spurs led by 20 points with 9:33 remaining.
But New York wasn’t calling it a night and the next thing you knew, it was a four-point game with 4:34 remaining.
After the Knicks took the lead, San Antonio moved back ahead and was in fabulous shape when Jalen Brunson missed a shot and De’Aaron Fox collected the rebound for the Spurs.
Fox made a calculation that he could make a layup as opposed to laying back and getting fouled and that turned out to be a disaster. Anunoby blocked the attempt with 11.1 seconds left and New York got the rebound to set up the sequence for the winning points.
The Spurs had a bad breakdown there too. Anunoby in-bounded the ball to Brunson (36 points), who was double-teamed with 7-foot-4 Victor Wembanyama being one of the defenders.
Brunson threw up a low-percentage 3-pointer from 31 feet out and Wembanyama was nowhere near the rim when the ball bounced off it.
“When the shot went up, I was free,” said Anunoby, who made seven 3-pointers and scored 33 points. “There was no one boxing me out. So I just went in there for a tip-dunk and then ended up just tipping it in.”
The Spurs then fumbled the chance at a final shot, a symbolic ending to close a dreadful second half.
Now San Antonio has to figure out how to recapture that splendid first-half form and keep it throughout Game 5.
The Spurs may be ahead of the schedule – nearly everyone expected the Oklahoma City Thunder playing this week – but there remains a path to a title.
“I think it’s going to go one of two ways,” said Wembanyama, who scored 24 points but was just 9-of-25 shooting. “One of two ways. A bad one and a good one. The bad one would be giving up. The good one would be getting stronger through this, getting more together.”
Sorry Wemby, your team couldn’t stay together with a 20-point, fourth-quarter lead. Your squad won’t be the last team standing.
It was only New York’s third win on Wednesday night, but the result made it clear that No. 4 will be occurring too.
