Knicks Stage Historic 29-Point Comeback in Game 4, Nearing First Championship in 53 Years

The New York Knicks just completed the greatest comeback in the history of the NBA Finals . Perhaps in the history of the NBA . Let's not mince words: we might have just witnessed perhaps the most incredible comeback in the history of professional sports. They were down 29 points in the second half of an NBA Finals game! How on Earth did that happen?!?!?!?

There's no one answer. It was a slow drip, 20 or so minutes of miscues on one end and heroism on the other. Change the result of one out of more than a dozen plays or decisions and the San Antonio Spurs might be headed back to San Antonio with a tied series and home-court advantage the rest of the way. Instead, the Knicks, after a thrilling 107-106 win, are 48 minutes away from their first championship in 53 years. So to figure out how it happened, let's go through those 20 or so minutes and recount the moments that made it all possible.

The flagrant

> Victor Wembanyama has been assessed a Flagrant 1 foul for elbowing Karl-Anthony Towns. Wemby is now one Flagrant Foul point away from a 1-game suspension. pic.twitter.com/NSpCMC44nK — Underdog NBA (@UnderdogNBA) June 11, 2026

No one will ever admit it, but the Knicks came into this game fixated on the officiating. Coach Mike Brown went on a tirade about it after Game 3. Victor Wembanyama's shove on Jalen Brunson in Game 3 was controversially not upgraded to a flagrant  afterward, keeping him two flagrant points away from a suspension. And on Wednesday,  Karl-Anthony Towns was removed from the game after 62 seconds because of two quick fouls, and the Knicks spiraled from there.

They spent the first half going at Wembanyama, either out of frustration or in an attempt to goad him into doing something stupid. Mitchell Robinson was called for a flagrant. Jose Alvarado nearly was. San Antonio built the third-biggest halftime lead in Finals history.

On some level, the Knicks needed what came next. Early in the third quarter, Wembanyama elbowed Towns in the face. That gave him that third flagrant foul point  the Knicks surely felt he deserved, and almost immediately, it felt like the Knicks clicked back into place. The refs no longer felt like a distraction. Everyone could focus on basketball. That's what the Knicks do best.

The triple

Two quick baskets cut the lead to 25. Fine. Cue the Chris Paul memes. But when Brunson hit a 3-pointer with around eight-and-a-half minutes remaining in the third quarter, you quirked an eyebrow. At least, Spurs coach Mitch Johnson did. That 7-0 run led to a timeout, an acknowledgment that the Knicks were starting to find something and that the Spurs should try to cut off their momentum. Suddenly, something was in the air.

The airball

Besides Wembanyama, you could argue no Spur has punished the Knicks quite as much as Dylan Harper has in the Finals. His one weakness has been 3-point shooting. Well, he made three triples in the first half. The Spurs made a Finals record 14. It just felt like one of those games. There's little you can do when your opponent makes over half of their 3s, and when someone as lethal attacking downhill as Harper is the one doing it, there's just no reasonable defense.

When he went up for this one late in the third quarter, he airballed. As with the Wembanyama flagrant, it felt as if something cosmic had shifted, as if the universe were realigning for the Knicks. Without that magical first-half shooting, would the Spurs have enough to win the game? It turned out, they didn't. San Antonio made only three of its 17 long-range attempts in the last two quarters.

How the Spurs authored the biggest single-game choke in NBA Finals history Brad Botkin

The turnovers

They weren't huge plays on the scoreboard, but you started to feel the wheels come off for the Spurs right around the end of the third quarter, on two uncharacteristic De'Aaron Fox turnovers. The first was a pass out of bounds to Stephon Castle when he wasn't looking. A bad pass to Castle when he wasn't looking? Hmm. I wonder where I've seen that before . The second was simpler: Fox merely dribbled the ball off his own foot.

Fox is supposed to be the steady, veteran hand. Castle turned the ball over 20 times in San Antonio's first two Western Conference Finals games against Oklahoma City, and getting Fox back from his high-ankle sprain helped turn around that series. But these two mistakes were notable foreshadowing of what was to come.

The bounce

When Landry Shamet made his crazy, triple-bounce 3-point at the end of Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, it felt like karmic retribution for the Knicks after Tyrese Haliburton's improbable, game-tying bounce in Game 1 of that very same series a year earlier. Just one problem: it came on the other rim. That left the Haliburton rim haunted, but OG Anunoby addressed that with this lucky bounce off the front of the rim at the end of the third quarter to cut the lead to 15.

The challenge

They call football a game of inches. The NBA, with the advent of instant replay, is very often the game of millimeters. When Robinson knocked away this inbound pass, common sense suggested he touched it last. But Knicks director of video services and player development Jordan Brink saw otherwise. He's been masterful overseeing New York's challenges this postseason, and this was one of his biggest wins yet. Even if the Knicks didn't score on their next possession, it could have kept points off the board in a game decided by just one.

The sub

Alvarado played three minutes and 23 seconds in the first half. He played two minutes and 35 seconds in the third quarter. These are appropriate numbers for a backup point guard in the NBA Finals. Alvarado has given the Knicks good minutes all series, but this is a team built around another small point guard in Brunson. Playing the two of them together would surely make the Knicks too small... right?

Wrong, at least according to Brown, New York's first-year coach. With 9:46 to play, he brought Alvarado back into the game with Brunson still out there. Alvarado would go on to play the rest of the game minus five seconds. A player who didn't even average 17 regular-season minutes closed the last 10 minutes of the greatest comeback in NBA Finals history, and it was perhaps the single most important decision of the game.

In the fourth quarter alone, Alvarado put up eight points, three assists and two rebounds. The Alvarado-Brunson pairing outscored the Spurs by 21 points for the game. As small as Alvarado is, he compensates defensively with sheer physicality. He may have committed five fouls in his first nine minutes on the floor, but he ultimately held up to the degree that the Knicks needed him to. More than anything, the Knicks needed a second ball handler. San Antonio's ball pressure in the backcourt would have exhausted Brunson had the Knicks not had someone else on the floor who could dribble reliably.

Just as Shamet swung Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals, Alvarado was the hero reserve of Game 4 of the Finals. Just as heroic here? Brown. Remember, a year ago, one of the major criticisms of Tom Thibodeau was that he didn't use his bench enough. Now, the Knicks are riding their bench to one of the more magical playoff runs in NBA history.

The slump buster

> KARL-ANTHONY TOWNS STEP BACK 3 AT THE BUZZER FILTHY. 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/p15i7L0xFd — Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) June 11, 2026

Another of the biggest stories of the Finals to this point: as dominant as Karl-Anthony Towns has been at points, he didn't score a single fourth-quarter point in the first three games. Well... what a way to put your first points on the board! This step-back 3, which resulted in Towns falling out of bounds, was probably the craziest basket of the comeback, and it was the one that fully brought Towns back into the game after foul trouble. Towns may have only taken two shots in the fourth quarter, but he made both of them count...

The return to single digits

> KAT BRINGS THE KNICKS WITHIN SINGLE DIGITS! Watch the 4Q of Game 4 on ABC 👀 pic.twitter.com/UPobXfeCa1 — NBA (@NBA) June 11, 2026

And here's the other Towns shot. He's had success driving at Wembanyama in this series, but this one was particularly tough. Wembanyama could use the baseline as a second defender, and Towns had to walk a tightrope. He might have even gotten fouled. But he finished through contact. The lead was cut to single digits for the first time since the first quarter.

The barrage

Every crazy comeback in the modern NBA includes a barrage of 3-pointers. Think back to Indiana's Game 1 comeback against the Knicks last season. We remember the Haliburton shot... but Aaron Nesmith made six fourth-quarter 3s. The Knicks made six fourth-quarter 3s as a team in Game 4, but if you're looking for that single stretch when the basket felt like it was the size of a hula hoop, it was here. Let's go through three of the biggest shots of the game.

- The Knicks get the Spurs into rotation, forcing Fox to split the difference between Alvarado and Josh Hart in the corner. Wembanyama rotates towards the rim, so Alvarado intentionally passes low to make sure he can't reach it. It gets to Anunoby in the corner. The lead is cut to four. - The Spurs push the lead back up to seven on a Fox triple, but when Alvarado sets a ghost screen for Brunson, both Harper and Devin Vassell stick with the superstar. Wrong choice. Brunson passes it back out to Alvarado. Another 3. The lead is back down to four. - The third shot is the superstar shot. Brunson draws the one-on-one matchup with Wembanyama on the perimeter with two-and-a-half minutes remaining, but the situation is hardly optimal. The strong side is empty, but he would have to drive around a 7-foot-4 defender to try to get a look at the rim. By the time he does so, another Spur could rotate over, and with the shot clock running out, he couldn't pass. So he heaves a 3-pointer over a defender who is, at least by listed heights, 14 inches taller than him. We now have a one-point game.

The miss

> JOSH HART NOOOOOO pic.twitter.com/Xz9EqDmkg8 — Legion Hoops (@LegionHoops) June 11, 2026

There's always a goat, and it very easily could've been Hart. After yet another horrible Fox turnover, Hart had a free lane to the basket, but Vassell was in hot pursuit. He couldn't quite decide if he wanted to dunk or lay it in, so he attempted to split the difference and wound up with the worst miss of his career. He even acknowledged it after the game.

"I got a special shoutout for OG, man, because he saved me at least for this game a lifetime of regret," Hart said.

This wouldn't even be the only significant mistake Hart made down the stretch. When San Antonio took a 106-105 lead with less than a minute remaining, it happened because Hart got caught up watching the ball and didn't box out Castle on Fox's miss. Hart fouled him, and Castle sank two free throws. But Hart was saved from that lifetime of regret by everything that came next.

The misses

> VICTOR WEMBANYAMA MISSES BOTH FREE THROWS NO WAY. 😅 pic.twitter.com/WaworjFmCq — Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) June 11, 2026

With 1:47 remaining, Wembanyama had a chance to push the lead back up to three when Anunoby fouled him on the drive that followed Hart's miss. Instead, he missed both free throws to keep the lead at one.

We've had consequential missed free throws in the Finals. Nick Anderson missing four straight possible game-winners in 1995 comes to mind. The Spurs have even had some brutal ones. Had Manu Ginobili or Kawhi Leonard made all of their freebies in Game 6 of the 2013 Finals, Ray Allen never would have had a chance to send that game to overtime (don't worry, Heat fans, this won't be our last mention of Allen tonight).

But think about the company Wembanyama is trying to keep. We're a long, long way away, but he's trying to climb GOAT mountain . Michael Jordan never missed back-to-back free throw

_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/knicks-historic-game-4-comeback-spurs-biggest-moments/)._