{"id":1984268,"date":"2026-06-11T09:05:51","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T06:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1984268"},"modified":"2026-06-11T09:05:51","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T06:05:51","slug":"how-somehow-became-the-knicks-dna-and-led-to-a-historic-nba-finals-game-4-comeback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1984268","title":{"rendered":"How \u2018somehow\u2019 became the Knicks\u2019 DNA, and led to a historic NBA Finals Game 4 comeback"},"content":{"rendered":"
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NEW YORK \u2014 Any sane person would have told Miles McBride that his team no longer stood a chance.<\/p>\n

The New York Knicks trailed by 27 at halftime. The NBA Finals were bound to go back to San Antonio tied at two games apiece. But McBride, surrounded by fellow believers, thought otherwise.<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old guard reeled through his squad\u2019s first-half gaffes, going through them in his head one by one. There were some bad fouls, some missed defensive rotations, some jumpers that could have gone in but rimmed out. McBride himself could not hit a shot. The Spurs, meanwhile, could not miss.<\/p>\n

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They seemingly floated in every scoop shot, nailed every 3-pointer and flushed every dunk. Over the first two quarters, they did not miss a free throw. They barely even turned it over, just twice in the first half. San Antonio was playing a perfect basketball game. But in McBride\u2019s head, this was a good sign for the Knicks.<\/p>\n

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In an effort to decipher the proper deficit, the one he felt would be more reflective of realistic performance instead of the one the measly scoreboard projects, he dinged the Spurs for a few of their made shots. Such fiery shooting seemed unsustainable for another two quarters. He removed some more points from the lead because of the Knicks\u2019 silly mistakes. In a moment of impromptu McBridian mathematics, he decided the lead was more like 14.<\/p>\n

\u201cFourteen,\u201d he thought. \u201cThat is doable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Knicks could overcome 14. After all, they had stormed back from worse.<\/p>\n

Just last series<\/a>, they trailed the Cleveland Cavaliers by 22 points with only eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter of Game 1. Somehow, they won. Because \u201csomehow\u201d has been woven into the Knicks\u2019 DNA. \u201cSomehow\u201d is what they do. \u201cSomehow\u201d is why McBride sat at his locker convincing himself that Wednesday\u2019s first-half shellacking, one that put the Spurs up as many as 29 points, could not poison them. \u201cSomehow,\u201d especially after such a comeback in Game 4 of the NBA Finals that ended in a miraculous 107-106 victory<\/a>, placing them just a single win away from their first championship in 53 years, is the identity of this team.<\/p>\n

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This crew of 18 players \u2014 from McBride to Jalen Brunson to OG Anunoby \u2014 never actually believes it is losing.<\/p>\n

Not when the team is up 30 or 40 or 50 in a playoff game, as New York has been various times this spring, and not when it trails by sums that would kill anyone else. To the unenlightened, a 29-point deficit would inspire a white flag. Only with MSG magic does it produce a white knight.<\/p>\n

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In that locker room, the one whose stability has carried the Knicks to a 3-1 finals lead, McBride\u2019s thought process is not exceptional. It is the norm.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t look at when you\u2019re down 29 \u2014 we\u2019ve got to win this game,\u201d Josh Hart said. \u201cYou look at it when you\u2019re down 29 of \u2018OK, let\u2019s get it to 20.\u2019 There\u2019s three minutes left in the third quarter. We\u2019re down 18, you\u2019re thinking, \u2018Let\u2019s get it to 10.\u2019 In the fourth quarter, you\u2019re like, this is winning time. Anything can happen. And when you have a group of guys that do that \u2014 it starts with (president) Leon (Rose), (executive VP William Wesley) \u2014 and (head coach) Mike (Brown) is the same \u2014 and it just trickles down.\u201d<\/p>\n

At halftime, Brown did not bother to show any film from the first two quarters. Normally, a head coach would guide the players through a few clips. On Wednesday, he let them be.<\/p>\n

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What You Should Read Next<\/div>\n
\n \"Knicks<\/p>\n
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\n Knicks stage historic Game 4 comeback against Spurs, 1 win away from title\n <\/div>\n
\n The Spurs had a 29-point second-half lead. By the final buzzer, the Knicks had erased it to go up 3-1 in the NBA Finals.\n <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThere really wasn\u2019t much to be said at that point,\u201d Brunson said. \u201cJust we need to chip away, hit singles.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few of the players discussed how San Antonio\u2019s hot shooting could not continue. Assistant coach Darren Erman, a holdover from Tom Thibodeau\u2019s staff who was around for last season\u2019s run to the Eastern Conference finals, reminded some of the guys about the first two games of their 2025 series against the Boston Celtics.<\/p>\n

The Knicks fell down 20 points in each of those. They won both and eventually upset the defending-champion Celtics in six games.<\/p>\n

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But those comebacks against Boston have nothing on these. The Celtics bricked shot after shot. As they cooled, the Knicks stumbled in the right direction. But the ones against Cleveland and now San Antonio have been stampedes, laced with brilliance from Brunson, fourth-quarter fallaways from Karl-Anthony Towns and heroics from Anunoby.<\/p>\n

Anunoby\u2019s cape flashes in unexpected moments, when he skies for LeBron James-esque transition blocks, when the basketball just kind of finds him and he splashes in 3-pointers or, of course, when he scrambles into the paint for the greatest tip-in in finals history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The Knicks did not know Game 4 would end this way. They figured the Spurs\u2019 shooting would collapse but not to this degree. They did not predict that Anunoby would nail seven 3-pointers, that splicing Jose Alvarado into a lineup with Brunson would bewitch the opponent, that De\u2019Aaron Fox would attempt the most ill-advised layup imaginable, that San Antonio star Victor Wembanyama\u2019s legs would move without any vigor over the last quarter of a 44-minute trudge.<\/p>\n

They did not anticipate any of the details. They just knew what McBride and the rest of the team told themselves: That pulling off the largest comeback in NBA Finals history would be just another night at the office.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Any sane person would have told Miles McBride that his team no longer stood a chance. The New York Knicks trailed by 27 at halftime. The NBA Finals were bound to go back to San Antonio tied at two games apiece. But McBride, surrounded by fellow believers, thought otherwise. The 25-year-old guard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,241],"class_list":["post-1984268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-nytimes-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1984268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1984268\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1984268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1984268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1984268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}