EmailPrintOpen Extended ReactionsNEW YORK -- Splayed on his rear with 41.7 seconds left in the opening quarter and the San Antonio Spurs ahead 37-20, Victor Wembanyama clapped excitedly, jabbing at his right temple with his right index finger.Mitchell Robinson had just clubbed Wembanyama with an elbow to the kisser.It seemed clear in that moment early in Game 4 on Wednesday night that Wembanyama and his teammates had burrowed into the heads of Robinson and the New York Knicks. Unfortunately for the Spurs, they failed to stay there -- surrendering a 29-point lead to allow the Knicks to make the largest comeback in NBA Finals history -- in a crushing 107-106 loss as they fell behind 3-1 in the series. OG Anunoby tipped in a Jalen Brunson miss on a 3-pointer in the final seconds to punctuate the comeback and put San Antonio on the brink of elimination heading into Saturday's Game 5 at Frost Bank Center."What's going through my mind right now?" Wembanyama said. "I think it's going to go 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. I know this is what we're going to do."The scene in the visitors' locker room postgame at Madison Square Garden left questions, though. Many of the players, still wearing their uniforms, sat silent with every head down, most glued to cellphones. One of those devices hit the floor with a thud and slid under a whiteboard parked in the middle of the room, sending a Spurs staffer scrambling to retrieve it.Throughout a regular-season and playoff run chock-full of lessons for the young, ascending Spurs, this one surely hurt the most."[It's] at the top of the list just in terms of the circumstances and stakes of what we're playing for," coach Mitch Johnson said. "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."With 13.1 seconds remaining and San Antonio clinging to a one-point lead, veteran point guard De'Aaron Fox sprinted to the rim for a layup that could have put the Spurs up by three points. As Fox scrambled toward the bucket, Anunoby closed fast, eventually blocking the attempted layup. The play opened the door for Anunoby to complete the comeback with the game-winning tip. But Fox might have been able to prevent that by holding the ball until the Knicks were forced to foul him."You have to score," Fox said. "Try to get a layup, get up three [points], [and] force them to need a 3. OG made a good block."Before that, however, Wembayama missed a pair of free throws with 1:47 remaining and his team trailing 104-103.The Spurs never expected to find themselves in that position in the first place. They reeled off 76 points over the first two quarters on the way to taking a 27-point lead into intermission, only to score 30 points in the second half on 8-of-39 shooting with 10 turnovers."We went away from everything we were doing," rookie guard Dylan Harper said. "In the first half, a lot of tough shots went in. Really, that was because we were playing the right way. We got away from that in the second half because of the lead. We just can't take our foot off the gas. It's one thing for me to sit up here and say it. It's another for us to go out there and do it."Devin Vassell and Harper combined to shoot 7-of-7 from deep over the first two quarters as San Antonio set a record for its most 3-pointers (14) in a half of an NBA Finals matchup. Four Spurs -- Wembanyama, Vassell, Harper and Fox -- scored in double figures by halftime, combining for 59 of the team's 76 points.In addition to opening the game on a 12-2 run, the Spurs found a way early to bait Karl-Anthony Towns into foul trouble. Just 62 seconds into the action, the center picked up his second foul on a play where Wembanyama was originally whistled for the infraction.Johnson challenged the foul against Wembanyama, which occurred on a Towns drive, and the call was corrected to an offensive foul on Towns.Robinson immediately subbed in for Towns.San Antonio, meanwhile, knocked down 9-of-11 in the first frame, including 6-of-8 from 3-point range in taking a 21-point lead that New York whittled to 19 by the end of the quarter. That 19-point lead marked the largest after the first quarter of any NBA Finals game since 2016, when the Cleveland Cavaliers led the Golden State Warriors 31-11 after the first frame of Game 6.The Spurs now own a point differential of plus-47 in the first quarter of this series, but that is meaningless if they can't finish. San Antonio has owned double-digit leads in every game of this series but has been able to maintain one only once in Game 3."I don't know about the emotions, but it was painful, of course," Wembanyama said. "It just feels like we worked too hard and give up our leads. It just hurts."Wembanyama played 44 minutes in Game 3, and with the Spurs leading by as many as 29 points in the first half, he still played 21 minutes over the first two quarters. Wembanyama's backup, Luke Kornet, played four minutes, three of those in the first half.San Antonio's other three backup bigs never stepped foot on the court.The 22-year old said, "Yeah, I guess I did," when asked whether he wore down as the game progressed."He had a few more minutes tonight because we were trying to put the game away," Johnson said. "Yeah, with [Game 5] two days after this, what was at stake, we wanted to win the game and try to put it away."San Antonio wasn't able to. Now, the Spurs find themselves facing elimination again for the second time this postseason. San Antonio emerged victorious the last time it faced elimination, in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals against Oklahoma City."I feel like even up to the last buzzer, we believed we were going to win or that we were supposed to win," said NBA Sixth Man of the Year Keldon Johnson. "We're all human. It hurts. We want to win. We're so close, but so far. We're going to continue what we do, bring our brand of basketball and correct the things we can correct going forward. I believe, one through 15, whoever steps on the court, we're going out there to get the job done."The Spurs only made that more difficult with a dud of a second-half performance in a game they could have dominated."We've proven we can surpass these difficulties," Wembanyama said. "Even though we haven't been there before, I'm convinced we're built that way and we're going to use the better of this. It's going to tighten us up."
