'Painful': How the Spurs Collapsed for the Biggest Blown Lead in NBA Finals History

NEW YORK -- It's impossible to win a basketball game in the first half, and the Spurs learned that the hardest way possible as they crashed and burned with largest collapse in NBA Finals history in Game 4 at Madison Square Garden.

"It was painful, of course," Victor Wembanyama said after the brutal 107-106 loss, after the Spurs led by 29. "It feels like we worked too hard and give up our leads. It's as simple as that. It just hurts."

For much of the game, it felt like they might have won it in the first 62 seconds. Maybe that was the problem.

Knicks star center Karl-Anthony Towns, who devastated San Antonio on both ends in the first two games of the series as New York stole two on the road, had alread picked up a foul on the first play. On the Knicks' second possession, he got good positioning on Victor Wembanyama and drove for a layup attempt, and Wemby recovered for a block but got called for a foul.

Wembanyama pointed across the court to San Antonio's bench, helicoptering his finger vociferously to ask them to challenge the call. You only have one challenge if you get it wrong, so teams rarely take that risk in the first half, let alone the first minute of the game. Johnson and his staff have caught flak for missing on some of these shots in the playoffs, but they trusted their eyes and their star as the rookie head coach called timeout and asked for a review.

As the replay showed, quite clearly, Towns got such good positioning for the drive because he clamped down on Wembanyama's arm before he caught the pass. Instead of a foul each on Wemby and KAT, it got overturned to two on Towns and he was forced to the bench pretty much as soon as the game started.

Upon review Wemby's first foul instead becomes KAT's second pic.twitter.com/WvIJ7bQ7vm
— New York Basketball (@NBA_NewYork) June 11, 2026

The Knicks came undone like the Weezer song, as if Towns pulled the thread that held together their hopes for a bounce-back win as he walked away.

San Antonio opened the game on a 12-2 run, and eventually built their lead up to 29.

Towns' early exit screwed things up for New York on many levels. First of all, it took the best shooting big man maybe ever off the floor and replaced him with a guy who couldn't hit free throws even before he broke his right hand leading up to the series. It forced Mike Brown to give first-quarter minutes to Ariel Hukporti, who had played just eight total minutes since the start of the Conference Finals.

After all the talk about Wembanyama pushing Jalen Brunson in Game 3, it seems the Knicks came in with a mandate to beat the big Frenchman up as much as possible. When he fell to the floor, Hukporti gave him an extra shove down there. He wouldn't be the only one.

Towns is more known for his scoring, but he's been a solid defender against Wembanyama. With Robinson across from him, Wemby drove to the basket, scored inside, and returned some trash talk as he pointed to his ear as if to say, "What was that? I couldn't hear you." Robinson said something to the effect of, "Oh yeah? Hear this!" and hit Wemby in the throat with a forearm shiver that sent him to the floor.

wemby smiling ear to ear while telling mitchell robinson "i'm in your head" is impeccable trash talk pic.twitter.com/3GHI68JnP5
— Molly Morrison (@mollyhannahm) June 11, 2026

From a seated position, Wembanyama clapped it up, stared down his foe, and pointed to his head to let Robinson and the world know that he'd gotten inside. On another play Jose Alvarado did all he could to push and pull Wemby before eventually tackling him.

In one 10 second clip Alvarado gave Wemby a two handed push, tried to trip him, tried to hook his leg, tried to fall back into him, then finished with a single leg takedown

lol, lmao even pic.twitter.com/kscPoQTcjF
— Tom Petrini (@RealTomPetrini) June 11, 2026

While the Knicks focused on sending a message to Wembanyama in the first half, the Spurs focused on running their offense. They scored 25 points in the first six minutes or so, moving the rock like the 2014 team and shooting like the death-ball Warriors. They racked up 18 assists and 14 made triples in the first 24 minutes, hitting 53% from deep and almost 60% from the floor, turning it over just twice.

San Antonio went into halftime leading 76-49, an absolutely insane margin. It felt insurmountable to everyone in the building. Maybe this young team allowed themselves to believe that too. But you can't win a basketball game in the first half, and the Spurs learned that in the hardest way possible.

"It's a pretty clear picture if you watch the game in terms of what we did in the first half and why we scored so many points," Johnson said. "It was pace, finding the paint, passing the ball to your teammate, taking good shots. The second half was opposite of that."

The Knicks opened the second half on a 16-5 run. Devin Vassell missed a 3, and Wembanyama missed two of them, then he got called for a flagrant 1 as he raised his arm and hit KAT in the face with his elbow. Keldon Johnson got some early burn and missed a few shots inside. Champagnie missed a 3, and Harper missed a 3, and De'Aaron Fox turned it over, and Vassell missed a 3, and Keldon missed a 3, and Fox missed a 3, and Harper turned it over. San Antonio scored just five points in the first seven minutes of the second half, as their approach turned to mush.

"We got away from what got us the 76 points in the first half just in terms of putting pressure on the rim, rolling after screens, running, continuing to find the paint, whether it's for ourselves or for our teammate," Johnson said. "We got on our heels, missed some shots. You don't get as many free throws, high-percentage looks when you play on your heels like that... 76 points one half and 30; that's a stark difference in a lot of surface-level things. You don't get to peel too many layers and dig too deep to find some differences."

Wembanyama was asked about what went wrong in the fourth quarter, and he correctly stated that it started unraveling well before that.

"I can't really explain it right now. I don't know. I think it's just execution, greediness of some sort. We clearly weren't the most hungry in the second half," he said. "Stopped moving the ball. Stopped executing."

"We went away from everything we were doing," Dylan Harper said. "I think in the first half, a lot of shots went in. A lot of tough shots went in. But really that was because we were playing the right way. I think 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."

The shooting percentages flipped completely after the Wu Tang Clan performed at halftime. San Antonio shot an appalling 20.5% from the floor and 17.6% from 3. They had 6 assists to 9 turnovers. There were way too many jumpers, and they didn't have success inside either as Wembanyama shot 3-14 in the second half and 1-8 in the paint.

The Knicks hit 11-20 from deep, and kept hitting shots as the Spurs kept missing until a 20-point fourth quarter lead dwindled to 11, and then to 7, and then to 4, and then to 1 as Brunson drilled a 3 that lit the Garden on fire.

The abandonment of the play style that brought the Spurs to the gigantic lead, that brought them to the Finals in the first place, will be what sticks with this group more than any missed opportunity down the stretch, and there were several of those.

With two minutes left and a one-point lead, Fox threw an awful turnover but the Spurs dodged a bullet in transition. Wembanyama got to the line for free throws, but he missed them both and the margin stayed at a point. Brunson drove for a floater to give the Knicks their first lead of the game at 105-104 with 82 seconds left.

Castle drove baseline and got trapped there, turniong it over with a minute left as he stepped on the baseline. The Spurs got a stop, and still had a chance. Fox took an early jumper, probably with a two-for-one in mind, and when he missed it Castle grabbed the board and got fouled. He hit both to take the lead back with 30 seconds left.

San Antonio played fantastic defense as Brunson bricked a floater over Wembanyama's extendo-arm block attempt at the rim. The loose ball got tipped out past halfcourt as one of the fastest players in the league tracked it down. But De'Aaron Fox needed to be a bit quicker to get away with an error in judgement that will haunt him for a long time. He grabbed the ball just outside the paint with OG Anunoby trailing him. Fox later told reporters he thought he could beat him to the rim. He was terribly wrong.

DE’AARON FOX?! 😅 pic.twitter.com/038SSqjh5n
— Hoop Central (@TheHoopCentral) June 11, 2026

There were 13 seconds left when Fox grabbed the ball. If he had just dribbled the ball back out to the perimeter, the Knicks would have had to foul, and the Spurs probably would have gotten away with the dozens of errors and overall malaise they played with in the second half. Instead he tried to sneak one past one of the league's best defenders. Anunoby punished him for it brutally, stuffing the shot and sending it back the other way to give the Knicks a shot at the win.

New York drew up a play after the Spurs used their foul to give. Wemby got switched onto Brunson, who got the inbound pass up top from Anunoby. Fox doubled off the inbounder, and Brunson threw up a prayer with a few seconds left. That prayer was answered, not by a swish, but by Anunoby who crashed unimpeded from miles away and tipped in the miss.

OG ANUNOBY WITH THE PUTBACK.

KNICKS COMPLETE THE 29-PT COMEBACK FOR THE WIN.

LARGEST COMEBACK IN NBA FINALS HISTORY 🤯 pic.twitter.com/ZtWVWY6JsR
— NBA (@NBA) June 11, 2026

Harper almost had it, but he didn't.

"Could play wish I could have did this, wish I could have did that," he said. "But at the end of the day he tipped the ball, and it went in the rim. I definitely thought I had a hand on it. I definitely think I helped put the ball in the rim. But just got to box out."

After all that, the Spurs still had an inbound play to win it with 1.2 seconds left. Castle cut to the rim but couldn't catch it cleanly, and that was that.

"I feel like late game, just got to control the game more," Harper said. "Can't just give up big leads like that."

The Spurs have built double-digit leads in all four of these games, and they've blown three. The Game 2 loss was gut wrenching, and this one was worse considering the Spurs now find themselves in a 3-1 hole instead of a tied series with all the momentum.

"At the top of the list just in terms of obviously the circumstances and the stakes of what we're playing for," Johnson said after the loss. "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."

It's difficult to find a silver lining after such a brutal, devastating collapse. If there is one for the Spurs, it's that they know they were just a couple of smarter plays away from this series being 3-1 their way. They know they

"We have two days to put everything we have into that game," Johnson said. "That's the only game that matters. By no means am I not acknowledging the Knicks and what they've done. Give them credit for playing good basketball. But we feel like we've decided the outcome of all four games. We need to be better in the next game."

As the players porcessed the shock and pain of this loss and thought about how to move on, Wembanyama outlined two diverging paths for this young Spurs team.

"I think it's going to go one of two ways; a bad one and a good one," he said. "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."

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