The Spurs threw 29 points from Victor Wembanyama at the New York Knicks on Friday night in San Antonio. They also threw a 14-point fourth-quarter lead at them. The Knicks won anyway. 105-104. Two-nil in the series.
This is becoming a pattern.
Game 1 at Frost Bank Center: Knicks trailed by 14, came back, won. Game 2 at Frost Bank Center: Knicks trailed by 14 in the fourth quarter, came back again, won. The San Antonio crowd have now watched their team lead by double digits twice in this series and lose both times.
Victor Wembanyama finished with 29 points and 9 rebounds. He also had the ball in his hands with the game on the line. He turned it over with 9.5 seconds left. He then missed a buzzer shot. The Knicks won by one.
The Game
Karl-Anthony Towns was the best player on the court. He finished with 21 points and 13 rebounds, shooting 8-for-12 from the field and 3-for-5 from three. When the Spurs pushed, Towns answered. When the Knicks needed a big stop on the boards, Towns provided it. His rebounding, in particular, was the difference in a game decided by one possession.
Jalen Brunson had a difficult shooting night — 7-for-25 from the field, which is not the kind of efficiency the Knicks want from their primary playmaker. But efficiency was not what mattered in the final seconds. With 9.5 seconds left, Brunson stood at the free-throw line needing to make one to seal the game. He made it. That is why he is paid what he is paid.
Mikal Bridges was the third 20-point scorer for the Knicks, finishing with 20 points on 8-for-13 from the field, four threes from six attempts, six rebounds and six assists. For a player signed to complement rather than lead, those numbers in a Finals game are extraordinary. He shot 8-for-13 with six assists while Brunson ground through 25 shots to get the same total. The contrast in efficiency between those two performances tells the story of how close this game really was.
Wembanyama’s Night
Victor Wembanyama had every statistical reason to believe he had done enough. Twenty-nine points on 11-for-21 shooting. Nine rebounds. Four blocks. Two steals. The box score is exceptional. The result was not.
What the box score does not capture is the late bad-pass turnover that handed Brunson the free throws, and the buzzer shot that rimmed out. Both happened when the game was in the balance. Both went against the Spurs.
This is not a criticism of Wembanyama as a player. At 22 years old, reaching the NBA Finals and posting numbers like these is the sort of thing a franchise builds around for a decade. But the Knicks defended him well enough when it mattered, forcing the turnover that decided the margin.
The Spurs rallied from 14 down in the fourth quarter. They had the crowd. They had momentum. They had their best player on the court in crunch time. They lost by one.
The 14-Point Question
Across two Finals games, the Spurs have built 14-point leads and lost both times. That is not a coincidence. It is a sign of something structural in how this Knicks team operates under pressure.
New York’s record in these playoffs now stands at 13 consecutive wins. In that run, they have faced deficits and absorbed them. They have not blown out teams consistently, but they have beaten teams that were leading them. The Celtics, the Heat, and now San Antonio twice, all of them have led, all of them have lost.
The Knicks win close games. They have won 13 of them in a row.
What Happens Next
Game 3 moves to Madison Square Garden on Monday June 8 (8:30pm ET). The Knicks are 2-0 on the road and now go home. They have the crowd. They have the momentum. They have a 13-game win streak.
The last team to win an NBA title after going 0-2 in the Finals was the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016. The San Antonio Spurs know that reference. They are 0-2.
For San Antonio to win this series, they need to win four of the next five games. Three of those games are at MSG. That is a very hard ask against a team that wins close games in front of 20,000 fans who have waited 53 years for this.
Our Model Read
The Knicks entered this series as slight underdogs on some models, primarily because of Wembanyama’s ceiling and San Antonio’s home-court edge. Two games in, the evidence points to a team that is executing better under pressure.
The 13-game win streak is not luck. It reflects a team with multiple scoring options (Towns 21/13, Brunson 20, Bridges 20, all in the same game), elite defensive communication, and a proven ability to close out games that are in the balance.
San Antonio have a generational talent in Wembanyama. He will have better games than this. Whether those better games come in time to make this a series is what the next few days will tell.
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