NEW YORK (AP) — For the New York Knicks, a 53-year wait for another championship might have been decided by what happened in 4 1/2 seconds.
And make no mistake: Those 4 1/2 seconds will never be forgotten by the Knicks. Or by the San Antonio Spurs.
The situation: Game 4 of the NBA Finals, Knicks down by one in a game where they trailed by as many as 29 points. They call timeout with 5.7 seconds left, just as Jose Alvarado nearly committed a backcourt
violation that would have cost the Knicks the basketball.
Here's how it happened.
The timeout comes and New York's Josh Hart is distraught. He blamed himself for missing an assignment at the other end, which allowed San Antonio’s Stephon Castle to hit two free throws that put his team up 106-105.
“I’m sitting there just hoping my guys make a play,” Hart said.
OG Anunoby inbounds the ball for the Knicks. The Spurs elect to not have a defender impede his vision, using all five of their players to guard the four who were moving about for New York. Jalen Brunson shakes free of a couple of defenders, including the Spurs' Victor Wembanyama, the league's Defensive Player of the Year, and catches the inbounds pass near midcourt.
Brunson takes one dribble and lets a shot fly from about 31 feet, over Wembanyama's outstretched left arm. The shot, in the air for about 1.2 seconds, misses and hits the rim. It's short, and the ball bounces off the iron into the air.
Anunoby — with nobody in his path — sprints from the out-of-bounds spot into the lane, just in case.
“I just went and crashed,” Anunoby said. “Tried to get a tip-dunk or something. The ball went over my head, so I couldn’t really dunk it. So, I tried to tip it in softly.”
With 2.5 seconds left, Anunoby leaps. The Spurs have a few Knicks boxed out, including Karl-Anthony Towns. But Anunoby is unnoticed and gets in front of the Spurs' Dylan Harper and Devin Vassell.
“I was contesting the first shot,” Wembanyama said. “Turned around and saw him up there. That’s all I saw.”
Anunoby throws his right arm into the air as he leaps, just out of the reach of the airborne Vassell. He gets his thumb and a couple of fingers on the ball, hoping to knock it back toward the rim — which he does.
“Right hand from God,” Towns called it.
Anunoby falls to the floor. The ball gets over the front of the rim. Brunson's fist goes into the air. The Garden waits.
Announcer Mike Breen thought Brunson's 3-point shot would be good. In the end, Breen yelled “Bedlam here at the Garden! They can't believe it!” as Anunoby's shot went through the net.
Hart — who also missed a go-ahead layup in the final moments — will never be able to thank him enough.
“I’ve got a special shoutout for OG, man,” Hart said. “He saved me, at least for this game, a lifetime of regret.”
Had the rebound of Brunson's miss bounced in a different direction, Anunoby wouldn't have gotten there.
“Bounced off the rim the right way,” Harper said. “He tipped it in the right way. It went in. I could play, ‘Wish I could have did this, wish I could have did that.’ But at the end of the day, he tipped the ball, and it went in.”
The one-point lead matched the Knicks' biggest all night.
It was all they needed.
“That has to be the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “I’m not you guys. You guys know better than me. But it was just unbelievable.”
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Reynolds reported from Miami.
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