The San Antonio Spurs put together one of the best first halves in NBA Finals history.
And then the New York Knicks pulled off the best comeback that the league's title round has ever seen.
Down 29, the Knicks rallied to beat the Spurs 107-106 on Wednesday night to take a 3-1 lead in the NBA Finals. It was the biggest comeback in finals history ... and a whole lot of other things happened in Game 4 as well, some that swung the pendulum completely San
Antonio's way and some that wound up letting New York do its share of rewriting the NBA history book as well.
A look inside the numbers:
Above all else, there was this: The biggest comeback in the finals.
San Antonio 81, New York 52 was the score with 9:40 left in the third quarter. No team had ever rallied from 24 points down in a finals game and won; the Knicks outscored the Spurs 55-25 over the final 21 1/2 minutes to pull this off.
Boston trailed the Los Angeles Lakers by 24 points in Game 4 of the 2008 finals, before winning 97-91 — another 30-point swing, just like what the Knicks pulled off on Wednesday.
There even were records within the record, such as:
— The Knicks were down 27 at the half. The biggest halftime deficit successfully overcome in a finals game was 21 points (41-20) by the Baltimore Bullets over the Philadelphia Warriors on April 13, 1948.
— The Knicks were down 15 going into the fourth, tying the biggest end-of-three-quarters deficit ever overcome in a finals game. Chicago trailed Portland 79-64 on June 14, 1992.
The Knicks never led by more than one point and won — the first time any team has done that this season.
The last time it happened, in any game, regular season or playoffs? Game 1 of the 2025 NBA Finals, when Indiana beat Oklahoma City 111-110.
There had been three comebacks from 20-point fourth-quarter deficits in the last 30 years of playoff basketball ... until three weeks ago, that is.
The Knicks were down by 22 in the fourth and beat Cleveland in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. They were down by 20 in Game 4 against the Spurs and won again.
So, the Knicks in that situation in these playoffs: 2-0.
The rest of the NBA in that situation in the last 30 postseasons: 3-751.
Jalen Brunson scored 36 points and OG Anunoby had 33 for the Knicks. Anunoby had the tip-in that ended up being the winning basket for the Knicks, but two teammates having that many points in a finals game also put that duo in title-series lore.
They became the 10th set of teammates with at least 33 points apiece in a finals game.
Elgin Baylor and Jerry West did it six times for the Lakers from 1962 through 1966. Kyrie Irving and LeBron James did it twice for Cleveland against Golden State, once in 2016 and again in 2017.
The other duos to do it: Philadelphia’s Hal Green and Chet Walker (1967); the Lakers’ West and Wilt Chamberlain (1970); the Lakers’ Magic Johnson and Jamaal Wilkes (1980); the Lakers’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Worthy (1985); Portland’s Clyde Drexler and Jerome Kersey (1990); the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal (2002); and Golden State’s Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant (2017).
San Antonio led 76-49 at the half, the 27-point margin tying the third-largest in finals history.
(Technically, that was the biggest halftime lead on the road, but more on that in a moment.)
Boston led the Los Angeles Lakers by 30 (79-49) at the half of Game 1 of the 1985 finals. The Lakers led Miami by 28 (64-36) at the half of Game 6 of the 2020 finals in the bubble; the Heat was the designated “home” team for that game, but it was played in the neutral site of Walt Disney World.
The Knicks also had a 27-point lead at the half of a finals game in 1970; they led the Lakers 69-42 at the break of Game 7 that year.
San Antonio had 76 points at halftime, the most by a road team in an NBA Finals game and tied for the third-most by any team in the title series.
The other first-half scoring outputs that reached that number: Cleveland scored 86 against Golden State in Game 4 of the 2017 finals; Boston scored 79 against the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 1 of the 1985 finals; and the Celtics also scored 76 against the St. Louis Hawks in Game 1 of the 1960 finals.
The most by a road team in the first half of a finals game, before Wednesday, was a 73-point first half by the Lakers over the Celtics in Game 2 of the 1962 finals.
San Antonio made 14 3-pointers in the first half, an NBA Finals record for any half. The previous record was 13 by Cleveland in the first half against Golden State on June 9, 2017.
The Spurs also made eight 3s in the second quarter, one shy of the NBA Finals record for most in a quarter. Golden State made nine in the first quarter against Cleveland on June 7, 2017 and Boston made nine in the fourth quarter against the Warriors on June 2, 2022.
The other teams with eight in a quarter: Phoenix against Milwaukee in the 2021 finals and Dallas against Boston in the 2024 finals.
Only 62 seconds into the game, Spurs coach Mitch Johnson — or more specifically, whoever makes the call in the second row of the bench area and relays that information — wanted a timeout called to review a foul that was called on San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama.
Great move by the review caller. Turns out, New York's Karl-Anthony Towns was pinning Wembanyama's arm, the call got overturned, Towns went to the bench with his second foul of the game and that helped set the tone for the Spurs' huge opening half.
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