The San Antonio Spurs will never look at a 29-point lead the same way again. For three quarters of Game 4, they were playing with house money: comfortable, confident, and seemingly headed for a trip back to Texas with the series tied 2-2. Then it all came apart. The New York Knicks, a team that has built this entire series on comebacks, pulled off the unthinkable to steal Game 4, 107-106. They etched their name into the record books as the authors of the largest comeback in NBA Finals history, eclipsing the previous mark of 24 points set by the Boston Celtics against the Lakers in 2008.

The loss stunned the team. Victor Wembanyama got a front-row look at OG Anunoby’s put-back with 1.2 seconds left, the shot that punctuated the collapse. That image captured a brutal truth for the Spurs in this series.

“I don’t know about the emotions, but it was painful, of course,” said the Spurs cornerstone. “We work too hard and give up our leads, just as simple as that. It just hurts.” 

The numbers behind the meltdown are almost as staggering as the result itself. San Antonio’s first-half outburst, a 76-49 lead built on 14 made three-pointers, a Finals record for a half, represented the largest halftime lead by a visiting team in Finals history. Then came the freefall: a second half in which the Spurs were outscored 58-30, going 3-for-17 from deep after torching the nets all night.

Each of the Knicks’ wins in this series has carried the same DNA: a double-digit comeback and a Spurs mistake to match it. Game 2 was Wembanyama’s late turnover. Tonight, it was De’Aaron Fox forcing a layup instead of protecting the ball in the final minute. Head coach Mitch Johnson also never called a timeout during NY’s decisive 28-9 run. It felt less like the Knicks stole this game and more like the Spurs left the door wide open, daring them to walk through it.

This isn’t unfamiliar territory for this franchise, either. The last time the Spurs stood on the doorstep of a championship moment in the closing seconds of a Finals game, it ended in heartbreak — Game 6 of the 2013 Finals, when San Antonio led Miami by five points with 28 seconds left, only for Ray Allen’s corner three to force overtime and flip the series.

The Spurs rebounded the following year to gentlemen sweep that same Heat team for the title, a reminder that this organization has, at least once before, turned a gut-punch loss into fuel. Whether this young core can do the same starting Saturday is the question hanging over Frost Bank Center.

“Can’t really explain it right now. I don’t know. I think it’s just execution,  greediness. We clearly weren’t the most hungry in the second half,” Victor Wembanyama said of the performance. 

Wembanyama himself cooled dramatically after the break, going 3-for-14 in the second half as part of a Spurs team that converted just 8-of-39 shots after halftime.

San Antonio had a real chance to head home with the series knotted at 2-2 and home-court advantage in hand. Instead, they’re staring at a 3-1 deficit and the Knicks are now one win from their first championship since 1973, a 53-year drought that suddenly feels like it’s about to end on San Antonio’s floor.

Victor Wembanyama’s Flagrant Foul Makes the Road Even Harder

Wembanyama will own a share of the blame for tonight’s loss. He couldn’t steady a Spurs team that lost its composure down the stretch, and his missed free throws with 1:47 remaining with San Antonio still up 104-103 breathed life into a building that desperately needed it. But his most concerning error of the night might be the physical one. Wembanyama avoided a flagrant foul for shoving Brunson in Game 3; tonight, he caught Karl-Anthony Towns with an elbow to the face and was hit with a flagrant 1.

He’s somewhat learned his lesson and is assessing his behavior.

“Of course, I mean, I’m going to be more careful, but it’s not going to change much,” Wembanyama said about his physicality.

There’s a layer of irony to all of it. Wembanyama opened this very game by absorbing an elbow of his own, a first-quarter shot to the face from Mitchell Robinson that left him clapping and laughing it off, seemingly rattling New York early. The Spurs built a 19-point first-quarter lead, their largest after one quarter in any Finals game since the Cavaliers’ 31-11 start against Golden State in Game 6 of the 2016 Finals, itself the prelude to a historic Cleveland comeback from down 3-1.

San Antonio has now outscored New York by 47 points combined in the first quarter across this series. None of it has mattered, because none of it has lasted.

Going forward, there’s no margin left for the loose habits that have defined this series, the live-ball turnovers, the lapses in focus, the willingness to let a 20-point fourth-quarter cushion evaporate.

To survive, the Spurs need 48 minutes of sustained intensity, not 36. And they’ll need to find that version of themselves three times in a row, on the road, against a Knicks team that now has every reason to believe, because history says they can do it again.