The San Antonio Spurs had a double-digit lead in every game of the Finals, yet they failed to close it out. Meanwhile, the New York Knicks crawled back every time, including a 29-point deficit, the largest in NBA Finals history. Josh Hart, who was an important figure in breaking the Knicks’ 53-year championship drought, pointed out the exact moment where they had the edge.

“And the reaction after Game Four and Three was like, it shows that. That was similar to the San Antonio issue, where everyone was talking about, you know, they got to beat OKC. Like, OKC’s going to be beat, OKC’s going to be beat, da-da-da. And then, they, you know, they beat OKC, and that was like, for them, for a young child, I felt like that was a mountaintop finale,” Hart said on the special live episode of The Roommates Show.

“And then after I looked at JB, I was like, ‘You see that reaction, because like, they think they’re going to win it, like they think it’s over, it’s over.’

Hart went on to draw the contrast between the two teams, “Then you look at all the reaction after we beat Cleveland, and it was like, it was tough to say, but we were like, we got a four in a war. Like, obviously winning is an amazing accomplishment, but we all looked at that like, this is just a step; this isn’t the destination; this is just a step in.”

Strip away the basketball jargon and Hart is describing two different title cultures. The Spurs treated dethroning the defending champion like the job was done. The Knicks, even after closing out road games, refused to call anything finished. That gap in temperament, Hart argued, is exactly why San Antonio kept building leads it couldn’t hold onto- relief had already set in before the Finals even started.

Wembanyama became highly emotional after San Antonio defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 7 of the WCF. As the second-youngest team ever to reach the NBA Finals, the moment carried significant weight for the Spurs. In fact, in his third year, Wemby had his first playoff run and made it to the Finals. It was the culmination of all those emotions which let out during the celebration.

Getting concussed in the first round against the Blazers and still coming back. Battling the physical Timberwolves in the Game 7 series and then the fight against the current champions, OKC, which again went to the wire. By contrast, the Knicks were always poised under their leader, Jalen Brunson, who hardly showed any emotion during the Finals run. In fact, JB even avoided shooting promotional material in any room where the Larry O’Brien trophy was present.

That composure wasn’t an accident on New York’s side, and on San Antonio’s side, the confidence Hart described had already been said out loud before Game 1 tipped off. Spurs guard Stephon Castle had waved away any doubts about the team’s youth heading into the series, insisting questions about inexperience were noise from outside the building and that the locker room had nothing but belief in itself.

Head coach Mitch Johnson echoed it, pointing to how consistent the team had been over more than a hundred games, even with stretches missing Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox, as proof the Spurs had earned their stripes despite their age. It was the language of a team that believed it had already cleared its hardest test. Hart’s critique suggests that belief never recalibrated once the Finals actually started.

Kazeem Famuyide, co-host of Carmelo Anthony’s 7PM in Brooklyn, was in attendance for the special live broadcast of The Roommates show and added that Josh Hart also said the emotional Spurs “were food”.

This could be the reason why the Knicks were able to chip away at the lead at every turn. They adjusted better, as Josh Hart admitted. The hustle guard averaged 10.4 points, 8.9 rebounds, 4.6 assists, and 1.7 steals with splits of 43.1 percent shooting from the field. In Game 1 of the NBA Finals against San Antonio, Hart became the first player in NBA history to outright lead both teams in rebounds (15), assists (6), and steals (4) during a Finals game.

None of this is unfamiliar territory for the Spurs as an organization, even if this roster shares no players with the team that lived it. In 2013, San Antonio led the Miami Heat 3-2 in the Finals and was five points up with under thirty seconds left in Game 6, only to watch Ray Allen’s corner three force overtime before the series slipped away entirely in Game 7. Letting a commanding position dissolve in a moment of emotional or mental lapse has happened to this franchise before. In 2026, it just wore different jerseys.

Wembanyama agreed that the Conference Finals win was a distraction

His playoff debut and leading the Spurs to their first NBA Finals appearance since 2014. It was an emotionally taxing journey. But analysts and even mentors like Kevin Garnett had an issue with Wemby crying after winning the Conference Finals. The Spurs found themselves down 2-0 in the NBA Finals against the Knicks, and Victor Wembanyama acknowledged that the high of the win over the Thunder still had its effect.

“I’m still very blurry, and that’s the whole problem, you know?” Wembanyama candidly confessed. “I need to have more poise, more control over the game. I’m not going to go through the whole possessions, but that’s the general image.”

“We need to never get too high, never get too low. Personally, I think I could have been better in recovering from the high of the conference finals. And—but I mean, here we are.”

Turnovers and poor shot selection also stemmed from the Spurs failing to keep the Knicks in check. It was a game of chess, and Josh Hart’s statements make it clear that the Knicks knew about their rivals’ weakness.

Wembanyama’s own postmortem, delivered once the series was over, closed the loop on Hart’s read of the room. He called it the biggest lesson of his life, the biggest learning moment he’d had- a confession that the emotional peak of beating OKC never fully wore off before New York made the Spurs pay for it.