Knicks win in Game 4, as Wemby misses 2 late free throws

NEW YORK — For all the shots Victor Wembanyama hit to get the San Antonio Spurs to the NBA Finals, the series is beginning to be defined by a few of his misses.

After clanking his shot off the rim at the buzzer on what would have been the Game 2 winner, Wembanyama did the same on two key free throws late in Game 4 on Wednesday night. With the chance to put his team up by three with 1:47 left, he instead went zero for two, and the New York Knicks took the lead and went on to win 107-106 on OG Anunoby's tip-in with 1.2 seconds left.

"It's just a shot," Wembanyama said. "You might work on your form for hours and hours. At the end of the day, it's just a shot, so you need to shoot it the normal way."

Wembanyama and the Spurs are now on the brink of elimination, down 3-1 in the best-of-seven series. It mattered little that the 7-foot-4 big man from France scored 24 points and had 13 rebounds.

It mattered more that the Knicks held Wembanyama to eight points in the second half on the way to rallying from 29 points down, the largest comeback in Finals history. Game 5 is Saturday night in San Antonio.

"It's going to go one of two ways," Wembanyama said. "One of two ways, a bad one and a good one. The bad one would be giving up. The good one would be getting stronger through this, getting more together. I know this is what we're going to do."

Wembanyama enters Game 5 on the edge of possible discipline after being called for a flagrant foul early in the second half for a right elbow to Karl-Anthony Towns' chin. Because of the NBA's flagrant foul point system, he now has three and is one more away from an automatic one-game suspension.

"Of course I'm going to be a little more careful, but it's not going to change much," Wembanyama said.

An officiating decision in the aftermath of Game 3 going the other way would have put him in danger of already staring down a suspension. The NBA acknowledged officials missed Wembanyama striking Knicks guard Jalen Brunson in the head, but did not retroactively make it a flagrant.

"The league's going to do what they're going to do," New York coach Mike Brown said before Game 4. "They aren't going to listen to me. They aren't going to listen to anybody else."

Wembanyama early in Game 4 looked to be getting under the skin of his opponents. After scoring on Mitchell Robinson and letting him hear about it while going back down the court late in the first quarter, he took a forearm to the face and appeared to say, "I'm in your head, bro," while pointing to his right temple.

A similar play happened early in the second, when 6-foot guard Jose Alvarado jostled with Wembanyama before ultimately pushing the towering Frenchman's right leg to get him to the ground.

Things changed after halftime. San Antonio had its biggest lead of the night at 81-52 when Wembanyama elbowed Towns, and the Knicks outscored the Spurs 55-25 the rest of the way.

Wembanyama played all but three minutes of the first half, which coach Mitch Johnson said was normal. Johnson said Wembanyama, who ended up playing nearly 44 minutes, got a little more playing time to try to close it out.

"With two days after this, what was at stake, we wanted to win the game and try to put it away," Johnson said.

Asked if that caused him to wear down as the game went on, Wembanyama responded: "Substitution patterns, I don't know. It's not really my expertise. But, yeah, I guess I did."

On the brink

The Knicks made a record comeback from 29 points down and moved to the brink of their first championship since 1973.

Anunoby tipped in the miss of Brunson's long 3-point attempt with 1.2 seconds remaining to complete the rally, giving the Knicks three chances to win the title.

It looked impossible early on, when the Spurs rolled to a 27-point halftime lead. But Brunson helped bring the Knicks back with 36 points and Anunoby finished with 33, swooping in as Brunson's shot bounced softly off the front of the rim and stretching high with his right hand to tap it in.

"I told OG as big, as strong, as athletic as he is, he's got to be a monster on the offensive glass tonight," Brown said. "I don't know if there was a play bigger in the history of Knicks basketball."

No team had come from more than 24 points down in a Finals game, when Boston did it against the Lakers in 2008, since the NBA began keeping detailed play-by-play for all four quarters in 1997.

The Spurs led 81-52 in the third quarter.

The only bigger comeback on record in any playoff game was 31 points by the Los Angeles Clippers against Golden State in Game 2 of a first-round series in 2019.

The Knicks had their 13-game winning streak snapped in Game 3 and seemed headed for a second straight defeat throughout the first half, when Wembanyama and the Spurs opened up the biggest halftime lead by a visiting team in the Finals.

But the young Spurs, who made 11 of their first 16 three-pointers, went cold in the second half, going 3 for 17 behind the arc as the Knicks outscored them 58-30.

"We got on our heels — we missed some shots," Spurs coach Johnson said. "It's disappointing, to say the least."

Dylan Harper scored 21 points and De'Aaron Fox and Devin Vassell each had 18 for the Spurs, who will try to regroup and send the series back to New York for Game 6 on Tuesday.

"I think it began before (the fourth quarter)," Wembanyama said of the Spurs' collapse. "I can't really explain it right now. I don't know. We clearly weren't the most hungry in the second half."

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