Photo by TJ Dragotta on Unsplash
New York arrives at Frost Bank Center one win from a first championship in 53 years, armed with the most complete roster in these Finals and a statistical edge that suggests this series may already be decided. The New York Knicks completed the largest comeback in NBA Finals history on Wednesday night, erasing a 29-point deficit to beat the San Antonio Spurs 107-106 at Madison Square Garden and take a 3-1 series lead. OG Anunoby tipped in a missed Jalen Brunson three with 1.2 seconds remaining, setting off scenes of disbelief inside an arena that had been preparing to sing its own eulogy. The Knicks are now one game from their first title since 1973, a drought of 53 years that has defined a franchise and consumed generations of fans. Game 5 tips off at 8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday at Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, with the Spurs installed as -198 moneyline favorites despite trailing the series and coming off a result that should, by every psychological measure, have broken them. Understanding why the line sits where it does, and whether the underlying numbers support that valuation, matters as much as any tactical breakdown going into what could be the final night of the 2025-26 season.
How the Knicks Turned a Rout Into a Record
San Antonio’s first-half performance in Game 4 was historically good. The Spurs scored 76 points on their first 38 possessions, hit 14 three-pointers before halftime, a Finals record for a single half, and built a lead that had reached 29 points in the third quarter. Victor Wembanyama and rookie Dylan Harper, both under 23, were playing the kind of basketball that suggests a dynasty in waiting rather than a team trying to survive a closeout game. Then the second half happened. According to NBA.com’s film study, the Knicks scored 34 points on 23 possessions when Brunson used Wembanyama as a ball-screen defender in the final two quarters, a rate of 1.48 points per chance that more than doubled their first-half output on the same action. The 6-foot-2 guard simply refused to let a 7-foot-4 opponent determine his night.
“The way Brunson kept forcing Wembanyama into those coverage decisions in the third and fourth quarter changed everything about how the Spurs could defend,” one analyst observed. “The moment they had to choose between dropping back and letting him shoot or switching and exposing Harper or Castle on the perimeter, the Knicks had them. They ran it over and over because it worked over and over.”
Brunson finished with 36 points. Anunoby added 33. The Spurs, who had not trailed entering any fourth quarter in their three previous games this series, watched a 29-point cushion dissolve in under 24 minutes of basketball.
Anunoby as the Series Differentiator
The Finals MVP race, entering the series widely framed as a battle between Brunson and Wembanyama, has shifted decisively toward Anunoby. His Player Efficiency Rating of 25.7 through four games leads the series ahead of Wembanyama at 24.0, according to RealGM tracking. He has scored 61 points on 19-of-28 shooting across the last two games, including 10-of-16 from three-point range, figures that speak to a player whose offense, long considered secondary to his defensive value, has become the series swing factor. Speaking to RotoWire, the award-winning independent platform covering DraftKings promo codes for US players alongside real-time injury and lineup analysis, one analyst noted: “Anunoby is now the one player neither team can game-plan around effectively. When he gets open looks off Brunson drives, he’s converting at a rate that would be elite even for a designated shooter. Asking your closeout defenders to stay connected to him while Brunson attacks Wembanyama in ball screens is asking teams to solve two problems simultaneously, and the Spurs haven’t managed it.”
Wembanyama remains the most disruptive defensive presence in the series. His 24 points and 13 rebounds in Game 4 were the kind of individual contribution that wins most playoff games. The problem for San Antonio is that his 9-of-25 shooting from the field in the same performance illustrates the tension at the center of the Spurs’ challenge. He covers so much defensive ground that his own offense suffers for it, and when the Knicks score on two consecutive possessions off Brunson drive-and-kick actions, the rhythm San Antonio requires to keep Wembanyama productive on both ends evaporates. “The statistical reality of this series is that Karl-Anthony Towns has held his own in the big-man matchup,” a data analyst noted. “Towns is averaging 15.8 points and 10.8 rebounds across the four games, and in the moments that mattered in Game 4, he was on the floor for most of the comeback and pestered Wembanyama into a 3-of-14 second half. Asking Wembanyama to anchor a defense against a team with Brunson, Anunoby, and Towns, all operating in different areas of the floor simultaneously, is the tactical problem these playoffs have revealed about the limits of even the best individual defender.”
The Spurs’ Statistical Case for a Game 6
There are genuine reasons to respect the -198 price on San Antonio. Road teams have won the first three games of this series. The Spurs, despite their collapses, have held a double-digit lead entering the fourth quarter of all three of their losses and a lead at the start of the final period in Game 3. They have demonstrated an ability to outscore New York in first quarters consistently across the series, suggesting a preparation and pace advantage at the opening tip that the Knicks have not been able to match. A Game 5 at home, with a sellout crowd and no deficit psychology to shake off, removes the specific conditions under which the Spurs have folded.
The Knicks enter as +164 underdogs on the moneyline but carry the more compelling aggregate profile. They are 14-1 across this postseason, are a perfect 3-0 in series closeout games, all on the road, and have not lost a game by more than four points during the entire playoff run. Their offensive rating, defensive rating, and net rating are all first in the 2026 postseason, a combination that reflects a team executing at the highest level rather than a team catching breaks. Full definitions of every efficiency metric referenced in this piece, from eDIFF to pace to offensive and defensive rating, are trackable in real time across all 30 teams via NBA advanced team stats for readers who want to go deeper on the numbers behind Saturday’s matchup.
What Game 5 Actually Decides
Brunson’s ability to weaponize Wembanyama’s defensive positioning is the thread running through every Knicks win in this series. In Games 1, 2, and 4, Brunson scored 30, 30, and 36 points respectively, using his lower center of gravity and spatial awareness to draw the Spurs’ best defender into coverage decisions he cannot win cleanly without sacrificing his shot-blocking presence. The Spurs’ coaching staff knows it. The solution has not materialized. Stephon Castle and De’Aaron Fox, both high-level perimeter defenders, have struggled in isolation against Brunson because the help defense required to slow him opens Anunoby on the weak side. “The closing sequence that wins or loses Game 5 will almost certainly come down to which version of Wembanyama shows up in the fourth quarter,” one observer said. “If he conserves his energy for the second half and his shot is falling by the third quarter, the Spurs become a different team. But if Brunson gets him into foul trouble or into those ball-screen rotations early, the Knicks’ experience in closeout situations makes New York the team you back.”
The Knicks have closed out every previous playoff opponent on the road in three games this postseason, dispatching Atlanta in Game 6, sweeping the 76ers and Cavaliers in their final games away from New York. San Antonio has never faced a team this composed in a closeout environment, and the collapse in Game 4, however galvanizing the locker room rhetoric may be, has produced a 3-1 deficit that no team has overcome in NBA Finals history without first winning Game 5 at home. The Spurs need the building. The crowd will deliver it. Whether the basketball follows is the only question that matters at Frost Bank Center on Saturday night.