NEW YORK — Even OG Anunoby, the king of stone-facedom, had to smile at just how ludicrous his words were.
When asked about his feelings after his game-winning tip-in with 1.2 seconds remaining to lift the New York Knicks to an NBA Finals-record 29-point comeback victory, 107-106, over the San Antonio Spurs in the wee hours of Thursday morning at Madison Square Garden, he started by simply saying, “It feels cool.”
It was far more than that.
For what feels like a team of destiny, Anunoby’s instant classic of a winner saw him seemingly defy gravity, crashing the boards on Jalen Brunson’s missed three-pointer, soaring over Dylan Harper and Devin Vassell to get his right hand on a ball that was too far over his head to dunk it, and settling for a tip heard ’round the world.
“It was unbelievable,” head coach Mike Brown said. “The tip, how he had to control it and tip it in from. That has to be the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball… It was just unbelievable.”
“OG being OG just made a play,” Brunson added. “…Just grateful to be on the winning side of that.”
Anunoby was a major piece of the Knicks’ comeback, dropping a personal postseason career-high of 33 points. He hit two huge corner three-pointers late to draw his side within four, then it was his trademark hustle that won it.
It was Anunoby who inbounded from the left sideline in the frontcourt to Brunson, who got it at the top of the key and heaved a prayer from 30 feet out. The moment the Knicks’ captain let it go, Anunoby streaked toward the basket, timed his jump perfectly, and sent Madison Square Garden into a frenzy rivaled only by Larry Johnson’s famous four-point play 27 years ago.
“He got a pretty good look, and I just went and crashed, trying to get a tip or something,” Anunoby said. “The ball went over my head, so I couldn’t dunk it, so I just tried to tip it in softly, and it went in.”
Brown’s pregame pep talk with the veteran forward now seems prophetic. The head coach challenged Anunoby to leverage the physical attributes that make him one of the more versatile players in the league to make a difference on the offensive glass.
“I told OG as big, as strong, as athletic as he is, he’s gotta be a monster on the glass tonight,” Brown said. “I don’t know if there’s a play bigger than any other play in the history of Knicks basketball. That was a huge offensive rebound. He took on the challenge, and he won the game for us doing exactly what I called him out for during shootaround.”
Anunoby and the Knicks have cleared practically every challenge thrown their way this postseason with flying colors, though this was by far their biggest one yet. The previous record for the largest comeback in an NBA Finals game was in 2008, when the Boston Celtics rallied back from 24 points down against the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 4 of that series.
After foul trouble and red-hot Spurs shooting in the first half that saw them set a new NBA Finals record with 14 made three-pointers, the Knicks’ deficit on Wednesday night ballooned as large as 29, and despite a few smaller runs, the hole was still at 20 with 9:33 left in the fourth quarter.
But no mountain ever seems too high enough for this team. They pulled off a pair of consecutive 20-point comebacks last season in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Boston Celtics. In Game 1 of the conference finals last month against the Cavaliers, they pulled off a 22-point comeback to lay the foundation of a series sweep.
So even when the Knicks trailed by double-digits as early as three minutes into Game 4 and Karl-Anthony Towns was limited to just eight minutes in the first half because of foul trouble, and the Spurs shot the lights out of MSG to the tune of a 54% three-point rate, and tempers were flaring when both Mitchell Robinson and Jose Alvarado took shots at Victor Wembanyama, belief never wavered.
Instead, the Knicks rediscovered their composure, didn’t watch any film, and resolved to start chipping away, as they’ve done so many times before.
“Experience teaches you a lot, and I think experience today lets us know that we cannot let go of the rope,” Towns said. “We always have a chance if we go out there and take it to another level and give ourselves a chance. We all needed to ask for it after the half we had. We just wanted a chance, and sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you make your luck. We made our luck.”
Their defense had an awful lot to do with it. While the Spurs cooled off, the Knicks allowed just 30 points in the second half, which is even more impressive considering they were in the penalty — meaning any additional foul would’ve sent San Antonio to the free-throw line — four minutes into the fourth.
On the offensive end, it was all hands on deck. Anunoby went 3-for-3 from the field, Brunson hit three of his six attempts, Towns was 2-for-2, and Alvarado, the reserve guard whose offensive game is the least-feared aspect of his game, went 3-for-3 with three assists.
“We found a way to really just continue the things that helped us get to this point, and it’ll be huge to kind of build off that for the next game,” Brunson said.
That next game comes on Saturday, and Anunoby’s “iconic” tip-in has the Knicks on the precipice of winning their first championship since 1973.
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